|
Japan Business Interests
Links between the corporate world and government were
maintained through three national organizations: the
Federation of
Economic Organizations (Keizai Dantai
Rengokai--Keidanren),
established in 1946; the Japan Committee for Economic
Development
(Keizai Doyu Kai), established in 1946; and the Japan
Federation of
Employers Association (Nihon Keieishadantai
Renmei--Nikkeiren),
established in 1948. Keidanren is considered the most
important.
Its membership includes 750 of the largest corporations
and 110
manufacturers' associations. Its Tokyo headquarters serves
as a
kind of "nerve center" for the country's most important
enterprises, and it works closely with the powerful
Ministry of
International Trade and Industry (MITI). There is
evidence,
however, suggesting that the federation's power is not
what it had
been, partly because major corporations, which had amassed
huge
amounts of money by the late 1980s, are increasingly
capable of
operating without its assistance.
Nikkeiren was concerned largely with labor-management
relations
and with organizing a united business front to negotiate
with labor
unions on wage demands during the annual "Spring
Struggle." The
Keizai Doyu Kai, composed of younger and more liberal
business
leaders, assigned itself the role of promoting business's
social
responsibilities. Whereas Keidanren and Nikkeiren were
"peak
organizations," whose members themselves were
associations, members
of the Keizai Doyu Kai were individual business leaders
(see Labor Unions
, ch. 4).
Because of financial support from corporations,
business
interest groups were generally more independent of
political
parties than other groups. Both Keidanren and the Keizai
Doyu Kai,
for example, indicated a willingness to talk with the
socialists in
the wake of the political scandals of 1988-89 and also
suggested
that the LDP might form a coalition government with an
opposition
party. Yet through an organization called the People's
Politics
Association (Kokumin Seiji Kyokai), they and other top
business
groups provided the LDP with its largest source of party
funding.
Data as of January 1994
|
