MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 187

TABLE

13

Indices of Economic Activity, 1949 and 1950

(193436 = 100)

Category

1949

1950

Real national income

82

97

Mining and manufacturing

72

94

Agriculture, forestry, fishing

97

100

Exports (including SCAP purchases)

15

35

Imports

30

39

Private plant and equipment investment

70

82

Per capita real national income

69

80

SOURCE

: Japan Development Bank,

Nihon kaihatsu

ginko

*

10-nen shi

(A ten-year history of the Japan Development Bank), Tokyo, 1963, p. 18.

food, were being supplied by the United States. In 1949 Joseph Dodge contended that U.S. aid was one of the two "stilts" on which Japan's rigged economy rested; the other was RFB financing. According to SCAP, "The realization of a self-supporting status [for Japan] by 1953 requires a 700 percent increase in the volume of exports over 1948 with no more than a 120 percent increase in the volume of imports."

⁵⁴

In 1949 Japanese exports were running at about $500 million per annum and imports at $900 million, with the difference being covered by disbursements from the U.S. Treasury.

According to the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, which Japan had accepted at its surrender, SCAP exercised complete control over all exports or imports of goods and services, as well as all foreign exchange and financial transactions. The little Japanese foreign trade that SCAP allowed was conducted government to government until September 1947, when private foreigners were first allowed to participate. Private Japanese could not engage in international commerce until December 1949.

On October 9, 1945, SCAP had directed the Japanese government to create a single governmental agency to account for and distribute the goods that SCAP itself imported into Japan and to receive and transfer to SCAP products manufactured by the Japanese for export. This order led to the creation of the Board of Trade (BOT; Boeki* Cho*, established by Imperial ordinance 703 of December 13, 1945) as an external bureau of MCI.

⁵⁵

The BOT was an unusual institution. The fact that it was even tenuously attached to MCI rather than to the Foreign Ministrywhich SCAP would have preferred, since U.S. practice is to give the Department of State final authority over American tradewas due to some