MITI and the Japanese miracle

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were not consulted. The funds, legislation, and institutions the bureaucracy needed for its programs were enacted by what Wildes has called the "puppet Diet."

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This "puppet Diet," working through its LDP majority, has nevertheless served as a mediator between the state and society, forcing the state to accommodate those interests that could not be ignoredagriculture and medium and smaller enterprises, for exampleand, on occasion, requiring the state to change course in response to serious problems such as pollution. At the same time, it has held off or forced compromises from those groups whose claims might interfere with the development program. By and large, it has done so equitably, maintaining a comparatively level pattern of income distribution and of hardships.

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The Diet's unproclaimed mediating role has been the subject of much scrutiny and analysis in Japan. Although there are many different formulations, most of them end up dividing Japanese society into two sets of social groups and institutions, those that are central and those that are peripheral (or privileged and ordinary, first class and second class), with the central groups operating the developmental state for the sake of the society as a whole and not just for their own particular interests. The central institutionsthat is, the bureaucracy, the LDP, and the larger Japanese business concernsin turn maintain a kind of skewed triangular relationship with each other. The LDP's role is to legitimate the work of the bureaucracy while also making sure that the bureaucracy's policies do not stray too far from what the public will tolerate. Some of this serves its own interests, as well; the LDP always insures that the Diet and the bureaucracy are responsive to the farmers' demands because it depends significantly on the overrepresented rural vote. The bureaucracy, meanwhile, staffs the LDP with its own cadres to insure that the party does what the bureaucracy thinks is good for the country as a whole, and guides the business community toward developmental goals. The business community, in turn, supplies massive amounts of funds to keep the LDP in office, although it does not thereby achieve control of the party, which is normally oriented upward, toward the bureaucracy, rather than downward, toward its main patrons.

This triangular relationship sometimes looks conflict ridden and sometimes consensual, but both impressions are deceptive according to Kawanaka Niko*, who maintains that interest groups representing the strategic industrieshe calls them the "prime contractor groups"always hold a privileged relationship with the bureaucracy. The two will sometimes be in conflict, however, with private indus-