MITI and the Japanese miracle

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ment as chief secretary, but Minister Miki made it clear that he himself would choose Sahashi's own successor. The next chief secretary was Ojimi * Yoshihisa (March 1966 to May 1968), a transitional figure in that he was sometimes thought of as a member of the "Sahashi faction" (he had headed the Industrial Structure Investigation Office in the Secretariat at the time of the Special Measures Law), but he was also more oriented than Sahashi to the problems of Japan in the world economy. He became the last vice-minister (196971) to have some claim to represent the old "Kishi-Shiina" orientation. For the position of vice-minister after Sahashi, Miki chose Yamamoto Shigenobu, a former chief of the International Trade Bureau and an official who, having served overseas in the Bangkok embassy, was in 1966 director of the Medium and Smaller Enterprises Agency. When Yamamoto took over as vice-minister, he in turn selected Kumagai Yoshifumi as his chief of the Enterprises Bureau, and for the period May 1968 to November 1969 Kumagai succeeded Yamamoto as vice-minister.

In addition to all their pending policy problems, this post-Sahashi team of Yamamoto, Kumagai, and Ojimi had to devote a great deal of attention to the internal problems of factions and lowered morale that had persisted since the Sahashi-Imai fight. By all accounts Yamamoto performed brilliantly; he is one of the most fondly remembered vice-ministers. He set out systematically to put industrial faction officers in international faction posts and vice versa, a policy that also reflected his own background as a specialist in promoting Japan's export trade in heavy machinery and high-value-added products rather than textiles and sundries (he was, significantly, the first vice-minister whose amakudari was to the automobile industry, where he became in 1968 the executive director of Toyota Motors). Typical of Yamamoto's personnel policy was the appointment of Miyazawa Tetsuzo*, who had a background in heavy industry but no overseas service, to be director of the International Trade Bureau; and his appointment of Morozumi Yoshihiko, whose background included service in Paris and the Enterprises Bureau, to be chief of the Mining Bureau.

These policies worked well enough for the time being, but bickering within the ministry continued about Sahashi's policies. Old industrial-policy cadres insinuated that the new leaders were not true "raised-in-the-ministry samurai" (like Sahashi) and that they were inclined to pursue a "foreign appeasement" policy in the face of the demands for capital liberalization. These charges often caused early leaders of the "international faction" to go out of their way to be tough, as for example in the United StatesJapan textile negotiations, in order to refute the accusations that they were predisposed to pla-