MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 231

TABLE

17

Plans of the Economic Planning Agency, 19551960

Item

I

Five-year plan for economic independence

II

New long-

term economic plan

III

National income-

doubling plan

Date of plan

12/1955

12/1957

12/1960

Cabinet

Hatoyama

Kishi

Ikeda

Plan period

195660

195862

196170

Planned growth rate

5.0%

6.5%

7.2%

Realized growth rate

9.1%

10.1%

10.4%

^a

^a

Rate for 196167.

things. By 1975 it operated some 24 trade centers and 54 reporting offices in 55 different countries.

During the 1950's there were actually three JETROs. The first was set up in 1951 in Osaka on the initiative of the mayor, Akama Bunzo * (an old MCI cadre, 192547), and Sugi Michisuke, chairman of the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Kansai industrialists and the individual prefectures put up the money for this early organization, and MITI merely approved its activities. In 1954 MITI took it over, provided more national funds for it, and greatly expanded its operations. Finally, in 1958, in recognition of the fact that national funding now heavily outweighed that of the prefectures and that MITI wanted to bring it more securely under the ministry's control, JETRO was transformed into a public corporation with all of its capital coming from the central government (Japan External Trade Organization Law, number 95, of April 26, 1958). From 1951 on MITI also began providing key executive personnel for JETRO, notably its managing director (from 1951 to 1954 he was Okabe Kunio, the recently retired director of MITI's Trade Promotion Bureau; and from 1954 to 1965, Nagamura Teiichi, who had ended his MITI career as vice-minister of the EDA). Virtually all of JETRO's overseas personnel are MITI transferees.

⁶⁶

Except during its earliest days, when it was the brainchild of Osaka business leaders, JETRO has always been an operating arm of MITI. However, its post-1958 legal status as a public corporation rather than as an agency of the government has sometimes gotten it into trouble in the United States. During the late 1950's JETRO set up in Washington an organization wholly staffed by Americans called the United StatesJapan Trade Council but failed to register it under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938. As a result of this oversight, in 1976