MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 127

If the Teijin case of 1934 marked the beginnings of the reform bureaucrats, the abortive military coup d'etat of 1936 transformed the political system and brought them into prominence. It also initiated the struggle between bureaucrats who favored state control of the economy and private industrialists who favored self-imposed control, a struggle that would last until the end of the Pacific War. Within MCI the military uprising alarmed many otherwise complacent bureaucrats; Yoshino acknowledges that in the wake of the incident he lost control of the ministry. Before the year was out he and Kishi would be fired. The military was riding high in the cabinet, but within the ministries some passive resistance to the militarists and their friends was developing. Business leaders also began to turn cautiously against the Yoshino-Kishi line, but they could not speak out openly because of the fear of assassination. However, in order to obtain the cooperation of industry, the military found that it had to compromise on whom it recommended for MCI minister and to tolerate ministers who came from or were acceptable to business.

One such compromise choice as minister of MCI was Ogawa Gotaro * (18761945), a former Kyoto University professor of economics and an elected member of the House of Representatives since 1917.

^*

Ogawa made it known that he intended "to eliminate the control faction in MCI," and he had several reasons for wanting to do so. First, he was from Kansai and reflected the Osaka business world's hostility to the controlled economy. Second, he was worried about working with a vice-minister who had been in office for five years and who might try to upstage him. Third, as a leader of the Minseito*, he did not like Yoshino's Seiyukai* leanings or Kishi's ties with Choshu* political and industrial figures (for example, with Matsuoka Yosuke*, then president of the South Manchurian Railroad, foreign minister at the time of the Axis alliance, and the uncle of Sato* Hiroko, the wife of Kishi's brother Eisaku). Finally, Ogawa evidently distrusted both Yo-

^*

Ogawa became MCI minister in the Hirota cabinet following the death after only a few weeks in office of Kawasaki Takukichi. Kawasaki had originally been selected as home minister, but the army vetoed him because he was one of Machida Chuji's* lieutenants, and he went instead to MCI.

Interestingly enough, Ogawa died on April 1, 1945, in the torpedoing of the

Awa Maru

in the Taiwan Straits by a U.S. submarine. The

Awa Maru

was supposed to be carrying noncombatants and relief supplies for Allied prisoners of war, but some Americans believed that the Japanese were using the passage of the

Awa Maru

to return gold and important people to the home islands. About 2,045 passengers were killed. In April 1949 the

Awa

incident became a political issue when the Yoshida government abandoned efforts to obtain an indemnity from the United States because of U.S. aid to Japan's postwar reconstruction. Ogawa was, in fact, returning to Japan after serving as supreme adviser to the Burmese government.