recession)
7/7012/71
18 months
Ijo* infure no jiki (period of unusual inflation)
1/721/74
25 months
Sekiyu shokku igo (after the Oil Shock)
2/74
SOURCE
: Togai Yoshio, 'Sengo Nihon no kigyo* keiei' (Postwar Japanese enterprise management), in Kobayashi Masaaki et al., eds.,
(The study of Japanese enterprise management), Tokyo, 1976, 3: 2.
imports outran exports whenever the people's economic conditions improved even slightly (see Table 16). The recessions of 1951 and 1954 caused numerous bankruptcies (the largest was that of Amagasaki Steel, which was absorbed by Kobe Steel), and manufacturers turned increasingly to the government for direction. The government, however, was divided. To the extent that Yoshida had an economic strategy at all, it was to ally Japan with the United States as closely as possible. MITI officials did not necessarily disagree with this approach, but their nationalism prompted them to plan to compete with the United States as well as rely on it. Moreover, some of them wanted to try to restore Japan's traditional China trade, which Yoshida and the Americans resolutely opposed. Most important, MITI stood for a shift of industrial structure from light to heavy industries, which neither Ichimada nor most consumers thought made economic sense.
On April 28, 1952, the San Francisco peace treaty restoring Japan's
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independence came into effect. On May 29, 1952, thanks to U.S. sponsorship, Japan was admitted to the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the 'World Bank'); and on August 12, 1955, Japan joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). However, at the time both Japan's IMF and GATT memberships were in the special category reserved for poor countries. On September 15, 1953, Japan also concluded a basic commercial treaty with the United States. Some of these affiliations did not go down well in Japanparticularly Yoshida's plan to 'introduce foreign capital' via loans from the World Bank, which irritated many nationalists and led to shouts of 'national dishonor' in the Diet.
46
Yoshida pushed the loan agreements through anyway; in the autumn of 1953 the World Bank made its first loan of $40.2 million to the Kansai, Chubu, and Kyushu Electric Power companies to build thermal generating plants. In later years the steel companies also borrowed from the World Bank. MITI was delighted with these loans, but it also saw in the political controversy surrounding them a potent reason to continue with its own approach to rapid economic development.
Once the occupation had ended, the Yoshida government ordered a general review of the executive branch and of all laws and ordinances inherited from the SCAP era. Among other things Yoshida himself wanted to abolish the Economic Stabilization Board as a symbol of the controlled economy, but MITI, which sent by far the largest number of officials to it, liked it. In order to save it, Hirai Tomisaburo* of MITI bypassed Yoshida to obtain the Liberal Party's agreement to transform the ESB into a smaller (only 399 officials) organ for economic analysis and forecasting.
47
Thus, on August 1, 1952, the powerful ESB ('whose name alone would stop a child's crying') became the Economic Deliberation Agency (EDA; Keizai Shingi Cho*), a 'think tank' with no operational duties at all. On July 20, 1955, after Yoshida had left the scene, its name was changed to Economic Planning Agency (EPA; Keizai Kikaku Cho).
MITI continued to regard the EDA/EPA as its own 'branch store'it appointed the agency's vice-minister, the chief of its Coordination Bureau, and numerous other key posts. Moreover, in 1952 the substantive powers of the old ESB were all transferred to MITI. The International Trade Bureau (ITB) took over preparation and administration of the foreign exchange budget, and the Enterprises Bureau began to screen all foreign investment proposals. These developments transformed the ITB; its offices on the third floor of the old MITI office building became known as the 'Toranomon Ginza' because of the
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hundreds of importers gathered there daily to seek licenses. Journalistic observers of MITI have also concluded that this was the ministry's most corrupt period. Officials of the ITB received numerous presents and invitations to mahjong sessions (at which they never seemed to lose money); and some trading companies employed attractive female negotiators to deal with the ITB.
48
It has been alleged that officials even sold copies of the 'secret' foreign exchange budget for large sums, it being of great value to importers in calculating how much of each commodity would be approved.
49
These conditions were the natural concomitants of tightly controlled trade, but they did not do anything for the ITB's reputation.
MITI used the opportunity of Yoshida's postoccupation review to reorganize itself totally. The Secretariat rewrote the MITI Establishment Law, and the new law, number 275, was passed on July 31, 1952. It eliminated the old prefix tsusho* (international trade) from the names of the industrial bureaus; combined the ITB and the Trade Promotion Bureau into one large unit; and abolished SCAP's Public Utilities Commission, which had been attached to the prime minister's office. In its place there was set up in MITI a Public Utilities Bureau, the direct successor of the old Electric Power Bureau that the Ministry of Munitions had acquired when it was established in 1943. The sections of the Enterprises Bureau were also expanded to accommodate the planning and control functions of the defunct ESB. MITI thus took on the form that it would retain throughout the high-speed growth period and down to the reform of 1973 (see Appendix B).
During the crucial years 195253 MITI undertook some other initiatives that set it on a collision course with a famous SCAP-created institution, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC; Kosei* Torihiki Iinkai), guardian and administrator of the so-called economic constitution, the Antimonopoly Law. The Antimonopoly Law, which is formally called the Law Relating to the Prohibition of Private Monopoly and to Methods of Preserving Fair Trade (Shiteki Dokusen no Kinshi oyobi Kosei Torihiki no Kakuho ni kan suru Horitsu*, number 54 of April 14, 1947) had a checkered career even before the occupation ended. SCAP defended it on the grounds that 'with the exception of
