Shake hands or shake apart? international relationship of Japan with global blocs

Despite the world-wide spread of economic blocs following the Great Depression, Japan sought to find trade partners outside of its own bloc and to maintain a relationship with some foreign blocs, in particular maintaining a connection with the British Commonwealth and the Sterling bloc. The 1930s bloc economies did not isolate Japan. Also, in the early period of the cold war after World War II, capitalist blocs did not significantly isolate Japan. Econometric analysis of Japan's trade and world trade over the period from 1890 to 1955 based on a development of a gravity equation illustrates these statements.