MITI and the Japanese miracle

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ministry and ended the earlier disputes, but the management of industrial policy has remained the hallmark of MITI. It is because of this that the directorship of the Industrial Policy Bureau is the last step before the vice-ministership.

MITI also differs from other ministries in the degree of internal democracy it supports and in the authority it gives to younger officials. The ministry believes that the most fertile time in the life of a bureaucrat for generating new ideas is when he serves as assistant section chief (

kacho-hosa

*). MITI tries to tap this capacity through a unique institution known as the Laws and Ordinances Examination Committee (Horei* Shinsa Iinkai). It is composed of the deputy chiefs of the General Affairs or Coordination sections in each bureau throughout the ministry. All major policies of the ministry are introduced and screened at this level, and no new policy can be initiated without its approval. For a young assistant section chief to be named chairman of this committee is a certain sign that he is on the "elite course" toward becoming a bureau chief and, possibly, the vice-minister.

Above this committee are review groups at the section chief levelthe General Affairs Section Chiefs' Conference (Shomu Kacho* Kaigi)and at the bureau director levelthe Operational Liaison Conference (Jimuren). The bureau director level is the court of last resort for approval of a policy initiated by the assistant section chiefs; anything that must go up to the vice-minister's and minister's level is by definition political. But the most substantive of all these internal coordinating groups is still the first.

¹¹²

In addition to these formal groups, there are numerous informal brainstorming institutions in MITI. During the late 1960's one was called the "Komatsu Bar," the conference room and liquor cabinet of Komatsu Yugoro* when he was chief of the General Coordination Section in the Secretariat. Young officials gathered there around 10 o'clock at night for a drink and lively discussionoften about OECD, GATT, and European developments, topics that had interested Komatsu since his service as first secretary in the embassy in Germany. Komatsu, of the class of 1944, became vice-minister in 1974. In addition to the Komatsu Bar, a young MITI bureaucrat could also visit the "Yoshimitsu Bar" (Director Yoshimitsu Hisashi of the Medium and Smaller Enterprises Agency) and the "Takahashi Bar" (Chief Secretary Takahashi Shukuro*).

¹¹³

Japanese analysts usually characterize the basic outlook of MITI officials as "nationalistic." Kakuma observes that they like to use expressions such as

joi

* (expulsion of the foreigners) and

iteki

(barbar-