MITI and the Japanese miracle

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1932 of the new state of Manchukuo. Since the army actually ran Manchukuo, those who were invited to work there had to be in sympathy with the military's ideas for the renovation of Japan itself. The MCI contingent that served in Manchuria is particularly important for postwar industrial policy because, as Shiina Etsusaburo * wrote in 1976, Manchuria was "the great proving ground" for Japanese industry.

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We shall identify them and describe their activities below.

Some important reform bureaucrats in MCI and in closely related economic bureaucracies were Kishi Nobusuke, Shiina Etsusaburo, Uemura Kogoro*, Kogane Yoshiteru (director of the Fuel Bureau in 1941 and a postwar Diet member), Hashii Makoto (who served in the postwar Economic Stabilization Board and then became president of Tokyo Gauge Company), Minobe Yoji* (Minobe Tatsukichi's nephew, chief of the Munitions Ministry's Machinery Bureau and postwar vice-president of Japan Hydrogen Industries), Wada Hiroo (from the Agriculture Ministry and postwar minister of agriculture in the first Yoshida cabinet), Sakomizu Hisatsune (from the Finance Ministry and postwar director-general of the Economic Planning Agency and postal minister in the Ikeda cabinets), Aoki Kazuo (from the Finance Ministry, president of the Cabinet Planning Board, and postwar member of the House of Councillors of the Diet), and Hoshino Naoki (from the Finance Ministry, president of the Cabinet Planning Board, and postwar chairman of the Tokyu* hotel chain and the Diamond Publishing Company). Not surprisingly, a few of the reform bureaucrats turned out to be not rightists but left socialists and cryptocommunists; their presence on the "economic general staff" produced a major scandal in 1941, as we shall see later in this chapter.

Before the second Konoe cabinet was established in 1940, the mainstream factions in most ministries tried quietly to check the influence of the reform bureaucrats, whom they regarded as excessively ambitious. The promilitary bureaucrats therefore often sought transfers to Manchuria or to the cabinet-level bureaus of the economic general staff, where military influence was strong. In May 1935, when the Cabinet Research Bureau was set up, Minister Machida of MCI suggested that Yoshino take the post as first director of the bureau, but he did not insist when Yoshino refused.

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Instead, the prime minister chose Yoshida Shigeru (18851954), who must be carefully distinguished from the Foreign Ministry bureaucrat of exactly the same name who became prime minister after the war. This Yoshida was a Home Ministry bureaucrat, a member of the ultranationalist Society for the Maintenance of the National Prestige (Kokuikai), and minister of munitions in the Koiso cabinet of 1944.