MITI and the Japanese miracle

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unify all of the government's various economic activities, two of the Meiji oligarchs, Ito * Hirobumi and Okuma* Shigenobu, memorialized the throne on the desirability of a new economic ministry. This memorial was accepted and led to the creation on April 7, 1881, of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce.

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Attending to agriculture was certainly the most important activity of the new ministry. As Horie notes, Japan had one "God-sent" product in the form of raw silk, without which it might never have brought its trade deficit under control.

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In addition to the supervision and promotion of agriculture, the new ministry was charged with the administration of all laws and orders relating to commerce, industry, technology, fishing, hunting, merchant shipping, inventions, trademarks, weights and measures, land reclamation, animal husbandry and veterinary affairs, forests, and the postal service. It combined functions that had been divided since the Restoration among the ministries of Finance, Civil Affairs, Industrial Affairs, and Home Affairs.

In 1885, with the success of the Matsukata reforms and the reorganization of the government into a cabinet system, MAC gave up its powers over shipping and the postal service to the new Ministry of Communications (Teishin-sho*). However, with the abolition at the same time of the old Ministry of Industrial Affairs (Kobu-sho*), it assumed control over mining. Between 1885 and the end of the century MAC's internal structure underwent several changes that finally resulted in the configuration that would last with minor variations until its dissolution: a ministerial Secretariat, six internal bureausAgricultural Affairs (Nomu* Kyoku), Commercial Affairs (Shomu* Kyoku), Industrial Affairs (Komu* Kyoku), Forestry (Sanrin Kyoku), Fisheries (Suisan Kyoku), and Mining (Kozan* Kyoku)and one semidetached bureau, the Patent Bureau (Tokkyo Kyoku), with its own secretariat.

At the end of the century MAC acquired one more very important function, management of the government-owned-and-operated Yawata steel works. In 1896, during the ninth Imperial Diet, Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi and Minister Enomoto Takeaki of MAC successfully proposed a bill for the expenditure of about ¥4 million to build an iron and steel plant. First priority for its products was to go to armaments, but any surplus could be offered for general sale. It was built in Fukuoka prefecture at Yawata village, and thus was located both in the northern Kyushu coal fields and on the Japan Sea for easy access to iron ore from China. As a result of Japan's victory in the first Sino-Japanese War of 189495, iron ore from China was readily available, and it was of higher quality than that mined domestically. Pro-