What were the operating principles of Japan's MITI during the 1950s and 60s?
score:4
MITI was formed by the merging of the Trade Agency and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Its purpose was to help curb inflation and to provide government leadership in different types of industries. MITI helped these industries by establishing policies on exports and imports as well as domestic inductries. In fact, the foreign trade policy that they developed was designed to strengthen domestic manufacturing. They were also responsible for establishing guidelines pertaining to pollution control, energy and power, and customer complaints.
The key to their success from bureaucratic perspective was that they did not have a group of bureaucrats who randomly made decisions that they felt would be successful. Instead, they relied on bring the top figures in each field of industry together to obtain a consensus on policies before enacting them. They also encouraged industry leaders to share their best practices to ensure that everyone had an opportunity for success.
In regards to your request for a long-form description of how they did this, I found a research paper from Harvard that focuses specifically on MITI's role in Information technology advancements. However, the principles applied in this particular field are equally relvant in other forms of industry as well. Here is an example of the primary point that brings all this together:
MITI by itself is not responsible for Japan's economic success. Rather, its forte appears to be its ability to bring divergent points of view together in creating national policies that are generally acceptable to the various sectors of the society. Consensus-building remains one of the striking features of the Japanese scene. Japan's and MITI's success in the post-war era have been due in large part to the political stability that has been enjoyed. This stability has enabled MITI to perform its role of guidance and coordination in an effective manner.
Upvote:3
There is a very thorough explanation on Japanese economic growth in the work by Asian scholar, Chalmers Johnson in his work Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. In addition to a very well researched explanation on American actions and the intelligence community derived concept of "blowback", he provides a very detailed explanation on Japanese economic success (you would probably be interested in his work with a more direct explanation of the role of the MITI specifcally, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975). His argument in Blowback is that in addition to the Japanese skill in industry promoted by the likes of MITI, much of their incredible growth was due to their ability to use their geopolitical surroundings to their benefit.
"From approximately 1950 to 1970, the United States treated Japan as a beloved ward, indulging its every economic need and proudly patronizing it as a star capitalist pupil. The United States sponsored Japan's entry into many international institutions... transferred crucial technologies to the Japanese on virtually concessionary terms and opened its markets to Japanese products while tolerating Japan's production of its own domestic market."
-Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, p.177
One of the interesting points Johsnon makes is on his claim that "East Asian export regimes thrived on foreign demand artificially generated by an imperialist power...the strategy only worked so long as Japan and perhaps one or two smaller countries pursued this strategy." While the beneficial policies initially benefited both Japan and the US, the former as described above and the latter by providing cheap consumer goods and an example of the benefits of capitalism to be used in the ideologically driven conflicts ragging in East Asia. However, by about the end of the 1980's, the Japanese developed an overcapacity to produce goods aimed at the American market at the same time that American policies in Japan (and elsewhere) had hollowed out vital American industries, lowering employment opportunities and wages in the US and thus correspondingly lowering the ability for the US consumer to absorb Japanese products.
His argument is elaborated more in chapter 9 of Blowback, and I would really recommend that you check it out from your local library or buy it, if you want to know more.
More post
- 📝 Could a jeweler in 1800 AD tell a synthetic gem stone is fake?
- 📝 Who cataloged the ships that visited Alta California?
- 📝 How many rapes did the Wehrmacht commit in the Soviet Union during World War II?
- 📝 Was there the concept of paternity leave in Spain in 1913?
- 📝 Was Catalonia ever a sovereign state?
- 📝 Are there wars still going on, but officially ended? (found two)
- 📝 When was the American War of Independence first called a 'Revolution'?
- 📝 A clear picture of the casaulties of the Jewish people under the Third Reich
- 📝 Did war chariots ever actually have blades on the wheel hubs?
- 📝 Are there any books solely about the Umayyad Invasion of Gaul?
- 📝 On 1941 Dec 7, could Japan have targeted the Panama Canal instead of Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack?
- 📝 What coin/token is this? Copper "1 1900" Rev: Austro-Hungarian arms
- 📝 Why is the flag of Prague yellow and red?
- 📝 English monarchs on the battlefield
- 📝 Was there a major Mexican military disaster in the Navajo Wars?
- 📝 Why did Alexander found or rename a number of places after himself?
- 📝 What is the anomaly in drawing of the Great Pyramid by National Geographic?
- 📝 Can anyone help identify this uniform /person?
- 📝 Are the Xibe people the same as the Manchu?
- 📝 Were the Chinese Warlords backed by other countries?
- 📝 How many Britons lived in India during the British Raj (1858 - 1947)?
- 📝 When, where, why did clean shaving for men become the norm?
- 📝 Why couldn't Japan crack the Navajo Code in WW2, when they captured a Navajo native speaker?
- 📝 What were the key difficulties for the Romans in the conquest of Germanic tribes?
- 📝 Why did/do they torture people to get fake "confessions"?
- 📝 How did people first discover that food is food?
- 📝 Connection between "lingua franca" and Frankish people
- 📝 What are some symbols representing peasants/oppressed persons fighting back?
- 📝 How have they traditionally handled safety on submarines in regards to "surface cruising"?
- 📝 Where was Mao Zedong during the Japanese surrender in Zhijiang (芷江) at the end of WWII in 1945?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What were the operating principles of Japan's MITI during the 1950s and 60s?
- 📝 What trains were used on the Dakar-Niger Railway in the late 1950s and early 1960s?
- 📝 What were conditions like for Chinese men subject to recruitment by the army during the Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War?
- 📝 During the Battle of Britain, what AA defenses were available, and where?
- 📝 What were the legal and societal conditions concerning "interracial love" during 1870s?
- 📝 What field guns, howitzers and mortars were used by the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army during the 1971 war?
- 📝 What were the differences between the Waffen SS and the Wehrmacht in their role during the war?
- 📝 What did the Germans believe were the causes of WWI during the war and after?
- 📝 What drugs were used in England during the High Middle Ages?
- 📝 Were there any Germans in Japan after the surrender of Germany in May, 1945 and if so, what happened to them?
- 📝 In WWII, what were the major differences in tank combat on the eastern and western fronts?
- 📝 What were the EMP effects, if any, of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
- 📝 What East German laws and regulations were extended to the West after unification?
- 📝 What were the demographics and economics of South-East Asian islands around year 1400?
- 📝 What were the Nazi racial views on Hungarians and the Japanese?
- 📝 At what point were the most current and former US Presidents alive?
- 📝 What were the thoughts of the Celts, Romans and other ancient European people about the standing stones which survive from prehistoric times?
- 📝 What were the original casualty projections for Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
- 📝 Why were schoolchildren in the USA taught virtually nothing about the Holocaust during the fifties and sixties?
- 📝 What goods did Germany trade during the Weimar Republic, and with whom?
- 📝 What were the individual soldiers motivated by during World War 1?
- 📝 What changes happened in law enforcement and criminal trials during the Nazi era in Germany?
- 📝 What did European people of the 5th century AD eat during spring and what was the availability?
- 📝 What were the political and military constraints on Vercingetorix at Alesia?
- 📝 What weapons were manufactured in India by the British forces which were used during world wars?
- 📝 Percentage of the draft pool that were conscripted during WW2 and Vietnam
- 📝 What proportion of the population of Soviet Union were taken into custody by the state during Stalin's time?
- 📝 What were the Government Press Prosecutions of 1858 and why did they occur?
- 📝 What were Chiang Kai-shek's biggest strategic blunders during the Second Sino-Japanese war?
- 📝 What were the insignia of the Western Roman Empire and what happened to them?