MITI and the Japanese miracle Page 8

  Same, except tax requirement abolished

  22

  April 10, 1946

  36.9

  75.8

  48.65

  All men and women

  20 years and

  above

  25

  October 1, 1952

  46.8

  85.9

  54.45

  Same

  29

  November 20, 1960

  54.3

  93.2

  58.30

  Same

  30

  November 21, 1963

  58.3

  95.8

  60.82

  Same

  31

  January 29, 1967

  63.0

  99.8

  63.11

  Same

  32

  December 27, 1969

  69.3

  102.7

  67.47

  Same

  SOURCE

  : Isomura Eiichi, ed.,

  Gyosei

  *

  saishin mondai jiten

  (Dictionary of current administrative problems), Tokyo, 1972, p. 705.

  a

  ¥15 was the equivalent of about U.S. $12.30 in 1890. Since it was paid as a direct tax it meant, in essence, that only property owners or the wealthy could vote.

  their view, this constitutes "administration through law," which is different from the "rule of law."

  15

  In addition to their status, the bureaucrats of modern Japan also inherited from the samurai something comparable to their code of ethics and their elite consciousness. Kanayama Bunji draws attention to the frank elitism and sense of meritocracy associated in contemporary Japan with young men (and a few women) who pass the incredibly competitive Higher-level Public Officials Examination and then enter a ministry. He cites the long hours of work they are expected to perform without complaint, their being sent abroad for postgraduate education in elite universities, the theme of "sacrifice for the public good" that runs through most ministries, and the lectures to new recruits during their early years in a ministry by their "seniors," including those who have retired from public service and have moved to powerful positions in industry or politics. He believes that these customs add up to a "way of the bureaucrat" (

  kanryodo

  *) comparable to

  Page 40

  the old "way of a warrior" (

  bushido

  *).

  16

  Of course, many prewar bureaucrats actually came from samurai families, where the ethos of service persisted for decades after the samurai as a class had been broken up. As Black and his colleagues observe, "With the disbandment of samurai administrations throughout Japan, a civilian bureaucracy was formed, roughly one-tenth as large as the total number of former samurai household heads. For the most part drawn initially from the samurai class, and enjoying high status as the loyal representatives of the emperor, rather than the shogun or daimyo as before, these bureaucrats acquired some of the aura previously reserved for samurai."

  17

  This "aura" formerly attached to samurai can still be found in some of the terminology now associated with bureaucrats. For example, the common term for governmental authorities is "those above" (

  okami

  ). It is also said that Japanese do not normally question the authority of the government because they respect its "samurai sword" (

  denka no

  hoto

  *), which refers directly to a samurai family's heirloom sword. Such a jeweled sword symbolized the status of a samurai household rather than being a weapon designed for killing people. Yamanouchi says that use of the term reflects the popular consciousness of the law as being a symbol of authority, not something that the possessor of authority need actually use. The change from the old constitution to the new, Yamanouchi argues, did little to change this attitude. For example, the effectiveness of MITI's informal administrative guidance is said to rest in the final analysis on its "samurai sword": both the government and industry find it more convenient to work on this basis rather than through the actual swords of litigation and penalties.

  18

  During the 1930's, when the political parties were under strenuous attack from the militarists, both the civilian and military bureaucracies extended the scope of their activities into areas they had previously left untouched. Given the sociological weakness of the parties in the 1920's despite their political prominence, Duus and Okimoto suggest that "the 1930s represented not a breakdown of 'democratic' government, but the stabilization of bureaucratic government"a confirmation of tendencies that had been latent since the Meiji era.

  19

  Craig proposes that the 1930's saw the "indigenization" of the values and institutions that had been borrowed from the West during the Meiji era.

  20

  However one evaluates the decade and a half from 1930 to 1945, Japan's government was much more bureaucratic and state dominated at the end of this period than it had been at the beginning.

  At the war's end this bureaucratic government had to face fierce domestic criticism for the disasters it had brought to the nation, as well

  Page 41

  as undergo the efforts of the Allied occupation to reform it in a democratic direction. But an unusual thing happened to the bureaucracy under the occupation: it did not by any means escape the Allied reforms unscathed, but a part of the bureaucracythe economic ministriesemerged with their powers enhanced. In fact, the occupation era, 194552, witnessed the highest levels of government control over the economy ever encountered in modern Japan before or since, levels that were decidedly higher than the levels attained during the Pacific War. This is a subject I shall consider in detail in Chapters 4 and 5, but the "reform" of the bureaucracy during the occupation is a necessary preface to any understanding of the prominence of bureaucrats in and out of the ministries in postoccupation Japanese politics.

