Some admired its influence; others decried its interference. But there was a time when nobody doing business in Japan, or with Japan, could ignore the clout of its Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). Over the past 15 years, however, changes in Japan's economy and political system have been transforming the ministry's role. Since 2001, when broad economic duties were added to the trade and industry bits, it has been known as METI rather than MITI. Yet that nominal expansion of its role has belied a steep depreciation of its currency, relative to the only benchmark that Japanese civil servants care about: the power to tell others what to do.
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