MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 193

Oda * Takio, later ambassador to Indonesia, who served from December 1949 to June 1951; Ushiba Nobuhiko, later ambassador to the United States (197073) and in 1977 "minister of external economic relations" to deal with the U.S.-Japan trade crisis, who served from June 1951 to July 1954; and Itagaki Osamu, later ambassador to the Republic of China (Taiwan), who served from July 1954 to September 1956. It was against this backdrop of strong Foreign Office coloration that MITI came into being and Yamamoto began trying to rebuild the Kishi-Shiina line from within. Nonetheless, from the third Yoshida cabinet of February 1949 to the fall of the fifth Yoshida cabinet in December 1954, the prime minister named eight different people as MITI minister, only two of whom had any political clout at all (Ikeda, briefly, and Aichi Kiichi at the very end). This was, of course, Yoshida's way of showing that he still regarded MITI as of no political importance.

As for Shirasu, after failing to be appointed ambassador to the United States, which he had wanted, he left politics and in May 1951 became president of the Tohoku* Electric Power Company. He and Yoshida had had a parting of the ways. In 1974, for the first time in many years, Shirasu's name was again mentioned in the press. The

Japan Times

reported on August 19 that as the director of the exclusive Karuizawa Golf Club and chairman of its course committee, he refused to allow former American ambassador Robert Ingersoll to play a round on a weekend, even though Ingersoll presented a letter of introduction from Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei. The rules of the Karuizawa Club prohibit visitors from playing on weekends, and Shirasu stuck to the rules. In order to become a member of the club, one must own a villa in Karuizawa.

The last minister of MCI and the first minister of MITI, Inagaki Heitaro* (an industrialist from the old Furukawa zaibatsu, the president of Yokohama Rubber, and a member of the House of Councillors), made a speech at the time of MITI's inauguration. He pledged the new ministry to international trade and export promotionor "trade number one-ism" (

tsusho

*

daiichi-shugi

) as he put it.

⁶¹

Inagaki added, however, that an increase in production, the rationalization of enterprises, and the raising of the technical level of industry were all prerequisite to an expansion of trade. He entrusted these vital tasks to the Enterprises Bureau, the only internal bureau he mentioned by name. The old MCI cadres found this very satisfactory. For almost a decade they had not paid much attention to trade and certainly not to export promotion. But the new ministry seemed to offer great opportunities for