MITI and the Japanese miracle

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laboratories and the existence of such official agencies as the former Atomic Energy Commission and the National Aeronautics and Space Administrationis thought by Americans to be exceptional, whereas it was the norm for Japan's leading industrial sectors during high-speed growth. It is also perhaps significant that aviation, space vehicles, and atomic energy are all sectors in which the United States is preeminent, just as Japan is preeminent in steel production, ship-building, consumer electronics, rail transportation, synthetic fibers, watches, and cameras.

As noted earlier, the cooperative government-business relationship in the capitalist developmental state is very difficult to achieve and maintain. Even with such deeply entrenched social supports for cooperation as a shared outlook among government and industrial leaders because of common education (for instance, at Todai * Law) and an extensive cross-penetration of elites because of early retirement from government service and reemployment in big business, the Japanese have difficulty in keeping public-private cooperation on the tracks. Industry is quite willing to receive governmental assistance, but it does not like government orders (as the steel and automobile industries illustrate). Government is often frustrated by the excessive competition and preemptive investment of industries it is trying to foster (as the petrochemical and textile industries illustrate). Nonetheless, the Japanese have worked hard to create cooperative relationships and have developed numerous unusual institutions through which to pursue them. These include the official "deliberation councils" such as the Commerce and Industry Deliberation Council of 1927, the Cabinet Advisers Council of 1943, the Industrial Rationalization Council of 1949, and the Industrial Structure Council of 1964; MITI's vertical bureaus and the corresponding officially sanctioned trade associations for each industry; the temporary exchange of officials between the state and private enterprise (for example, the posting of young MITI officers to Keidanren headquarters); the formal "discussion groups" implemented in the wake of the failure of the Special Measures Law; and the practice of administrative guidance, in which government officials and representatives of banking and industry can coordinate their activities unconstrained by law and lawyers.

In addition, the Japanese have fostered social supports for cooperation. We have already mentioned two of themthe essentially bureaucratic education of both public and private managers and the extensive "old boy" networks. It should not be thought that these are the only social supports or that they are not duplicable in other societies. They would be very hard to duplicate in other societies, since