MITI and the Japanese miracle Read online

  Tokyo University of Education

  24

  22

  Nagoya Industrial University

  7

  19

  Tokyo Agricultural University

  18

  15

  Yokohama University

  19

  14

  Chiba University

  14

  12

  Kobe University

  14

  12

  Hitotsubashi University

  22

  10

  Keio* University

  6

  10

  SOURCE

  :

  Shukan*

  asahi

  , July 15, 1977, pp. 2123.

  NOTE

  : No other university had as many as ten passers in either year.

  noncommissioned officers in the military. In contemporary Japan all government officials must pass entrance examinations, but the old system is perpetuated by a differentiation between the difficulty and comprehensiveness of the examination taken. Today prospective bureaucrats must sit for either the class A (

  ko

  *) or the class B (

  otsu

  ) examinations; those who pass the first and are accepted by a ministry may advance to the highest executive levels of the career service, including the position of vice-minister, but those who pass the second cannot be promoted beyond the section chief level, and usually not that high.

  University students hoping to enter government service take the class A examinations during their last year in the university. Those who pass and are selected by a ministry then become part of an entering class within the ministry. This identification with an entering cohort becomes the bureaucrat's most important attribute during his entire bureaucratic life, and it follows him long after he leaves government service. Entering classes establish vertical relationships among all high-level, or ''career" (

  kyaria

  ), officialsor what are called relations between

  sempai

  (seniors, those of earlier classes) and

  kohai

  * (ju-

  Page 59

  niors, those of later entering classes). Both promotion to the level of section chief and retirement are in accordance with strict seniority. This age grading (

  nenko

  *

  joretsu

  ) and "respect for seniority" (

  nenji

  soncho

  *) among bureaucrats influences everything they do, not just their activities in a ministry. For example, as an aged man and a former prime minister, Kishi Nobusuke still habitually referred to Yoshino Shinji as his sempai, recalling their earliest relationship in the old Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce.

  64

  More poignantly, when Oba* Tetsuo, a former official of the Transportation Ministry and later president of All Nippon Airways, was hauled into the Diet to testify as a witness in the investigation of the Lockheed corruption case (1976), the press wrote that he shook with barely controlled anger under questioning. The explanation, the journalists said, was that the Diet member interrogating him was his former junior at the Transportation Ministry, and he was overcome by the impudence of a junior questioning a senior.

  65

  In place of the term gakubatsu, some Japanese analysts prefer

  Todaibatsu

  * (cliques of Tokyo University classmates) because of the predominance of Tokyo University graduates in the bureaucracy and in the upper echelons of the banking and industrial worlds. Even among the Todaibatsu*, there is the batsu of all batsuthe alumni of the Tokyo University Law School. In order to understand their influence it is necessary to know that when an entering class joins a ministry, its members are permanently divided into two career pathsthe path of "administrative officials," or generalists (

  jimukan

  ), and the path of "technical officials," or specialists (

  gikan

  ). This distinction differs from that between career (class A exam) and noncareer (class B exam) officials, but it has almost equally serious consequences. It is based on academic specialization in the university.

  Only one ministry promotes technical officers to the top positionthe vice-ministershipand that is the Ministry of Construction. It was created after the war around the nucleus of the old Home Ministry's Civil Engineering Bureau, plus many jimukan officers drawn from the Home Ministry's regular ranks. The struggle by the technicians to achieve equal treatment in Construction was both famous and fierce. It fell to the socialist government of Katayama Tetsu during the occupation to name the first vice-minister of the new Ministry of Construction. The old Home Ministry cadres proposed as their candidate the jimukan official Ohashi* Takeo, a former police officer; and the engineers put forward as their candidate the gikan official Iwasawa Tadayoshi. The unions of the various segments of the old Home Ministry put intense pressure on the Katayama government to favor

  Page 60

  one side or the other. Nishio Suehiro, chief cabinet secretary and an old socialist, chose Iwasawa. He explained that he personally had been victimized by the police in Okayama during the militarist era, precisely at the time when Ohashi * had served as chief of the Okayama police. As a result of Nishio's choice, the Construction Ministry bureaucrats forged an unwritten rule that the vice-ministership would alternate between administrative and technical officials, a practice that has prevailed to the present day.

  66

  Within MITI only the head of the Mine Safety Bureau is open to a gikan officerin fact, only to a graduate of the School of Engineering, Department of Mining, Tokyo Universityand even here a pattern of alternation between generalists and specialists has developed. All other major posts in MITI and the other ministries, excluding the Construction Ministry and detached research institutes and other specialized organs, are monopolized by administrative officers. And the greatest source of administrative officers is the University of Tokyo's Law School.

  According to a calculation of the National Personnel Authority, as of July 1, 1965, among 483 officials at the level of department chief (

  bucho

  *) and aboveall of whom had university degrees from law, economics, or literature departmentssome 355 (or 73 percent) were graduates of Todai* Law.

  67

  But Todai Law students do not go just to the governmentonly the best of them do. The rest go to top positions in the most important businesses in the country, and their affiliations with each other are legendary. Table 4 details the initial placement of the Todai Law classes of 1975 and 1976. Each class numbered around 690, of whom from 150 to 250 did not seek employment because they were continuing on in graduate work or had failed the Higher-level Public Officials Examination and were waiting to take it again the following year. Some 130 graduates of each class entered government service, choosing ministries in accordance with their own attainments and a rough rank ordering of the ministries in terms of their prestigeFinance, MITI, and Foreign Affairs on top; Welfare, Education, and Labor near the bottom. According to the

  Mainichi

  , "Before graduation, the Tokyo University counselors direct students to proper jobsgood enough for the Finance Ministry, or maybe not good enough for that but quite suitable for the Health and Welfare Ministry, or if this is undesirable, perhaps a leading business firm."

