MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 115

uine public-private cooperation. Nonetheless, it should not be thought that these painful early experiences were wholly negative. The prototype of industrial policy did not fly well, and the improved model crashed, but the suitably modified production version of the 1950's amazed the world by its performance. From this perspective the early years of industrial policy were a period of indispensable gestation in the evolution and perfection of a genuine Japanese institutional invention, the industrial policy of the developmental state.