Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Defense Industrialization in the Japanese Developmental State

This paper re-examines the drive and rationale behind the Japanese developmental state. Existing understandings situate the Japanese developmental state as part of a technonationalism, or the mix of ideologies and state policies on technological competitiveness and innovation that stretch back to the Meiji period. Challenging this timeline and that notion that Japanese developmentalism was the result of an unbroken commitment to technology and national self-reliance, this paper rethinks the role of militarization in the postwar period. Drawing on the corporate archives of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), I focus on precision machinery manufacturing to highlight how American Mutual Security Assistance Funds from 1953 to 1962 not only structured plans to remilitarize heavy and chemical industries but strengthened state and business leaders’ commitment to national defense production long after the Korean War. Standing at the center of Japan’s commercial and defense economies MHI provides a counter-archive of the developmental state that have important implications for analyzing the martial roots of postwar Japan’s drive for technological independence.