Chalmers Johnson - MITI and the Japanese miracle

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On Yoshino's birthday, September 17, 1936, he and Kishi jointly submitted their letters of resignation. Yoshino went to Tohoku, where he had been born, and Kishi became the deputy director of the Industrial Department of the government of Manchukuo.

In strict accordance with custom Ogawa asked Yoshino to name his successor. Yoshino recommended Takeuchi Kakichi, class of 1915, and at the time director of the Patent Bureau. Takeuchi had never been popular with Kishi, who apparently believed that Takeuchi should have been sent to the Agriculture Ministry when MAC was divided in 1925. Nonetheless, Takeuchi served in many important, typically reform bureaucratic posts in MCI and elsewhere in the government: he was a department chief in the TIRB from 1930 to 1935, president of the Cabinet Planning Board from January to July 1940, and vice-minister of munitions from July 1944 to April 1945. In 1936 Ogawa appointed him vice-minister of commerce and industry but made clear that he distrusted him as a follower of the Yoshino-Kishi line. Under these circumstances Takeuchi resigned two months later, and after a short interval in Manchuria took up the post of director of the semidetached Fuel Bureau, where he felt much more comfortable. As his successor Ogawa selected Murase Naokai, an official much more to Ogawa's liking and the vice-minister who led MCI through the first years of the China war and through its total reorganization in 1939.

Murase Naokai (18901968) entered MAC from Todai* Law in 1914. He had not had much experience in MAC or MCI, since from 1919 to 1933 he had worked as a transferee in the Cabinet Legislation Bureau (Hosei* Kyoku). This bureau was the most prestigious post for a prewar bureaucrat, and its directorship was the pinnacle of the Imperial service. By 1933 Murase had become a councillor in the bureau, and

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the only post still ahead of him was the director's. Because he was considered too junior for that, although he was regarded as an excellent legal technician, the bureau asked Yoshino to take him back as a bureau chief in MCI. Yoshino was glad to oblige, and in September 1933 he appointed Murase chief of the Commercial Affairs Bureau. Murase held that post until Yoshino's resignation.

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Murase thus had no experience in industrial administration or in the TIRB. He leaned toward the commercial wing of MCI, which was oriented to medium and smaller enterprises, the insurance business, the stock exchanges, and tradeand which reflected the business world's wary approach to the controlled economy. Murase's greatest achievement as chief of the Commercial Affairs Bureau was securing the passage in 1936 of the Commercial and Industrial Cooperatives Central Depository Law, the enabling legislation for the Shoko* Chukin* Bank. This was and is today the leading governmental financial organ devoted exclusively to support of medium and smaller enterprises. Murase became known as a champion of the small businessman, and after the Pacific War he served from February 1953 to February 1958 as chairman of the bank he had founded in 1936.

*

While Murase was settling in at Kobiki-cho*, Kishi was in Hsinking greeting old friends and colleagues. Kishi himself had been directly responsible for sending most of them there. During his service as Industrial Policy Section chief and as Documents Section chief (193235), Kishi had received many requests from the Kwantung Army for MCI officials to staff its new government of Manchukuo. This government was divided into a series of departments (

bu

) equivalent to the ministries in Japan, each with a Manchurian as director and a Japanese as deputy director. The General Affairs Agency (Somu-cho*), whose director and deputy director were both Japanese, supervised the whole puppet structure. The army asked the ministries in Tokyo to send reform bureaucrats to serve temporarily in these "guidance" posts, and Kishi was only too willing to oblige. The first director of

*

When Murase was forced from the vice-ministership in October 1939 by the "return of the Manchurians," Ikeda Seihin, the Mitsui leader and minister of MCI during the second half of 1938, arranged for his appointment as director of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau. He remained there until the appointment of the Tojo* cabinet, when he resigned from the government. On April 7, 1945, Prime Minister (Admiral) Suzuki Kantaro* asked him to return as director of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau in order to assist in terminating the Pacific War. He stayed in the post until after the surrender. On August 28, 1946, the occupation authorities purged him, and on October 13, 1950, they depurged him. He became an adviser to MITI on March 1, 1953. After heading the Shoko* Chukin* Bank, a public corporation under MITI's control, he became president between 1961 and 1967 of the Japan Electronic Computer Company, one of MITI's main instruments for promoting the domestic computer industry.

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the General Affairs Agency was Komai Tokuzo * of the Kwantung Army's Special Affairs Department, but his successor was Hoshino Naoki of the Ministry of Finance. Kishi later served as Hoshino's deputy at the General Affairs Agency.

The first MCI official sent to Manchuria was Takahashi Kojun*, a former Documents Section chief, who went in June 1933 and became deputy director of the Industrial Department (Jitsugyo-bu*, which changed its name during 1937 to Sangyo-bu*). During the autumn of 1933 Takahashi returned to MCI to recruit more officials, and Kishi strongly recommended that he approach the young TIRB official, Shiina Etsusaburo* (Kishi was Shiina's sempai by three years). This established a relationship between Kishi and Shiina that was as long lasting as that between Yoshino and Kishi. If the Yoshino-Kishi line prevailed in the ministry during the first half of the 1930's, the Kishi-Shiina line dominated it during the 1940's, 1950's, and well into the 1960's. Shiina served in the Industrial Department of Manchuria from 1933 to 1939. In addition, Kishi sent Okabe Kunio (chief of MITI's Trade Promotion Bureau in 1951 and, after retirement as a bureaucrat, the managing director of JETRO and a director of MITI's Electrical Resources Development Company). In his memoirs Yoshino refers to both Shiina and Okabe as members not of his faction but of "Kishi's faction."

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Others whom Kishi sent or Ogawa expelled to "the wilds of Manchuria" between 1933 and 1936 included Minobe Yoji* (whose active duty at MCI lasted from 1926 to 1945), Koda* Noboru (1925 to 1943), and Shiseki Ihei (1930 to 1952, a member of the House of Representatives since May 1953, and one of MITI's key supporters in the Diet). However, the MCI official the army wanted all along was Kishi himself. His predecessor as deputy chief of the Industrial Department, Takahashi Kojun*, had not proved to be effective in the post, and in 1936 the army was insisting that Kishi come over to help get its faltering industrialization campaign underway. Thus, with an added push from Ogawa, Kishi went to Manchuria to replace Takahashi as deputy director of the Industrial Department.

The situation in Manchuria was changing significantly just at the time Kishi arrived. From 1933 to 1936 the army and the South Manchurian Railroad (SMRR) had attempted to apply a radical, state-controlled, antizaibatsu development plan, but they had failed due to a lack of capital and to amateur management of heavy and chemical industries. The reputation of the SMRR had suffered considerably as a result. By 1935 the Kwantung Army had begun to reconsider its earlier anticapitalist line and was now trying to create a much sounder

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