Escaping the Japanese Pyramid: The Association of Small and Medium Sized Enterprise Entrepreneurs (SME Doyukai), 1947–1999

In Japanese society the pinnacle of economic and political power resides in Tokyo conglomerates and elite ministries: the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Ministry of Finance. Until now, the story of this power arrangement has been told from the perspective of national bureaucrats and big business executives. The image projected to the outside world has been of cooperative, trust-based relational contracting with big business at the top “taking care” of its suppliers and subsidiaries below. The story from the bottom, however, is one of technology expropriation (of patentable technology) and monopsony squeeze (unilateral cost-down demands, for example). Firms unwilling to toe the line have been wholly excluded from access to the benefits reserved for those at the top of the pyramid, where one finds lucrative main bank financing, government support, and copious technological information. This article offers a historical narrative of the political struggle by independent-minded entrepreneurs in postwar Japan. Central to the struggle has been the challenge of building broad-based coalitions to avoid becoming embedded in these hierarchies while at the same time trying to obtain alternative sources of finance and technological know-how. The most successful example of such efforts is the Association of Small and Medium Size Enterprise Entrepreneurs (SME Doyukai). The SME Doyukai has somehow managed to remain completely independent from the state, while most other small business associations have not. This independence has not been free, and the association has gone through a number of institutional dilemmas as a result. We analyze these dilemmas over time and offer comparative lessons.