MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 121

TABLE

8

Indices of the World Economic Crisis, 19301935

(1929 = 100)

Country

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

Wholesale Prices

Japan

82.3

69.6

77.2

88.5

90.2

92.5

United States

90.7

76.6

68.0

69.2

78.6

83.9

England

87.5

76.8

74.9

75.0

77.1

77.9

Germany

90.8

80.8

70.3

68.0

71.7

74.2

France

88.4

80.0

68.2

63.6

60.0

54.0

Mining and Manufacturing Production

Japan

94.8

91.6

97.8

113.2

128.7

141.8

United States

80.7

68.1

53.8

63.9

66.4

75.6

England

92.3

83.8

83.5

88.2

98.8

105.6

Germany

85.9

67.6

53.3

60.7

79.8

94.0

France

99.1

86.2

71.6

80.7

75.2

72.5

SOURCE

: Arisawa Hiromi, ed.,

Showa

*

keizai shi

(Economic history of the Showa* era), Tokyo, 1976, p. 52.

day as the direct ancestor and model for the Petroleum Industry Law of 1962. The 1934 law gave the government authority to license the business of importing and refining petroleum, and it required importers to stockpile at least a six months' supply of petroleum in Japan at all times. It also empowered the government to set quotas, fix prices, and make compulsory purchases of petroleum products.

An Imperial ordinance put MCI in charge of administering the law, and Yoshino, as vice-minister, set out to negotiate with Japan's foreign suppliers (chiefly the Standard Vacuum and Rising Sun oil companies). One of Stan-Vac's representatives in Japan recalls that in late 1934 Yoshino himself was not difficult to deal with or antiforeign, but that both of them had agreed it would be better to postpone their negotiations until after the current Diet session had ended in order to lessen possible military charges that MCI was bending to foreign coercion.

⁹

The result of the negotiations in 1934 was that the foreign suppliers more or less met the terms of the law in order to keep the Japanese business.

The Petroleum Law affected the ministry most directly by authorizing the creation of a Fuel Section in the Mining Bureau. Three years later, on June 9, 1937, this section became the Fuel Bureau (Nenryo* Kyoku), an external agency of MCI charged with making fuel policy, developing new sources of petroleum, promoting the synthetic petroleum industry, and administering the Petroleum Industry Law. It