MITI and the Japanese miracle

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centrated in the strategic sectors. However, the way it was done and the enrichment of the zaibatsu in the process contributed to the radicalization of the whole society and brought forth demands that someone speak for the nation as a whole.

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In this climate of opinion, the new minister of commerce and industry, working with and on the inspiration of his chief of the Documents Section, Yoshino Shinji, undertook an initiative that is acknowledged to be the beginning of modern Japanese industrial policy. On May 23, 1927, Minister Nakahashi set up within MCI a Commerce and Industry Deliberation Council (Shoko* Shingikai). Its charter was to examine broadly what was ailing the Japanese economy and what the government ought to do about it. As a joint public-private forum, it is the direct antecedent of the 1950's-era Industrial Rationalization Council and its successor, the Industrial Structure CouncilMITI's number one official channel to the business community. Nonbureaucratic members of the 1927 council included all the leading businessmen of the time. Among the most influential in the actual deliberations were Okochi* Masatoshi, who was both a Todai* professor of engineering and a prominent private industrialist, and Nakajima Kumakichi of the Furukawa zaibatsu, who later became an important MCI minister.

The council achieved unprecedented results. It convinced MCI to strengthen its compilation of industrial statistics (this was Minister Nakahashi's pet project and his main contribution to the council), authorized some ¥30 million in loans to medium and smaller enterprises (a figure ten times larger than any previous loans), proposed for the first time the amalgamation of the Yawata steel works with private steel firms (an idea that came to pass in 1934), and underscored the need for improved trade intelligence and subsidies for export industries. The discussions also had their comic side. Both Kishi and Kogane Yoshiteru recall Okabe Nagakabe's objections to the introduction of the metric system in Japan as a way of standardizing industrial products. Okabe reflected the views of the House of Peers when he noted that the metric system was associated with the French Revolution and was therefore incompatible with the Japanese national spirit. Members of the council proposed shelving the issue until Okabe died. Since Okabe lived until 1970, twenty-five years beyond his term as minister of education in the wartime Tojo* cabinet, it would have meant a long wait.

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As it turned out, Kogane managed to introduce the metric system in the late 1930's with the help of the army.

By far the most important achievement of the council was the introduction into Japan of the concept of "industrial rationalization" (

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