MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 139

The most famous product of the CPB was the National General Mobilization Law (Kokka Sodoin * Ho*, law number 55, introduced in the Diet on February 24, 1938, passed April 1, 1938, and put into effect May 5, 1938). It was more than an economic law. It was intended as a replacement for the munitions law of 1918, but it actually authorized the complete reorganization of the society along totalitarian lines. According to Murase, its drafter was Uemura Kogoro*.

³⁷

Despite the law's scope, its 50 articles contain very few concrete rules or stipulations. All details of implementation were left to Imperial ordinances, which the bureaucracy could issue on its own initiative without reference to the Diet. The law, in fact, became a carte blanche for the executive branch to do anything that it and its various clients could agree on; its policies extended not just to industry and the economy but also to education, labor, finance, publishing, and virtually all social activities even remotely related to the war effort.

³⁸

The Diet vigorously debated the mobilization law. Leaders of the new zaibatsu approved it, even though they did not like controls, because it signaled more business for them. The old zaibatsu and independent business leaders raised numerous objections and demanded a say in the ordinances that would implement the law (this they received), but they were quieted during 1938 with assurances that the China Incident would end soon, or they were shouted down by military spokesmen in the Diet chambers. Some economic leaders seemed to imply that a façade of civilian control should be maintained in order to prolong friendly trading relations with the United States and Great Britain, to which the military agreed, and dividends on equity shares continued to be paid until virtually the end of the Pacific War, when the zaibatsu no longer objected to the nationalization of their destroyed factories. These zaibatsu ownership rights turned out to be virtually the only civilian rights that were respected throughout the wartime period.

More important than the mobilization law to an understanding of postwar industrial policy was the work of department four of the CPB, which was responsible for formulating the materials mobilization plans (

busshi

doin

*

keikaku

, abbreviated

butsudo

*).

³⁹

Despite their being top secret (only during the 1960's were full details about them published), their influence on postwar economic management cannot be overstated. All analysts agree that the experience and methods of the wartime materials mobilization plans reappeared in the Temporary Materials Supply and Demand Control Law (Rinji Busshi Jukyu* Chosei* Ho) of October 1946, which was MCI's basic control law dur-