ABSTRACT
Close cooperation between MOF bureaucrats and the LDP under LDP dominance promoted a high growth in the Japanese economy in the 1960s and 1970s. In July 1960, an ex-MOF executive, Ikeda Hayato, formed the First Ikeda Cabinet, and the Cabinet proposed ‘The Income Doubling Programme’ in which he pledged to double the national income within ten years. The MOF answered this plan by expanding annual expenditure and a government investment and loans programme (Zaisei Tøy¥shi). In the budget of the 1961 fiscal year, while the amount of tax reduction totalled 113 billion yen, the annual expenditure and the government investment and loans programme increased to 19.4 per cent and 30.5 per cent respectively from the previous fiscal year to improve social welfare systems and infrastructure (Økurashø Zaiseishishitsu 1998: 209). The average growth rates of the annual expenditure and government investment and loans programme from the 1961 fiscal year to the 1971 fiscal year were 16.76 per cent and 20.8 per cent respectively. The Japanese economy experienced ‘the high growth period’ (Kødo Seichøki) during the 1960s and early 1970s.
