【留学予定者必見】日本経済史を英語で説明したい！6

The first thing the MITI (The Ministry of International Trade and Industry) tackled was growing the automobile industry.

The car industry was massively broad-based and capable of making other relative industries including the steel, glass, and rubber industries grow up together.

Therefore, the MITI deemed that a whole heavy industry would be able to expand and a great deal of employment would also be generated if they succeeded in growing the automobile industry.

In order for the MITI to develop car companies, they implemented protective trade practices until the automakers were able to produce competitive cars against European and American enterprises.

The MITI imposed a-40%-tarrif on import cars. The European and American countries urged the MITI to decrease the tariff by necessity, but they resisted and protected the car industry as a shield.

機械工業進行臨時措置法

“Now when I think about it, we put unthinkable restrictions on imports and imposed high tariffs on imported cars. Foreign people became angry at us and I was preached by them, they said things like “it is impossible to acquire highly-developed technology like automobiles. If you want to have a car, just buy it from us. If you want to make money for buying the car, you should earn money by selling textiles and daily goods, which are Japan’s best fields”. It was terribly unpleasant for me to hear that and I was determined to succeed in growing the automobile industry, and surprise them with our technology. ‘Just you wait and see’, I murmured in my heart.”

Yugoro Komatsu (the MITI)

Around this time, the MITI established *a special law which later extensively developed Japan’s manufacturing.  *Including temporary measures of promoting the machinery industry.

They tried to support not only makers of end products, but also parts suppliers. Therefore, even small and medium-sized enterprises that had difficulty in financing were able to get loans from banks and it enabled them to invest in their plants and equipment radically.

Small and medium-sized enterprises also carried out capital investments aggressively.

Economic Growth Started (1955 ~ )

Japan’s economic growth recorded 8.8% in 1955.
This was the takeoff of the high growth. However, back then no one was thinking that this growth would last for 20 more years…. Except for him.

Osamu Shimomura (the Ministry of Finance) realized that this economic boom would lead to the takeoff of the historical economic growth.

From 1955, Japan recorded high growth for 2 consecutive years, but Japanese people were expecting stagnation to come again. Shimomura was writing a dissertation in order to establish a theory which could help Japan’s economic growth as soon as possible.

While he was writing this, he contracted tuberculosis regarded as impossible to recover in those days, but he miraculously overcame a-3-year-battle of the disease and finally perfected the theory.

Economic Growth Started (1955 ~ )

Shimomura’s business forecast based on his theory was an extraordinary prediction that a 10% economic growth would last for over 10 years.

This theory was not accepted by people and regarded as nothing more than megalomania.

In fact, the economic white book published in 1956 also talked about the pessimism of Japan’s economy. A famous passage in the book goes as follows, “The nation is no longer in an immediate postwar period”.

This means that around this time when Japan was considered to have recovered from the war, Japanese economists stated that Japan could not expect to have as high economic growth as before. No one, excluding Shimomura, figured out that the potential of high growth was lurking in Japan.

Shimomura’s theory totally agreed to the economic growth which later happened in practice.