The focus of this book is on the Japanese economic bureaucracy, particularly on the famous Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), as the leading state actor in the economy. Although MITI was not the only important agent affecting the economy, nor was the state as a whole always predominant, I do not want to be overly modest about the importance of this subject. The particular speed, form, and consequences of Japanese economic growth are not intelligible without reference to the contributions of MITI. Collaboration between the state and big business has long been acknowledged as the defining characteristic of the Japanese economic system, but for too long the state''s role in this collaboration has been either condemned as overweening or dismissed as merely supportive, without anyone''s ever analyzing the matter.
The history of MITI is central to the economic and political history of modern Japan. Equally important, however, the methods and achievements of the Jap
