Chalmers Johnson - MITI and the Japanese miracle

4. director-general, Medium and Smaller Enterprises Agency

5. director-general, Patent Agency

6. chief, International Trade Policy Bureau

7. chief, Machinery and Information Industries Bureau

8. chief, Minister's Secretariat

9. chief, Basic Industries Bureau

10. chief, Industrial Location and Environmental Protection Bureau

11. chief, Consumer Goods Industries Bureau

12. chief, Trade Bureau (the old Trade Promotion Bureau)

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The high status of the Industrial Policy Bureau is a reflection of the internal factional fighting that has gone on continuously within the ministry since it was reorganized in 1949. In this fighting, which was between the industrial faction (also called the "control" or "domestic" faction) and the international faction (also called the "trade" or "liberal" faction), the industrial faction and its policies dominated the ministry until 1966, and its headquarters was the Industrial Policy Bureau. During the 1970's a new breed of internationalists took over the

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ministry and ended the earlier disputes, but the management of industrial policy has remained the hallmark of MITI. It is because of this that the directorship of the Industrial Policy Bureau is the last step before the vice-ministership.

MITI also differs from other ministries in the degree of internal democracy it supports and in the authority it gives to younger officials. The ministry believes that the most fertile time in the life of a bureaucrat for generating new ideas is when he serves as assistant section chief (

kacho-hosa

*). MITI tries to tap this capacity through a unique institution known as the Laws and Ordinances Examination Committee (Horei* Shinsa Iinkai). It is composed of the deputy chiefs of the General Affairs or Coordination sections in each bureau throughout the ministry. All major policies of the ministry are introduced and screened at this level, and no new policy can be initiated without its approval. For a young assistant section chief to be named chairman of this committee is a certain sign that he is on the "elite course" toward becoming a bureau chief and, possibly, the vice-minister.

Above this committee are review groups at the section chief levelthe General Affairs Section Chiefs' Conference (Shomu Kacho* Kaigi)and at the bureau director levelthe Operational Liaison Conference (Jimuren). The bureau director level is the court of last resort for approval of a policy initiated by the assistant section chiefs; anything that must go up to the vice-minister's and minister's level is by definition political. But the most substantive of all these internal coordinating groups is still the first.

112

In addition to these formal groups, there are numerous informal brainstorming institutions in MITI. During the late 1960's one was called the "Komatsu Bar," the conference room and liquor cabinet of Komatsu Yugoro* when he was chief of the General Coordination Section in the Secretariat. Young officials gathered there around 10 o'clock at night for a drink and lively discussionoften about OECD, GATT, and European developments, topics that had interested Komatsu since his service as first secretary in the embassy in Germany. Komatsu, of the class of 1944, became vice-minister in 1974. In addition to the Komatsu Bar, a young MITI bureaucrat could also visit the "Yoshimitsu Bar" (Director Yoshimitsu Hisashi of the Medium and Smaller Enterprises Agency) and the "Takahashi Bar" (Chief Secretary Takahashi Shukuro*).

113

Japanese analysts usually characterize the basic outlook of MITI officials as "nationalistic." Kakuma observes that they like to use expressions such as

joi

* (expulsion of the foreigners) and

iteki

(barbar-

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ians) that date from the last decades of the Tokugawa shogunate. They see their function in life as the protection of Japanese industries from "foreign pressure."

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When he was chief of the Trade Promotion Bureau from November 1969 to June 1971, Goto* Masafumi liked to use the derogatory term

keto

* ("hairy Chinese," by extension "unpleasant foreigner") to refer to Japan's competitors.

115

A different perspective is suggested by the former vice-minister Sahashi Shigeru's habitual use of the literary prefix

hei

, meaning "our" in a humble sensea form of expression associated with an

obanto

*, the chief clerk of an old mercantile house or a prewar zaibatsu holding company. When Sahashi spoke of

heikoku

(our country) as if he were a clerk referring to

heisha

(our company), many Japanese thought of him as the obanto* of Japanese capitalism.

116

Nagai Yonosuke* sees still another historical parallel: "With its self-assertiveness, its strong native nationalism, its loyalist posture, . . . and its terrific 'workism,' MITI reminds us of the General Staff Office of the defunct army.''

117

Whatever its roots, MITI's "spirit" has become legendary.

A part of the MITI perspective is impatience with the Anglo-American doctrine of economic competition. After the war MITI had to reconcile itself to the occupation-fostered market system in Japan, but it has always been hostile to American-style price competition and antitrust legislation. Sahashi likes to quote Schumpeter to the effect that the competition that really counts in capitalist systems is not measured by profit margins but by the development of new commodities, new technologies, new sources of supply, and new types of organizations.

118

MITI is highly competitive internationally, but it is often irritated by the disorderly competitive scramble among its domestic clients. As Robert Ozaki says, "Sometimes it is assumed [by MITI] that the adverse effects of private monopoly will not arise if the monopolists are Japanese."

119

During the 1970's many of these old MITI attitudes were modified by a new "internationalism." Nonetheless, Japanese commentators such as Kakuma have some reservations about the depth of the change; he calls the new MITI leadership the "nationalist international faction" and refers to the coming of the "age of the cosmopolitan nationalists."

120

MITI men are powerful and outspoken, and the Japanese public enjoys reading about them. Several best-selling novels have been written about them, the best of which is Shiroyama Saburo's*

The Summer of the Bureaucrats

(

Kanryo-tachi

*

no natsu

) of 1975. English novelists sometimes choose bureaucrats as subjects (examples are Maugham's

Ashenden

or le Carré's

Smiley's People

), but economic bureaucrats in

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America or Britain are rarely as interesting as spies or politicians. The opposite is true in Japan, where the power and influence of economic bureaucrats make fictional portrayals of their lives and struggles intriguing. In order to understand in greater depth why the Japanese find such people worth reading about in their newspapers and novels, we turn next to a history of the men and accomplishments of MITI.