MITI and the Japanese miracle

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able because of worldwide condemnation of Japan's conduct of the war. Nonetheless, Ayukawa worked at it for five years, setting up numerous satellite firms ("one company for one industry" was his and Kishi's model of industrial organization) and giving his staff of Japanese bureaucrats invaluable experience in industrial planning and operation.

Kishi subsequently wrote that in Manchuria he "imbibed the ideas of industrial guidance," and Shiina contends that the experience of economic planning in Manchuria was as important for the later "materials mobilization plans" and their postwar equivalents as the work of the Cabinet Resources Bureau. The biggest Manchurian undertakings were the dams for hydroelectric power generation on the Sungari and Yalu rivers and the extensive land reclamation projects. Mangyo * built electrical transmission lines larger than any that had been constructed in Japan up to that time, and the Japanese aluminum industry, which requires large quantities of electric power, was first established in Manchuria.

The nucleus of the Manchurian power structure was known in Hsinking by the acronym "the two

kis

and three

sukes"

(

ni-ki sansuke

), a phrase that referred on the political side to Hoshino Nao

ki

(chief of the General Affairs Agency), and Tojo* Hide

ki

(chief of the Kwantung Army's military police and after 1937 chief of staff of the Kwantung Army); and on the economic side to Kishi Nobu

suke

(deputy chief of the Industrial Department and subsequently deputy chief of the General Affairs Agency), Ayukawa Gi

suke

(president of Mangyo), and Matsuoka

Yosuke

* (president of the SMRR). They all missed the political turmoil in Japan during the first years of the China Incident, but in 1939 and 1940 four of them returned to top positions in the Japanese government. Two of them, Tojo and Kishi, went on to become prime ministers.

In Japan during this period the movement toward industrial control took the form primarily of industry-specific development laws. The second such law (after the Petroleum Industry Law of 1934) was the Automobile Manufacturing Industry Law (passed May 29, 1936, and in effect July 11). It required that manufacturers of cars and trucks in Japan be licensed (

kyoka

) by the governmenthence the term

kyoka kaisha

(a licensed company) for the few firms left in this sector. The government supplied half the capital of the licensees, and taxes and import duties were eliminated for five years. Only two companies were licensed, Toyota and Nissan, and by 1939 the law had put foreign car manufacturers in Japan (Ford and General Motors) out of business, as it was intended to do. One of Kishi's last acts during