Antitrust in Japan

541 Pages·2015·16.39 MB·English

by  Eleanor M. Hadley

ANTITRUST IN JAPAN

ANTITRUST IN
JAPAN
by Eleanor M. Hadley
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
1970
Copyright © 1970 by Princeton University Press
ALL BIGHTS RESERVED
L.C. Card: 68-56312
S.B.N. 691-04194-6
Title page calligraphy by Miss Uwano Moto
Printed in the United States of America
by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
For
M S H
and
in memory
H M H

Contents
PABT I
1. Japan's Combines, Target of Occupation Reform 3
2. Combine Enterprise in Japan 20
3. Japanese-Developed Zaibatsu 32
4. Combine Dissolution: Severing Ownership Ties 61
5. Combine Dissolution: Severing Personnel Ties 77
6. The Deconcentration Law and the
Antimonopoly Law 107
7. The Public Debate: FEC 230 and All That 125
8. The Dissolution of Two Trading Giants;
Financial Institutions Untouched 147
9. The United States Reorients Its Economic
Policy in Japan 166
10. The Sale of Securities and other Deconcentration
Developments 181
PART II
11. Zaibatsu Yesterday, Business "Groupings" Today
—Is There a Difference? 205
12. Other "Headless" Combines and Financial
Groupings 257
13. Still More Groupings: Subsidiaries
and Kombinato 291
14. Concentration Without Monopoly 316
15. Cartels 357
16. Government in the Economy 390
17. The Postwar Performance of the Economy 408
18. Assessment 439
Appendices 455
Index 519

Preface
Tms BOOK might be said to represent the unforeseen conse­
quences of a bureaucratic argument. I became involved with the
zaibatsu and the question of U.S. policy toward those giant combines
in the World War II period when I was "borrowed" by the Interna­
tional Business Practices Branch of the State Department from the
OflBce of Strategic Services to work on a research-policy paper on this
matter. In the dispute within State as to which division would prepare
the paper, the economists won the argument, but winning, discovered
they had no one with familiarity with Japan. Subsequently I transferred
to the Department, then in April 1946 left to join MacArthur's head­
quarters in Tokyo, where I was a member of General Whitney's Gov­
ernment Section for the next year and a half. In September 1947 I
returned to RadcliflFe College to take up a pending fellowship from
the American Association of University Women.
Having become bureaucratically involved with Japan's giant busi­
ness, I made the zaibatsu the subject of my doctoral dissertation,
Concentrated Business Power in Japan, in 1949. I did not return to
the subject of industrial organization in Japan until 1962 when I was
in Japan as a Fulbright Research Scholar to observe the consequences
of the Occupation's deconcentration policy.
The book is divided into two parts. Part I is an account of what was
done in the Occupation toward breaking up concentrated business, and
the reasons for doing so. Part II is an analysis of the current scene in
Japan. Those familiar with the field may wonder why I decided to
include Part I, inasmuch as Professor T. A. Bisson's study, Zaibatsu
Dissolution in Japan, is available. My primary reason is the much
fuller information available than when Professor Bisson wrote his
study, although differences in interpretation and analysis likewise
entered into the decision.
For a foreigner to undertake a study of Japan's economy and social
change presents both weaknesses and strengths. Obviously I cannot
bring to the subject the familiarity with the literature that a Japanese
scholar would bring. On the other hand, the very lack of such familiar­
ity provides an opportunity for freshness of perception. Also, the study