  For reasons that are still none too clear, the occupation authorities, or SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers), never singled out the civilian bureaucracy as needing basic reform. However, SCAP eliminated completely from political life one major rival of the economic bureaucracy, the military; and it transformed and severely weakened another, the zaibatsu. Both of these developments propelled the economic bureaucrats into the vacuums thus created. Equally important, SCAP broke up the prewar Ministry of Home Affairs (Naimu-sho *), which had been the most prestigious and powerful of ministries under the Meiji Constitution. The powers of the old Home Ministry were distributed primarily among the new ministries of Construction, Labor, Health and Welfare, Home Affairs (at first called "Local Autonomy"), and the Defense and Police agencies. But the loss of power by the Home Ministry also offered new jurisdictions into which the economic bureaucrats could expand; for example, the Home Ministry's wartime regional bureaus and its police power to enforce rationing passed, respectively, to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Economic Stabilization Board.

  SCAP also included the civilian bureaucracy under its purge directives, that is, its campaign to exclude from various public and private positions of responsibility persons designated by category as having been partly responsible for the war.

  21

  A major purpose of the purge was to bring new, younger people into the government. Once again, however, the purge had little effect on the economic ministries. It is hard to calculate exactly how many economic bureaucrats were purged because many appealed on grounds that they were indispensable to the economic recovery effort, but one estimate is that only 42 higher officials (bureau chiefs and above) were purged from the Ministry of Commerce and Industrythe wartime Ministry of Muni-

  Page 42

  tionsand only 9 from the Ministry of Finance. Of the 1,800 civilian bureaucrats purged, 70 percent were police and other officials from the Home Ministry.

  22

  Amaya Naohiro of MITI feels that the purge
of business leaders, if not of bureaucrats, was very helpful to the postwar economy; he compares it to the purge of feudal leaders that actually accompanied the Meiji Restoration.

  23

  The postwar economic purge eliminated from industrial life the rentier classwhat Weber calls the "property classes" (

  Besitzklassen

  ) as distinct from the "professional classes" (

  Erwerbklassen

  ), which includes entrepreneurs and highly qualified managersand thereby greatly rationalized the zaibatsu, as well as allowing for the creation of new zaibatsu. Perhaps the most important rentier interest eliminated from economic life was the Imperial Household itself, which had been a significant owner of shares in the prewar and wartime "national policy companies."

  24

  But the purge did not really touch the economic bureaucrats themselves.

  SCAP's attempts at positive reform of the bureaucratic system as a whole are widely acknowledged to have failed. Foster Roser, a member of the Blaine Hoover Mission, which wrote the National Public Service Law (law 120 of October 21, 1947) on the basis of then current American civil service legislation, concludes: "The proposed civil service law was submitted to the Diet in the fall of 1947. Unfortunately, the nucleus of feudalistic, bureaucratic thinking gentlemen within the core of the Japanese Government was astute enough to see the dangers of any such modern public administration law to their tenure and the subsequent loss of their power. The law which was finally passed by the Diet was a thoroughly and completely emasculated instrument compared with that which had been recommended by the mission."

  25

  Blaine Hoover, former president of the Civil Service Assembly, knew nothing of the efforts made by the military during the 1930's and during the war to bring the ministries under centralized control and take personnel selection and promotion matters out of their handsnor did he know of the successful efforts by the Home and Finance ministries to block these earlier attempts. The ministries had years of experience in sabotaging civil service reform movements.

  26

  Hoover's law did set up a National Personnel Authority attached to the cabinet to conduct examinations, set pay scales, and hold grievance hearings. But the law did not establish in either the cabinet or the prime minister's office the powers and staff necessary to control the ministries; in particular, the powers of budget-making remained

  Page 43

  in the Ministry of Finance (contrast the U.S. Office of Management and Budget attached to the President's staff).

  27

  An amendment to the National Public Service Law enacted during 1948 compelled the reexamination of all officials from assistant section chiefs up to and including administrative vice-ministers. Despite protests from older officials, this examination took place on January 15, 1950and instantly became known as the "Paradise Exam," since officials could smoke, drink tea, and take as long as they wished (some stayed all night). As a result, about 30 percent of incumbent officials failed to be reappointed, but the government simultaneously undertook a matching 30 percent reduction in force, so the net result was that no new blood entered the bureaucracy except through regular recruitment channels.

  Aside from its enhanced status, however, the rapid rise of the economic bureaucracy during the occupation was primarily due to circumstances. First and foremost was SCAP's decision to conduct an indirect occupation, working through and giving orders to the Japanese government rather than displacing it. In the eyes of many Japanese this was probably a desirable decision, but it opened the way for the bureaucracy to protect itself. Seven years of bureaucratic

  menju

  *

  fukuhai

  (following orders to a superior's face, reversing them in the belly) is the way one commentator has put it.

