While commerce between the social democracy and the Empire of Japan was modest and constituted only a minor fraction of the overall Imperial Japanese trade with Europe, Swedish export of strategic products, such as steel, ball bearings and different sorts of advanced machinery, proved important for the Imperial economy. Sandviken, a Swedish engineering company, also supplied the Imperialists with piano wire for their machine‐guns, and the social democracy exported pulp, newsprint and certain superior qualities of paper to the Imperialists. The paper tycoon Fujiwara Ginjirō of Ōji Seishi (Oji Paper Manufacturing Co.) in particular often went on study visits to Scandinavia and played a significant role in the Japan–Sweden Society that capitalists founded in Tokyo in 1929, with Prince Chichibu as its official patron.