The author of the paper aims at two objectives. One of them is presenting an arrangement between the state and the private capital in the circumstances of capital and foreign currency shortfalls, which has proved to be particularly beneficial for the growth rate and competitiveness of the economy. The author has undertaken an attempt to reconstruct the institutional arrangement in the post-war Japan, thanks to which the state intervention into the decisions of private enterprises succeeded through the private banking sector. The Japanese solution served as an interesting illustration of different possibilities of realisation of the growth objective in a country with poor capital resources. However, the solution is not presented as an ageless "recipe" but rather as a historical situation. An analysis of the conditions due to which the growth of the Japanese economy was directed by means of the bank loan is aimed at providing better understanding of the current problems of one of the biggest banking systems in the world.