MITI and the Japanese miracle

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the General Affairs Agency was Komai Tokuzo * of the Kwantung Army's Special Affairs Department, but his successor was Hoshino Naoki of the Ministry of Finance. Kishi later served as Hoshino's deputy at the General Affairs Agency.

The first MCI official sent to Manchuria was Takahashi Kojun*, a former Documents Section chief, who went in June 1933 and became deputy director of the Industrial Department (Jitsugyo-bu*, which changed its name during 1937 to Sangyo-bu*). During the autumn of 1933 Takahashi returned to MCI to recruit more officials, and Kishi strongly recommended that he approach the young TIRB official, Shiina Etsusaburo* (Kishi was Shiina's sempai by three years). This established a relationship between Kishi and Shiina that was as long lasting as that between Yoshino and Kishi. If the Yoshino-Kishi line prevailed in the ministry during the first half of the 1930's, the Kishi-Shiina line dominated it during the 1940's, 1950's, and well into the 1960's. Shiina served in the Industrial Department of Manchuria from 1933 to 1939. In addition, Kishi sent Okabe Kunio (chief of MITI's Trade Promotion Bureau in 1951 and, after retirement as a bureaucrat, the managing director of JETRO and a director of MITI's Electrical Resources Development Company). In his memoirs Yoshino refers to both Shiina and Okabe as members not of his faction but of "Kishi's faction."

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Others whom Kishi sent or Ogawa expelled to "the wilds of Manchuria" between 1933 and 1936 included Minobe Yoji* (whose active duty at MCI lasted from 1926 to 1945), Koda* Noboru (1925 to 1943), and Shiseki Ihei (1930 to 1952, a member of the House of Representatives since May 1953, and one of MITI's key supporters in the Diet). However, the MCI official the army wanted all along was Kishi himself. His predecessor as deputy chief of the Industrial Department, Takahashi Kojun*, had not proved to be effective in the post, and in 1936 the army was insisting that Kishi come over to help get its faltering industrialization campaign underway. Thus, with an added push from Ogawa, Kishi went to Manchuria to replace Takahashi as deputy director of the Industrial Department.

The situation in Manchuria was changing significantly just at the time Kishi arrived. From 1933 to 1936 the army and the South Manchurian Railroad (SMRR) had attempted to apply a radical, state-controlled, antizaibatsu development plan, but they had failed due to a lack of capital and to amateur management of heavy and chemical industries. The reputation of the SMRR had suffered considerably as a result. By 1935 the Kwantung Army had begun to reconsider its earlier anticapitalist line and was now trying to create a much sounder