  68

  Todai classmates in and out of government keep in touch with each other, and one reason private businesses are glad to get them is for purposes of liaison with the government. Perhaps more important, the Todai connection means that both government offices and board

  Page 61

  TABLE

  4

  Placement of Graduates of the University of Tokyo Law School Classes of 1975 and 1976

  Where graduate was placed

  1975

  1976

  1. Central Government

  Ministry of Finance

 
17

  15

  MITI

  13

  14

  Ministry of Foreign Affairs

  10

  11

  Ministry of Justice

  4

  N.A.

  Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications

  12

  13

  Police Agency

  7

  12

  Ministry of Home Affairs

  13

  10

  Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry

  11

  9

  Ministry of Transportation

  9

  9

  Ministry of Construction

  8

  9

  Ministry of Education

  4

  8

  Ministry of Welfare

  11

  7

  Ministry of Labor

  5

  4

  Board of Audit

  2

  2

  Supreme Court

  1

  2

  Prime Minister's Office

  1

  1

  Environment Agency

  1

  1

  Defense Agency

  1

  1

  National Tax Agency

  0

  1

  Hokkaido Development Agency

  0

  1

  SUBTOTAL

  130

  130

  2. Prefectural governments

  3

  18

  3. Public corporations

  12

  37

  4. Banks, commercial and governmental

  92

  117

  5. Securities and brokerage firms

  4

  8

  6. Casualty and life insurance firms

  26

  27

  7. Real estate firms

  4

  2

  8. Shipbuilding companies

  8

  3

  9. Automobile manufacturing companies

  0

  5

  10. International trading companies

  26

  27

  11. Electrical equipment manufacturers

  5

  4

  12. Steel industry

  20

  22

  13. Chemical industry

  3

  4

  14. Textile industry

  3

  4

  15. Construction industry

  1

  1

  16. Warehousing and transportation industry

  4

  4

  17. Public utilities

  3

  9

  18. Mass communications

  7

  10

  19. Other (family businesses, etc.)

  c. 100

  c. 111

  TOTAL

  451

  543

  SOURCE

  :

  Shukan *

  yomiuri

  , Apr. 3, 1976, pp. 15659.

  Page 62

  rooms are staffed by men who share a common outlookone that is neither "legal" in the sense used in American law schools nor "entrepreneurial" in the sense used in American schools of business administration. Todai * law offers a superb education in public and administrative law of the continental European variety, a subject much closer to what is called political science than to law in the English-speaking countries. Todai students also study economicscompulsory principles of economics in the first year, optional economic policy in the second year, and compulsory public finance in the third year. The resulting homogenization of views between the public and private sectors began before the war. As Rodney Clark observes from the point of view of corporate management: "By the 1920's higher education, particularly at certain great state and private universities, most especially the University of Tokyo, was coming to be seen as the most natural qualification for the management of major companies. . . . The emphasis on such [public law] studies argued (and, of course, promoted) a view of management as a bureaucratic and cooperative venture: the government of a company rather than the imposition of an entrepreneurial will on a market place and a work force by superior skill, courage, or judgment."

  69

  Once in the bureaucracy, the Todai group in an entering class in a ministry works together to ensure that its members prosper and that others are frozen out of choice positions. Sakakibara Eisuke, a bureaucrat turned professor, recalls that his entering class at the Ministry of Finance in 1965 had a total of 18 members, 16 of which were from Todai and 2 from Kyoto University. Among the 18, 5 had economics degrees while the rest had law degrees. More usual was the class of 1966, with 21 members, of whom 20 were law graduates.

  70

  Under such circumstances a young official not from Todai will have difficulties in being promoted much beyond the section chief level. As the

  Mainichi

  reported, "When a Waseda University man was appointed to a bureau chief's post in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry some time ago, the event was played up prominently in all the newspapers."

  71

  Who becomes a bureau chief, a director-general, or ultimately the one vice-minister is a source of intense competition among classes in a ministry. A new class of officers begins its life by circulating among different jobs in the various sections, moving every year or two (the bureaucrats call this

  sotomawari

  , or "going around the track"). Within MITI, in recent years most members of a class will also be posted overseas for a year in a consulate, an embassy, a university, or an office of JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization). Not all sections or

  Page 63

  posts in a ministry are equal. The general affairs section of each bureau is the most important section in the bureau, and the three main sections in the Minister's Secretariat (Daijin Kanbo *)those for personnel, general coordination, and budget and accounts, as they are known in MITIare the most important sections in the ministry. A member of a class who passes through or heads several of these on his sotomawari is said to be on the "elite course" (

  erito

  *

  kosu

  *).

  Nonelite class B exam bureaucrats do not circulate nearly so frequently. The pattern among them is to settle down in one section for years and become what is called a "walking dictionary" or "human encyclopedia" (

  iki-jibiki

  ), the common term for those who do the detailed work of a section and who show the new career officers the ropes. Occasionally a walking dictionary will be promoted to section chief, but this is rare, and it never occurs in a key policy-making section.