MITI and the Japanese miracle

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out a mobilized people, without innovation and competition in the private sector, nor without the supplementary programs of other agencies of the government, it is equally true that the developmental effort itself required management. This is what MITI supplied.

In 1945, amid the ruins of Osaka, a group of businessmen lamented to an American observer that the militarists had "started the war twenty years too soon."

⁸⁶

Although the figure should probably be more like forty years than twenty, it is nonetheless true that from about 1941 to 1961 the Japanese economy remained on a war footing. The goal changed from military to economic victory, but the Japanese people could not have worked harder, saved more, or innovated more ruthlessly if they had actually been engaged in a war for national survival, as in fact they were. And just as a nation mobilized for war needs a military general staff, so a nation mobilized for economic development needs an economic general staff. The men of MCI, MM, and MITI had been preparing to play this role since the late 1920's. During the 1950's the trumpet finally sounded.