MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 219

TABLE

16

Japan's Business Cycle, 19501974

Popular name

Period

Duration

Doran * bumu* (Korean War boom)

6/506/51

13 months

Kyusen* hando* (Truce recession)

7/5110/51

4 months

Shohi* keiki (consumption boom)

11/511/54

27 months

Nijuku-nen* fukyo* (the 1954 recession)

2/5411/54

10 months

Jimmu keiki (boom unprecedented since the emperor Jimmu)

12/546/57

31 months

Nabezoko fukyo (bottom-of-the-pot

recession)

7/576/58

12 months

Iwato keiki (boom unprecedented since the time of the sun goddess Amaterasu)

7/5812/61

42 months

Sanjushichi-nen* fukyo (the 1962 recession)

1/6210/62

10 months

Kokyokan-naki* hanei (prosperity without a sense of boom)

11/6210/64

24 months

Yonju-nen* fukyo (the 1965 recession) (also called the Kozoteki fukyo, the structural recession)

11/6410/65

12 months

Izanagi keiki (boom unprecedented since the god Izanagi joined with Izanami to create the islands of Japan)

11/656/70

56 months

Yonjugo* yonjuroku-nen* fukyo (the 197071 recession)

7/7012/71

18 months

Ijo* infure no jiki (period of unusual inflation)

1/721/74

25 months

Sekiyu shokku igo (after the Oil Shock)

2/74

SOURCE

: Togai Yoshio, "Sengo Nihon no kigyo* keiei" (Postwar Japanese enterprise management), in Kobayashi Masaaki et al., eds.,

Nihon keieishi o manabu

(The study of Japanese enterprise management), Tokyo, 1976, 3: 2.

imports outran exports whenever the people's economic conditions improved even slightly (see Table 16). The recessions of 1951 and 1954 caused numerous bankruptcies (the largest was that of Amagasaki Steel, which was absorbed by Kobe Steel), and manufacturers turned increasingly to the government for direction. The government, however, was divided. To the extent that Yoshida had an economic strategy at all, it was to ally Japan with the United States as closely as possible. MITI officials did not necessarily disagree with this approach, but their nationalism prompted them to plan to compete with the United States as well as rely on it. Moreover, some of them wanted to try to restore Japan's traditional China trade, which Yoshida and the Americans resolutely opposed. Most important, MITI stood for a shift of industrial structure from light to heavy industries, which neither Ichimada nor most consumers thought made economic sense.

On April 28, 1952, the San Francisco peace treaty restoring Japan's