MITI and the Japanese miracle

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report on rationalization measures that were needed at once. Meanwhile, in response to the worldwide economic collapse, the cabinet on January 20, 1930, set up its own Emergency Industrial Deliberation Council (Rinji Sangyo * Shingikai) with the prime minister as chairman and the minister of commerce and industry as vice-chairman. This supreme body lasted only a few months, but it took notice of the work on industrial rationalization within MCI and ordered the creation there of a Temporary Industrial Rationality Bureau (TIRB; Rinji Sangyo Gori* Kyoku) to formulate and carry out concrete measures of rationalization. This bureau came into being on June 2, 1930, as a semi--detached organ of MCI with the minister of commerce and industry himself serving concurrently as the bureau's director. The TIRB, which lasted until 1937, was also the brainchild of Yoshino Shinji; and it was so successful that he was chosen vice-minister a year later mainly on the strength of TIRB's performance.

Yoshino deliberately created the TIRB as a detached bureau headed by the minister in order to prevent internal ministerial rivalries from crippling its activities. He involved all of the ministry's bureau and section chiefs in it and gave it an unconventional internal structure. Instead of sections, it had only two large departments, the first headed by Kido Koichi*, who was concurrent chief of the Documents Section in the Secretariat, and the second headed by Yoshino, who was concurrent chief of the Industrial Affairs Bureau.

These departments drew up plans for the control of enterprises, implementation of scientific management principles, improvements in industrial financing, standardization of products, simplification of production processes, and subsidies to support the production and consumption of domestically manufactured goods. Continuing the precedent set by the Commerce and Industry Deliberation Council, Yoshino involved civilian industrial leaders in the active duties of the bureau, even to the extent of providing them with offices in the MCI building. Okochi* and Nakajima from the council continued as the TIRB's most important advisers, but representatives of all the zaibatsu as well as academics and journalists actively participated. They all proved extremely useful to the ministry in gaining acceptance for its ideas within the business community and in defending its proposed laws in the Dietparticularly the landmark Important Industries Control Law of 1931.

The Japanese term

gorika

*literally "to make rational"was not well understood at the time Yoshino chose it for his new bureau. He was worried about its implications and therefore deliberately named the bureau the Sangyo Gori Kyoku instead of the wholly correct San-