“High apple…pie in the Sky hopes!” I’d sing it for you, but I don’t think you’re in a position to appreciate my heavenly notes. 
I think they got the technology for making artificial rubber from Germany as war aid (there was a certain cooperation between the countries, mostly Germany sending blue prints and sample over to Japan by submarine).
The bottleneck for the Japanese would have been the supply of hydrocarbons, either through oil or coal. I think that the Chinese coal would have been sufficient. The main reason for Japan’s drive to Indonesia was that through the American oil boycott the Navy was running out of fuel for their oil fired warships. Malaya had to be captured, same as the Philippines, to prevent it to be used as a base for Allied attacks against Japanese shipping on the way to Java.
The rubber plantations were just a bonus. Of course once Japan had them, getting a source for synthetic rubber was not that important anymore.
Jan
Walther, thanks again.
I suspect that, so far as tyres go, rubber might have been less important to Japan than to Germany in their war efforts after their initial expansions.
Germany relied on horses to a greater extent than the Allies, so perhaps there was less need for rubber tyred wagons. Nonetheless, Germany had a huge land mass to cover in Europe, Russia, and the Balkans. The best way to do it was with rail and road transport, and the latter needs tyres. Germany’s area also had a generally good road network, which made road transport feasible.
In comparison, Japan’s land areas often had limited road networks so, regardless of the question of what road transport was available, there was less scope to use it. Shipping was much more important to Japan in communicating with its far-flung island conquests.
I don’t know in how far the Japanese were using (again German developed) technology for making liquid fuels out of coal (either through the Fischer-Tropsch process or the Bergius-Pier-Process). Germany was using this technology big time to manufacture petrol and diesel fuel from coal. During the apartheid period, the South Africans have been manufacturing their fuels using these methods due to the UN oil embargo.
Jan
The German genius in organic chemistry was well known in the world prior to WW1. One could say that most, but not all, of the American chemical industry was based on German patents that were simply taken over by the US and its allies following WW1.
As to the Japanese “needing” rubber from Malaysia, I rather doubt it because they could get a fairly abundant supply out of French Indochina which was controlled by Vichy and effectively powerless to stop the Japanese from taking what it wanted. But, by taking Malaysia, Japan denied access to natural rubber by the allies, and that was important. However, it was a fortuitous by-product of Japan’s real drive which was to get oil out of the Dutch East Indies.
Now we have a new problem getting coal out, which is adding to the cost.
The US has so much coal close to the surface out west that we are fairly drowning in the stuff. I have heard it said that we have a supply sufficient to last us a thousand years ( how anyone would know that is beyond me), but there is a very powerful environmental lobby in this country which would like to shut down the coal industry because it uses open-pit mining, scarifies the land, and its products of combustion probably contribute to global warming on a fairly grand scale. Maybe the coal can be converted to fuel for our cars if anyone can make the process cheap enough to compete).
I have noticed on my drives from San Antonio, Tx to Lubbock, Tx (a mere 6-7 hour drive north through mostly empty land - like Australia - over good roads) where my daughter attends university, that there are, in addition to mile upon mile of huge wind farm electrical generators, literally hundreds of new oil wells being drilled - could be thousands but I wouldn’t know.
Couple of related News:
Brazil ‘rubber soldiers’ fight for recognition
According to Brazilian government records, more than 55,000 people, almost all of them from the drought-ridden and poverty-stricken northeast, were sent to the Amazon to harvest rubber for the Allied war effort. There are no official figures on how many of them succumbed to disease or animal attacks, but historians estimate than nearly half perished before Japan surrendered in September 1945.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/13/news/brazil.php
Creation of Synthetic Rubber Plant Was Exciting
When Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942, the United States and its allies lost 95 percent of their source of natural rubber. The stockpile in this country was barely a year’s supply. Fortunately, the design and plans for a huge synthetic rubber industry were well advanced.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/341651/institute_and_wwii__creation_of_synthetic_rubber_plant_was/index.html?source=r_science
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alephh
Thanks for your information.
I’m beginning to think that Germany and or the Axis might have won if Germany had kept synthetic rubber knowledge and technology to itself.
The questions, for anyone who knows, are:
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Could Germany have kept that knowledge or technology secret?
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Was that knowledge inevitably disseminated through commercial exploitation by Germany before WWII without regard to future war considerations?
The German black (antrazite) coal come to surface at about a line drawn from south of Aachen through Bochum in the southern Ruhr area and continue (increasing in depth) all the way north beneath the North Sea. The easily accessible coal seams close to the surface though have been exploited during the 19th century, though during and after WW2 small mines, often only operated by a handfull of miners (often illegally) have been working seams, which were not commercially viable for a bigger operation.
A former colleague of mine, a native Texan, who worked in the Texan oil fields before joining the USAF and subsequently ending up in Germany as aircraft mechanic, told me that there are hundreds of oil wells in the Texas / Oklahoma area, which have been drilled to confirm the presence of oil, but afterwards tapped. The American government, acc. to him,
treats these wells as a strategic reserve, rather buying oil from abroad during peacetime, but having the American oil sitting underground in case of war.
Jan