  28

  Prof. Tsuji Kiyoaki, Japan's most prominent authority on the public service, believes the two key reasons for the perpetuation of what he calls the "Imperial (tenno*) system," meaning not the Imperial institution itself but the structure of a state bureaucracy unconstrained by either the cabinet or the Diet, were indirect rule and the prompt acceptance by the government of the new American-drafted constitution. The latter forestalled MacArthur's threat to take his constitution to the people in a plebiscite if the government continued to balk. Tsuji acknowledges that the Constitution of 1947 provides for a highly responsible, democratic governmentthe constitution was, in fact, the most important act of positive democratization carried out by the occupation. But he believes the important point was seen by the bureaucrats: the need to avoid direct participation in politics by the people if bureaucratic power was to be preserved. The Constitution of 1947, as liberal as it unquestionably is, was bestowed on the society from above just as was the Meiji Constitution of 1889.

  29

  A comment made by a Ministry of Finance official to John Campbell elucidates Tsuji's point. Japan, he said, "has never undergone a 'people's revolution,' which would have created a feeling among citizens

  Page 44

  that 'the government is something we made ourselves.'"

  30

  Tsuji feels that an opportunity was missed during the occupation for such a popular revolution, despite the considerable degree of social mobilization that was achieved in the social, labor, industrial, and farming sectors. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that the effective operation of the developmental state requires that the bureaucracy directing economic development be protected from all but the most powerful interest groups so that it can set and achieve long-range industrial priorities. A system in which the full range of pressure and interest groups existing in a modern, open society has effective access to the government will surely not achieve economic development, at least under official auspices, whatever other values it may fulfill. The success of the economic bureaucracy in preserving more or less intact its preexisting influence was thus prerequisite to the success of the industrial policies of the 1950's.

  The bureaucracy did not simply preserve its influence, it expanded itin two ways. First, the requirements of economic recovery led to a vast ballooning of the bureaucracy. Wildes offers figures showing that during the first three postwar years the size of the bureaucracy increased 84 percent over its highest wartime strength.

  31

  Whether or not SCAP saw the irony in this, the Japanese people certainly did. In a famous lead editorial in

  Chuo

  *

  koron

  * in August 1947, the editors wrote:

  The problem of the bureaucracy under present conditions is both complex and paradoxical. On the one hand, the responsibility for the war clearly must be placed on the bureaucracy, as well as on the military and the zaibatsu. From the outbreak of the war through its unfolding to the end, we know that the bureaucracy's influence was great and that it was evil. Many people have already censured the bureaucrats for their responsibility and their sins. On the other hand, given that under the present circumstances of defeat it is impossible to return to a laissez-faire economy, and that every aspect of economic life necessarily requires an expansion of planning and control, the functions and significance of the bureaucracy are expanding with each passing day. It is not possible to imagine the dissolution of the bureaucracy in the same sense as the dissolution of the military or the zaibatsu, since the bureaucracy as a concentration of technical expertise must grow as the administrative sector broadens and becomes more complex.

  32

  It was not just a matter of an increase in the number of tasks for the bureaucracy; even more important was SCAP's insistence that economic functions previously shared between the government and the zaibatsu should now be placed exclusively in governmental hands. As we shall see in Chapter 4, this was a development that the prewar bureaucracy had fought for with passionate enthusiasm but had

  Page 45

  never achieved due to the resistance of the private sector. Tsuji thinks that SCAP never fully appreciated t
he implications of what it was doing when it forced the transfer of the zaibatsu's share of power to the government because SCAP, in accordance with American governmental theory, regarded the bureaucracy as a "nonpolitical instrument," not a political body. Moreover, SCAP was itself an official bureaucratic organizationthe U.S. Armyand disinclined to question institutions comparably based on professional, if not necessarily politically accountable, service to the nation.

  The second reason for the expansion of bureaucratic influence was the relative incompetence of the political forces SCAP had fostered to replace the old order. Cadres of the old political parties brought again to leadership of the government by the new constitution had never (or not for almost twenty years) exercised political power. Moreover, some of the most competent among them had been purged. The American-style tradition in which party leaders become deeply involved in administrative affairs and the drafting of legislation had never been well established in Japan in any case. Under the Katayama government, created on May 24, 1947, the cabinet ministers were so lacking in expertise and so unfamiliar with legislation that everyone had his vice-minister sitting next to him in the cabinet room in order to advise him on what to do.

  33

  This state of affairs ended in January 1949 with the establishment of the third Yoshida government. Yoshida Shigeru (18781967) was himself a former high-ranking bureaucrat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and he established the "bureaucratic leadership structure" (

  kanryo

  *

  shudo

  *

  taisei

  ) that has formed the mainstream of Japanese politics to the present day.