MITI and the Japanese miracle

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tant post of chief of the Cotton Textiles Section in the Textiles Bureau (which he held from December 1948 to August 1951) to a mere outpost as chief of the General Affairs Department of the Sendai regional bureau (August 1951 to August 1952).

During the period of rapid unionization in the early years of the occupation, Sahashi had been elected the first chairman of Zenshoko *, and although he was not a communist, this put him in an exposed position when the "red purge" began. In the course of the Dodge Line reduction in force, members of Zenshoko one day seized Chief Secretary Nagayama and subjected him to a kangaroo court. Although he was no longer a union leader, Section Chief Sahashi was summoned to mediate the dispute. In his typically outspoken manner (of which we shall have several examples in the next chapter), Sahashi ended the incident by loudly haranguing the workers that they would not save their jobs by pressuring a fool such as Nagayama. Shortly thereafter Sahashi found himself on a train heading northeast.

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The objections to Nagayama were not just that he was serving as an agent of Yoshida and Shirasu but also that as chief secretary he had jumped over several other officials in the seniority hierarchy. It was during this period of poverty and firings that seniority became entrenched in all Japanese organizations as a vital source of job security. Nagayama's use of his political connections was thus seen as a potential threat to everyone. He was not, however, easy to dislodge. Tamaki, as vice-minister, worked on the problem, and he gained the support of his minister, Ikeda. When Ikeda had to resign after his "slip of the tongue" in the Diet about his not caring if a few small businessmen were driven to suicide, he advised his successor, Ogasawara Sankuro*, that Nagayama must go. At this same time Nagayama's position was weakened because his mentor, Shirasu, publicly criticized Prime Minister Yoshida and promptly lost his own influence.

In January 1953 Ogasawara and Tamaki succeeded in moving Nagayama out of the secretaryship and made him chief of the Tokyo regional bureau (they replaced him as secretary with Ishihara Takeo, who became vice-minister two years later). Nagayama remained in his new post until July of the following year, when he returned to headquarters as chief of the Textiles Bureau. He finally resigned as a bureaucrat in December 1955, and sought to use his contacts developed in the Tokyo and Textiles positionsamong the best places to build political supportto run for the upper house of the Diet. However, he was unsuccessful at the polls and therefore made a normal amakudari to the presidency of the Showa* Oil Company (a Shell affiliate) and a directorship at Mitsubishi Yuka (petrochemicals).

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