MITI and the Japanese miracle

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peared to have been achieved in July 1961 when Matsuo Kinzo * moved from the Enterprises Bureau to the top job and Sahashi moved to the Enterprises Bureau.

In the course of arranging things in this way, Sahashi developed within the ministry two groups, one made up of his close associates and one of men who were more distant from himthey were not yet explicit factions but rather different career specializations within trade and industrial administration. The group closest to him comprised the industrial-policy specialists from the Enterprises Bureau and the industry-specific bureaus; the more distant group was made up of officials who had served overseas in embassy or JETRO postings or who worked in international trade positions within the ministry. Sahashi once described himself as "weak in foreign languages" and as a "domestic-use-only bureaucrat," descriptions that would also apply to most of the people he favored.

³

Sahashi's personnel administration was not particularly controversial during the 1950's; it became so only in retrospect, with the onset of liberalization and MITI's response to it. The people whom Sahashi advanced and who in turn helped him were all acknowledged to be the leaders of heavy and chemical industrialization, at the time the basic policy that was widely supported throughout the ministry.

Just before Ishihara Takeo retired as vice-minister in June 1957, he asked Sahashi what post he would like in the ministry in return for his long and effective service as personnel officer. Sahashi chose deputy director of the Heavy Industries Bureau, which was just then at the peak of its influence and also the most old-fashioned bureau in the ministry. The Heavy Industries Bureau had jurisdiction over both the nurturing and the export sales of steel, machine tools, general machinery, automobiles, electronics, heavy electrical equipment, rolling stock, and aviation productsand over the industries that turned them out. Machines in general were beginning to occupy a commanding share of Japan's high-value-added exports, and its enterprises were also among the leading investors in all domestic industry. The Heavy Industries Bureau was at the cutting edge of the Kishi-Shiina line (and, it should also be noted, Kishi was prime minister from 1957 to 1960, Shiina MITI minister from 1960 to 1961). Sahashi had chosen well.

Among his many duties Sahashi had to deal with the steel industry. One of his first achievements was setting up a price maintenance cartel for steel in 1958 and getting it approved by the Fair Trade Commission. This type of work was not difficult for a MITI officer. Steel had been a government enterprise for half of the twentieth century, and