MITI and the Japanese miracle

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TABLE

11

Directors of the Economic Stabilization Board August 1946August 1952

Director and tenure

Remarks

Zen Keinosuke, 8/461/47

Former MAC-MCI bureaucrat.

Ishibashi Tanzan, 1/473/47

Concurrently finance minister.

Takase Sotaro *, 3/475/47

President, Tokyo Commercial University. MITI minister, 1950.

Wada Hiroo, 6/473/48

Former agriculture bureaucrat. Arrested in Cabinet Planning Board incident, 1941.

Kurusu Takeo, 3/4810/48

Arrested in Showa* Denko* scandal, 10/48.

Izumiyama Sanroku, 10/4812/48

Former Mitsui Bank official.

Shuto* Hideo, 12/482/49

Former agriculture bureaucrat. Former director, Department Four, Cabinet Planning Board (1942).

Aoki Takayoshi, 2/496/50

Former professor (economics), Nihon University.

Shuto Hideo, 6/508/52

See above.

1947 of Japan's first

Economic White Paper

), Sato* Naokuni (of MCI), Oshima* Kan'ichi (of the Finance Ministry), and several staff aides such as Kojima Keizo* (formerly of the CPB and at the time working in MCI's Coal Agency). This group invented "priority production" (

keisha seisan

). On January 31, 1947, in a cabinet reshuffle, Ishibashi Tanzan was asked to take on the post of director of the ESB in addition to serving as minister of finance, and he made priority production the central objective of the ESB (for a list of the ESB leaders, see Table 11).

Priority production was a scheme to concentrate all of the economy's assets in a few strategic sectors, regardless of the effects this might have on civilian consumption or inflation. In this respect it was quite similar to the revised materials mobilization plan of 1938. The Arisawa committee had recognized that the first objective had to be to increase coal production. Calculating from the 1946 production figure of 22.8 million tons, the committee had set a goal of 30 million tons for 1947. In order to try to achieve this, it had suggested that the coal industry get first priority on RFB loans and subsidies. Allocation of coal was an equally serious problem. Before the war 60 percent of coal output had been used by industry and only 40 percent for transportation, electricity generation, and other so-called civilian uses, but in 1946 these proportions were reversed. Demand for nonindustrial use had become so great that there was no possibility of reviving industry unless coal production was increased. The committee therefore earmarked 16 million of its targeted 30 million tons for industry, and the