MITI and the Japanese miracle

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that seemed to afflict everyone in the big petrochemical complexes at Yokkaichi and Tokuyama. As the press revealed, many of these conditions had actually been diagnosed as early as 1955 but had elicited no governmental corrective measures. The blame was laid squarely at MITI's door.

More politically significant because they affected so many people were air pollution in all the major cities (it was predicted that a chic, well-designed gas mask would soon become as indispensable an item of personal daily use as the umbrella), and automobile and truck accidents (because of inadequate expenditures on highways and alleged insensitivity to safety in automobile design). Noise, crowding, and the shortage of land for housing in the big cities also led many to question the value of high-speed growth. Organizations of local residents and consumers were created to protect such things as ''sunshine rights," that is, the right of a resident not to have all sunshine blocked by an intervening high-rise. The word

kogai

* ("pollution," or more literally, "public wound") appeared in the newspapers every day.

During 1967 the Diet enacted the Pollution Countermeasures Basic Law (Kogai* Taisaku Kihon Ho, number 132 of August 3), which set standards for seven kinds of pollution: air, water, soil (added in 1970), noise, vibration, subsidence, and offensive odors. However, on MITI's insistence the Diet modified article 1 of the Ministry of Welfare's draft law to add that antipollution measures must be "in harmony with the healthy development of the economy."

¹⁴

This effectively gutted the law. But as pollution problems intensified, the politicians ultimately had no choice but to overrule the ministry. The result was the famous "pollution Diet" (

kogai kokkai

, the 64th session, November 24 to December 18, 1970), which passed some fourteen antipollution laws and removed the phrase "in harmony with the economy" from the basic law. MITI had finally gotten the point; on July 1, 1970, it renamed its Mine Safety Bureau the Environmental Protection and Safety Bureau (Kogai Hoan Kyoku) and increased its budget for dealing with industrial pollution problems from ¥274 million (1970) to ¥638 million (1971). A decade later MITI was to be credited with carrying out one of the most effective industrial cleanup campaigns in history, and in the process it also developed a thriving new industry in antipollution devices.

¹⁵

But in 1970 no one was thanking it, nor did many think that it could do the job.

In addition to being held responsible for the pollution problem, MITI was also blamed for damaging relations with the United States.