1961, Sahashi named him chief of the First Enterprises Section in the Enterprises Bureau. Other participants in the drafting of the law were Takashima, the bureau's deputy director; Miyake Yukio, chief of the Industrial Fi-
*
According to Stephen S. Cohen, 'The
is a partnership of big business, the state and, in theory though not in practice, the trade unions. The managers of big business and the managers of the state run the modern core of a nation's economymostly the oligopoly sectors. Positive cooperationnot conflict, as in a market ideologyis its motor. The state is not a silent partner; it is an initiating, active partner. It intervenes in every aspect of economic affairs, encouraging, teaching, sometimes even threatening. Its purpose is to promote economic modernization: greater efficiency, greater productivity, greater expansion. The partnership works for the general interest; and it works outside the traditional political arena. Parliament and the constellation of institutions that surrounds parliament are not necessary for the smooth functioning of the system. . . . The
is the new higher civil servants' favorite model of economic and social organization. It is fundamentally an attitude of cooperation between the stewards of the state and the managers of big business.'
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 5152. Former MITI Vice-Minister Ojimi* Yoshihisa states bluntly that 'the Special Measures Law was actually an attempt to introduce the French
into Japan.' Ojimi Yoshihisa and Uchida Tadao, 'Nihon no kanryo* gyosei* to kanmin kyocho* taisei' (Japan's bureaucratic administration and the public-private cooperative system),
, September 1972, p. 30.
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nance Section and a protege of Sahashi's; and two younger officers, Konaga Keiichi (who later served as Prime Minister Tanaka's assistant and was the actual author of Tanaka's
) and Uchida Genko * (an engineer who had played an active role in fostering the automobile industry).
23
The Enterprises Bureau first entitled its brainchild the Draft Law of Special Measures for Strengthening the International Competitive Ability of Designated Industries. It was the cabinet that changed its name. Article 1 spelled out the law's objectives: to promote the sound development of the national economy by raising the international competitive ability of designated industries in order to counter the effects of liberalization. Article 2 designated the first three industriesspecial steels, automobiles, and petrochemicalsand authorized the designation of others by cabinet order after consultation with the Industrial Structure Investigation Council. Articles 3 and 4 incorporated the public-private cooperation formula, which Sahashi held to be the very heart of the whole law.
24
These articles authorized three-way committees (
), composed of representatives of government, industry, and finance, which were to establish and carry out 'promotion standards' for each particular industry. It is perhaps worth noting that the Japanese word kondankai (discussion group, or committee) implies more than its English equivalents.
*
(4th ed.) gives for kondankai the Italian word
, 'a verbal agreement between two or more parties,' which suggests something less than a contract but considerably more than a 'conversation.'
Articles 5 and 6 required managers of designated industries to cooperate in raising the competitive ability of their firms, said that banks had to 'give heed to' loan requests from designated industries, and ordered government banks to assist them. Articles 7 and 8 provided for 'structural financing' for designated industries, various tax exemptions to be specified by cabinet orders, and reductions in the corporate income tax. Article 9 legalized 'cooperative behavior' by enterprises in a designated industry and specifically exempted such behavior from the purview of the Antimonopoly Law. Articles 10, 11, 12, and 13 were given over to legal technicalities. Like most Japanese statutes, the Special Measures Law was comparatively short.
25
Disclosure of the contents of the law in the Industrial Structure Investigation Council immediately set off three major controversies. The first was the old favorite of self- coordination versus public-private cooperation. Much in the tradition of Kobayashi Ichizo* at the time of Prince Konoe's New Structure Movement, Ishizaka Taizo*, the
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venerable head of Keidanren, let it be known that he favored self-imposed control. He went on to say that 'all the government has to do is watch for fires and thieves. It can leave the rest of work up to civilians'; but he also believed that 'opponents of foreign investment are like grown men wearing diapers, refusing to leave their mothers' breasts.'
