Autumn 1939. The war in China drags on, Europe has just burst into flames, and prices are soaring in Tokyo. Military spending is inflating the money supply while imports of raw materials grow scarce. Each month, the yen buys a little less.
The cabinet of , formed in late August, has at its disposal the National General Mobilization Law (1938), which authorizes it to set prices, wages, and rents by imperial decree. But how should it act? Freeze the entire price apparatus in one stroke, or patiently build a grid of official prices sector by sector?
Each option has its cost: the brutality of a blanket freeze risks strangling producers and the market; the slowness of selective controls lets inflation run for months.
Faced with the surge in prices triggered by the war, which instrument does the government impose to stabilize the Japanese war economy?
The Abe cabinet chose the blanket freeze. Imperial Decree No. 703, the "Price Control Ordinance" (Kakaku-tō Tōsei-rei), promulgated on 18 October 1939 and enforced from 20 October under Article 19 of the National General Mobilization Law, froze all prices, wages, rents, transport, storage, and insurance charges at their level of 18 September 1939 — hence its nickname the "9-18 stop order" (9.18 stop order). Any increase beyond this ceiling was prohibited. The measure did not lastingly curb inflation: it fed a vast black market and worsened shortages, until it was replaced by the Price Control Ordinance of 1946.
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