Doctoring the Economy

Until a few years ago the most important asset in the prefecture of Okayama, 350 miles southwest of Tokyo, was the scenery. The people, mostly small farmers and fishermen, were among the poorest in Japan. Today, Okayama reverberates with the din of industrial expansion--so much so that last week Emperor Hirohito made one of his rare trips out of Tokyo to see for himself what was going on in Okayama and to meet the man responsible, a teetotaling bachelor physician named Yukiharu Miki.

Okayama's rebirth began in 1951 when Miki, the crusading author of Japan's public-health and TB-prevention law, was persuaded to run for governor of the prefecture. Swept into office by a landslide vote, the dumpling-shaped doctor decided that only a daring gamble would ever get Okayama off the economic sick list.

Bankrolling his scheme with bond issues and loans that he personally wheedled out of private bankers. Miki first spent $55 million to build roads and power dams, reclaim land from the sea for level, waterfront industrial sites, and to carve out a deep-water port at the village of Mizushima. Then he hustled around Japan on overnight trains, wooing industrialists with the argument that Okayama offered the big labor pool and wide-open spaces that Japan's older, overcrowded industrial areas lacked. In 1958, after 200 visits from the indefatigable Miki, the huge Mitsubishi Oil complex decided to put up a $30 million refinery in Okayama. Since then, 14 more companies have come into Okayama to build plants producing everything from chemicals to ship engines. Currently, dredges are working round the clock filling in still more land, including a site for an $850 million Kawasaki Steel Corp. mill which is eventually expected to employ 30,000 workers.

Thanks to Miki's efforts. Mizushima has been transformed from a somnolent fishing town into Japan's second biggest oil port (after Yokohama). More important, Okayama's per capita income has risen from $108 to $356 since 1951, jumped 29% last year alone. Miki, who is the only prefectural governor in Japan to sport a radiotelephone in his car (a 1952 Chrysler), insists that his work is now largely done and that, at 59, he would like to retire. But when he ran for a third term in 1959 he won 90% of the vote and even the Communists, along with everyone else, are urging Miki to stand for a fourth term next year.

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