ABSTRACT
In the later years of the Tokugawa era, especially after the opening of the country to Westerners, both local and central governments began to establish industries modelled on those of the West. This policy was continued by the Meiji Government after the Restoration of 1868; for the leaders realized that until Japan had herself acquired the technical equipment that had been worked out in the West, a menace to her independence from ambitious European Powers would remain. The State naturally had to take the lead in this process of Westernization, because although there were a few business families with a long experience of large-scale undertakings, knowledge of modern industrial and financial technique was not widely diffused, and the great business families themselves had to be encouraged to direct their activities into lines favourable to the Government’s political aims. But while many of the new enterprises were established by the State, it did not retain the ownership or administration of them once they were firmly rooted. There were some exceptions as was shown in the last chapter. But the main function of the State was not to exercise a detailed control over industrial and commercial life, but rather to set up certain economic objectives and to assist private enterprise (especially the great Zaibatsu) to attain them. In other words, its aim was to create the conditions which would lead the entrepreneurs to direct and organize the economic resources of the country in the way believed to be desirable. Only in this sense could the Japan of the pre-War period be said to possess a “planned economy.”1
