MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 142

the military services for allocations made their lives almost intolerable.

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Tanaka Shin'ichi divides the planning into two periods: 193840, during which the determining element in the plans was the amount of foreign currency reserves; and 194144, during which the determining element was marine transport capability. The leader of the General Affairs Unit during the first period was an army officer, and during the second period a naval officer.

Although there were many interesting technical problems of conceptualization and procedure in these plans, by far the most lasting influence they were to exercise on later Japanese industrial policy came from the experience gained by MCI in trying to implement them. On May 7, 1938, in order to deal with its new rationing function, MCI created a powerful external unit called the Temporary Materials Coordination Bureau (TMCB; Rinji Busshi Chosei* Kyoku, based on Imperial ordinance 324). The minister of commerce and industry was concurrently its director-generalto signify its importancebut its deputy director was actually in charge. Yoshino was still minister and therefore the first director, although he was dropped from the cabinet less than three weeks after the bureau was created. Its first deputy director and actual leader was Murase Naokai, who served at the same time as vice-minister of MCI.

The Fuel Bureau was the first unit in MCI to be devoted exclusively to a commodity, but the TMCB was the first unit to adopt the principle of vertical organizations classified by materials for its internal organization. The TMCB was divided into six departments and fourteen sections, ranging from department one, section one (in charge of steel and manganese), through department four, section nine (in charge of chemical textiles, paper, and pulp), to department six, section fourteen (in charge of import plans and funds to pay for imports). All commodities covered in the materials mobilization plan were assigned to one or another section, which then had to decide how to meet the targets and had to negotiate with other bureaus and with industries about terms, delivery dates, and so forth. The TMCB was heavily staffed with military officers, and all the civilian MCI officials who worked there became intimately familiar with the plan and with its authors in the Cabinet Planning Board.

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The TMCB did not work well. Among its many problems were conflicts of jurisdiction within MCI itselfparticularly among the TMCB, the Trade Bureau, and the Fuel Bureauand externally with the Ministry of Finance over the licensing of imports and the use of foreign exchange. The conflict with the Finance Ministry led in December