MITI and the Japanese miracle

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hundreds of importers gathered there daily to seek licenses. Journalistic observers of MITI have also concluded that this was the ministry's most corrupt period. Officials of the ITB received numerous presents and invitations to mahjong sessions (at which they never seemed to lose money); and some trading companies employed attractive female negotiators to deal with the ITB.

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It has been alleged that officials even sold copies of the "secret" foreign exchange budget for large sums, it being of great value to importers in calculating how much of each commodity would be approved.

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These conditions were the natural concomitants of tightly controlled trade, but they did not do anything for the ITB's reputation.

MITI used the opportunity of Yoshida's postoccupation review to reorganize itself totally. The Secretariat rewrote the MITI Establishment Law, and the new law, number 275, was passed on July 31, 1952. It eliminated the old prefix tsusho* (international trade) from the names of the industrial bureaus; combined the ITB and the Trade Promotion Bureau into one large unit; and abolished SCAP's Public Utilities Commission, which had been attached to the prime minister's office. In its place there was set up in MITI a Public Utilities Bureau, the direct successor of the old Electric Power Bureau that the Ministry of Munitions had acquired when it was established in 1943. The sections of the Enterprises Bureau were also expanded to accommodate the planning and control functions of the defunct ESB. MITI thus took on the form that it would retain throughout the high-speed growth period and down to the reform of 1973 (see Appendix B).

During the crucial years 195253 MITI undertook some other initiatives that set it on a collision course with a famous SCAP-created institution, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC; Kosei* Torihiki Iinkai), guardian and administrator of the so-called economic constitution, the Antimonopoly Law. The Antimonopoly Law, which is formally called the Law Relating to the Prohibition of Private Monopoly and to Methods of Preserving Fair Trade (Shiteki Dokusen no Kinshi oyobi Kosei Torihiki no Kakuho ni kan suru Horitsu*, number 54 of April 14, 1947) had a checkered career even before the occupation ended. SCAP defended it on the grounds that "with the exception of the Unfair Competition Law of 1934, which primarily dealt with imitating and palming off one's goods as those of another, Japanese legislation did not embody any rules against unfair trade practices generally and did not recognize any concept of free, competitive enterprise as being in the public interest"; but SCAP also acknowledged that "many civil servants in various departments of the Government exhibited a strong lack of sympathy or support for the antitrust program."

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