MITI and the Japanese miracle

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war production apparatus was in place, the tide of war was beginning to run strongly against Japan. It was against this background that, in late 1943, Kishi and Tojo * took their final step to achieve full state control of the economy. They converted MCI into the Ministry of Munitions.

Writing as an Allied analyst of the Japanese economy during World War II, T. A. Bisson perceived the existence of "a chronic behind-the-scenes political crisis throughout 1943," and he was quite right to do so.

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The crisis had at least three aspects. First, Tojo and Kishi were seeking to centralize authority over war production, but the business community was resisting this movement, and MCI was being pulled in both directions. Second, the Cabinet Planning Board and MCI were engaged in almost daily shouting matches over priorities and deliveries, in part because the CPB was writing plans for the empire as a whole, including the occupied areas (which were under military control), but MCI had jurisdiction only over Japan proper. And third, interservice rivalries were tending to nullify all efforts at expanded production, particularly production of fighter aircraft, which had become the highest priority for the battles to be fought in Japanese home waters.

In March 1943, in response to the Tojo cabinet's assertion of greater control powers and to the enterprise readjustment movement, the business community and its supporters in the Diet had demanded and won a much larger voice at the top of the government concerning war production policies. This led on March 17, 1943, to the creation of a Cabinet Advisers Council, the businessmen on which wanted above all to supervise the comparatively young MCI minister, Kishi. These businessmen were not unpatriotic or opposed to the war effort, but they remained suspicious of the dictatorial tendencies of Tojo and Kishi and of their known antizaibatsu sentiments. From Kishi's point of view the creation of the council was a personal insult; it recalled forcefully to him the clashes of the 1930's between the reform bureaucrats and such MCI ministers as Ikeda Seihin, Fujihara Ginjiro* (who became a member of the 1943 council and ultimately Kishi's successor), and Kobayashi Ichizo*. The council of 1943 also signified that neither the state-control nor the self-control group had ever seen its views totally prevail as a result of those earlier battles.

Members of the council included Admiral Toyoda, president of the Iron and Steel Control Association; Okochi* Masatoshi, one of Yoshino's civilian colleagues in the old Rationality Bureau and president of the Industrial Machinery Control Association; Fujihara, head of the Industrial Facilities Corporation and personally affiliated with Mitsui;