Progress in housing policy research activity in Dōjunkai: A study on the discussion and research in the process of establishing housing policy during World War II (2)

Dōjunkai was a nonprofit government foundation set up in 1924 to rebuild the areas hardest hit by the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923. In the late 1930s, Dōjunkai established the Housing Policy Research Committee (HPRC). Previous studies have pointed out the importance of the research activity of this committee and demonstrated that some of its findings shaped the housing policy of wartime and postwar Japan. Less well known are the circumstances in which Dōjunkai became increasingly involved in policy research. This article is distinctive in that it examines Dōjunkai's research within a broad temporal lens, beginning with the founding of the corporation, and in doing so, it analyzes the circumstances in which the HPRC was established. Two novel findings are revealed: 1. Dōjunkai increasingly developed an organizational footing for research after establishing the Research Section and launching a research series titled, “Research into Building and Maintenance of Small Houses.” 2. Having accumulated a body of findings on the housing policies of foreign governments, Dōjunkai established the HPRC because the relevant government ministry lacked its own organizational apparatus for researching housing policy.