434,716
8. Tokyo Shibaura Electric (Toshiba*) (8)
414,761
Est. 1904.
9. Mitsubishi Mining
(53)
407,555
Est. 1918.
10. Sumitomo Metals (7)
380,200
Est. 1915.
III. 1972
(Millions)
1. New Japan Steel
2,113,335
2. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
1,648,235
3. Nippon Kokan* (Steel Pipe)
1,162,308
Est. 1912.
4. Hitachi, Ltd.
1,036,178
5. Ishikawajima-Harima
982,021
Est. 1889.
6. Nissan Motors
949,029
Est. 1933.
7. Sumitomo Metals
930,197
8. Toshiba, Ltd.
852,999
9. Kawasaki Steel
843,838
Est. 1950.
10. Kobe Steel
683,629
Est. 1911.
SOURCE
: History of Industrial Policy Research Institute,
*
(The formation and development of big business in our country), Tokyo, 1976, pp. 26, 38, 56.
Numbers in parentheses are the rank in 1972 of those corporations still in existence in that year.
oriented solely to the maximum use of existing facilities rather than to investment in new installations.
2
Although Cohen and the Japanese analysts are critical of this policy, it is hard to imagine what alternatives were available to MCI, given the fact that Japan had already entered the war, thereby endangering its most vital imports, before the industrial implications of a
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long war with the United States had dawned on the military. It is of no great relevance to postwar industrial policy to recall that the Japanese government did not begin to mobilize fully for World War II until after the battle of Midway and the American landings on Guadalcanal (August 1942), but it is of considerable relevance that when the government took action, its policies injected economic bureaucrats much more intimately into the affairs of individual enterprises than they had ever been before. Botched
