The Research Institute of National Policy and the Ministry of the Army Military Affairs Bureau on the Eve of the “Konoe New Regime” era

The making of the “National 10-Year Plan”

Abstract

The Research Institute of National Policy (Kokusaku Kenkyukai 国策研究会 ; hereafter RINP), which is a private research organization studying administrative policy, was founded in 1934 as the National Policy Research Club (Kokusaku Kenkyu Doshikai 国策研究同志会). Before World War II, RINP was sometimes referred to as the “Citizens Planning Agency” (Minkan Kikakucho 民間企画庁), on which sat influential figures both active in the private and public sectors, who gathered together to study various issues and whose findings often exerted profound influence on national-policy making.
Much of the research done to date on the RINP has focused on the close connection between the Institute and the Ministry of the Army's Military Affairs Bureau and has characterized it as a think-tank for the Army, despite its existence as a non-government citizens organization. However, little has yet been revealed regarding how exactly themes suggested by the Army were reflected in the Institute’s research and how its findings were presented to the Military Affairs Bureau. To clarify these questions, this article examines the drafting of the Comprehensive National 10-Year Plan (Sogo Kokusaku Jukkanen Keikaku 総合国策十ヵ年計画), which according the research to date was drawn up by the RINP at the request of the Bureau and eventually became the blueprint for the “Basic Outline of National Policy” for the 2nd Konoe Cabinet’s “new regime” enacted between June 1940 and June 1941. In contrast, this article presents a new interpretation of the RINP, in general, and its involvement in the drafting of the “National 10-Year Plan”, in particular.
The author finds that the Plan was in fact not researched and drawn up by the RINP per se, but in effect by a group of reformist bureaucrats in conjunction with Army staff members, all of whom were associated based on personal relationships. The whole process of drafting the plan was kept completely secret, to the extent that a dummy group was organized within the RINP to disguise the activities of the actual planners. It therefore follows that the political influence attributed to the Institute as an Army think-tank has been greatly exaggerated. Rather, the Army utilized the Institute merely as a carefully micro-managed front to exert its influence covertly on national politics.