Shinobu Majima

This article analyses finance in South East Asia during the Second World War in terms of three challenges. Beginning in December 1941, Japan swiftly occupied South East Asia and immediately faced the challenge of how to finance occupation. Finance largely through printing money gave rise to a further challenge in the need to avoid hyperinflationary pressures. After the war the reoccupying powers faced their own, and a third, challenge of wartime finance in deciding how to deal with a large stock of money created during the conflict. Comparison with war finance elsewhere shows that the three challenges were met in sometimes unusual but rather effective ways.

The article addresses debates around the changing nature of old age, using UK data on spending on dress and related aspects of appearance by older women to explore the potential role of consumption in the reconstitution of aged identities. Based on pseudo-cohort analysis of Family Expenditures Survey, it compares spending patterns on clothing, cosmetics and hairdressing, 1961-2011. It concludes that there is little evidence for the 'baby boomers' as a strategic or distinctive generation. There is evidence, however, for increased engagement by older women in aspects of appearance: shopping for clothes more frequently; more involved in the purchase of cosmetics; and women over 75 are now the most frequent attenders at hairdressers. The roots of these patterns, however, lie more in period than cohort effects, and in the role of producer-led developments such as mass cheap fashion and the development of anti-ageing products. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This article analyzes how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the market-purchased transfer of resources to Japan, and the monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. Occupation was financed principally by printing large quantities of money. While some Southeast Asian countries had high inflation, hyperinflation hardly occurred because of a sustained transactions demand for money and because of Japan's strong enforcement of monetary monopoly. Highly specialized Southeast Asian economies and loss of Japanese merchant shipping limited resource extraction.