The role of the special survey committee in the post-war reconstruction of Japan

Abstract

The article explores the institutional and conceptual experience of the initial period of Japan’s post-war economic reconstruction. The prerequisites, institutional mechanisms, and performance results of the Special Survey Committee (SSC) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan are comprehensively analyzed; its impact on the post-war reconstruction and the phenomenally successful modernization of the Japanese economy in the context of Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction tasks is assessed. For this purpose, the abstract-logical, empirical-historical, interdisciplinary methods are used, and the tools of political economy and modernization theory are applied. It is concluded that the SSC has become the intellectual, personnel and program «assembly point» for the entire further process of Japan’s national reconstruction. Thus, the SSC provided the Japanese government with a systemic vision of the country's place in the postwar world, in the latter’s economic and financial system as well as of national landmarks, priorities, and postwar reconstruction mechanisms. Despite the powerful influence of military-security and geopolitical factors, it took a very high level of mobilization, patriotism, and social responsibility of the Japanese national elite to convince the Allied Powers of the need to make heavy industrialization based on advanced technologies the basis of Japan's postwar recovery. The SSC’s experience testifies that in every successful case of national post-war reconstruction, one should find and define the key conceptual and institutional initiative that launched the recovery process – not necessarily materially, but at least in conceptual and political-volitional terms, as every large-scale and successful (re)construction begins with the development and approval of the relevant project. The author concludes that the SSC’s strategic report on the basic problems of Japan's economic reconstruction is a relevant framework model, according to which a strategy of national economic reconstruction, in particular post-war recovery of Ukraine’s economy, may be developed, of course, taking into account national and local characteristics.