The Search for National Identity and Japanese Industrial Policy, 1950–1969

Abstract. Economic nationalism reflected in Japanese industrial policy experienced two distinctive stages during 1950–69. It was fragmented in the 1950s as political actors held competing perceptions of national interest and consequently asserted contesting strategies for industrial policy. The tensions between the conservative and the progressive eventually led to a clash in 1960 on the issue of the renewal of the Japan–US security treaty. Economic nationalism began to unify the country in the 1960s as political actors were able to build a consensus on national interest based on economic growth and united around a grand strategy of high growth and liberalisation of trade. During this transition, the perceived external threat to the nation was a major force in generating the momentum for economic nationalism in policy-making, while a fair distribution of economic welfare among social classes through industrial policy was indispensable for economic nationalism to obtain public support.