MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 87

duction at Yawata began in the autumn of 1901 and immediately accounted for 53 percent of the nation's production of pig iron and 82 percent of its rolled steel. It had no serious domestic rivals until 1911 and 1912, when the privately owned Kobe Steel Company and Nippon Kokan * Company (Japan Steel Pipe) were founded.

MAC's sponsorship and operation of the Yawata works produced an identification between the ministry and big steel that has lasted to the present day. Long after the post-World War II Allied occupation had denationalized the steel industry, the Japanese public continued to believe that MITI officials had a soft spot in their hearts for the newly created "private" Yawata Steel Company. The press regularly suggested that Yawata officials had an unfair influence over the government, and went as far as to nickname MITI the "Tokyo Office of the Yawata Steel Company."

⁸

Certainly in 1970, at the time of the merger of the Yawata and Fuji steel companies into New Japan Steelmaking it the world's largest steel producer and recalling the old nationalized company of 1934no one in Japan thought MITI was either neutral or anything but pleased by the development. The trade and industry bureaucrats throughout this century have had a strong influence over Japan's steel industry, a relationship made all the more explicit by the Tokyo sales office of the Yawata works being located in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry building until 1934.

The creation of Yawata was the single most important achievement of MAC, but the inspiration came from the oligarchs and the military. The daily life of the ministry was always dominated by agricultural affairs. This was only natural since Japan was still predominantly an agricultural country. As late as 1914 agriculture accounted for 45.1 percent of the total national product and fishing for another 5.1 percent, while mining contributed 5.1 percent and manufacturing 44.5 percent. Manufacturing was still concentrated overwhelmingly in such light industries as textiles and foodstuffs; heavy industrymetals, machines, chemicals, and fuelsdid not comprise more than half of all manufacturing until the 193337 period.

⁹

The ministry's internal organization reflected these proportions. From before World War I newcomers to the ministry had informally divided themselves into an agricultural career path (

nomu

*

keito

*) and a commercial and industrial career path (

shoko

*

keito

), although they often switched back and forth between each other's bureaus. The arrival after the turn of the century of the first graduates of Tokyo University Law School strengthened this separation. Technical agronomists had dominated the agricultural wing of the ministry from its