MITI and the Japanese miracle Page 9

  The twenty-fourth general election of January 1949 brought into the Diet 42 new members who were former bureaucrats; in most cases they were also protégés and allies of Yoshida, who had encouraged them to run. Among this new class of politicians were Ikeda Hayato (18991965), recently retired as vice-minister of finance, who became Yoshida's new finance minister, and Sato* Eisaku (19011975), recently retired as vice-minister of transportation and soon to become chief secretary of Yoshida's Liberal Party. Shortly before the election, on December 24, 1948, Kishi Nobusuke (b. 1896) was released from Sugamo Prison as an unindicted class A war criminal. He had served as vice-minister of commerce and industry under the Abe, Yonai, and Konoe cabinets and as minister of commerce and industry and viceminister of munitions in the Tojo* cabinet. On April 29, 1952, he was depurged, and a year later he was also elected to the Diet. These three

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  former bureaucrats, each of whom had had a full and very successful career in his respective ministry, dominated Japanese politics from 1957 to 1972: Kishi was prime minister from February 1957 to July 1960, Ikeda from July 1960 to November 1964, and Sato * from November 1964 to July 1972. Yoshida himself, a former vice-minister of foreign affairs and ambassador to Great Britain, served as prime minister from May 1946 to May 1947 and from October 1948 to December 1954.

  In addition to these leaders, many middle-ranking Diet members were also drawn from the ranks of state officialdom. In 1946 Liberal Party (conservative) ex-bureaucrat Diet members accounted for only 2.7 percent of the total. Yoshida raised the number to 18.2 percent in 1949, and this proportion has held firm ever since. As of 1970, 69 members of the House of Representatives (23 percent) and 50 members of the House of Councillors (37 percent) were ex-bureaucrats belonging to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). In 1977 the respective figures were 27 percent and 35 percent.

  34

  Party politicians holding a safe electoral base (

  jiban

  ) in one of the prefectural constituencies did not take this intrusion of bureaucrats with equanimity. Many of them believed, and still believe today, that bureaucrats were not so much becoming politicians as they were displacing politicians and contributing to a dangerous blurring of functions between the executive and legislative branches. In the election of October 1952 approximately 40 percent of some 329 prewar and wartime politicians recently released from the ban against their holding public office were reelected to the Diet. They held about 30 percent of the seats. From that point on, the main configuration of postwar Diet politics was established: the so-called mainstream of the conservative forces was occupied by retired bureaucrats, and the antimainstream by old (later called "pure") politicians who did not come from a background in the state apparatus. In 1955 the two main conservative parties, successors to the Seiyukai* and Minseito* of the prewar era, united in order to confront the growing strength of the opposition socialists. They created the huge coalition Liberal Democratic Party that has controlled the Diet without interruption ever since.

  Within the LDP the bureaucratic mainstream and the party politicians' (

  tojinha

  *) antimainstream factions compete with each other, with the bureaucrats usually dominant; but for the sake of party unity neither group is ever totally excluded. The second Kishi cabinet of 1958 established bureaucratic supremacy when eight of the twelve ministries were headed by ex-bureaucrats. Former bureaucrats also held many influential positions in the party's Policy Affairs Research Council and on the key standing committees of the Diet, where the plans

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  and budgets of the ministries are ratified. Given their skills and background in government, former bureaucrats also advanced more rapidly to the cabinet level of power within the LDP: according to one calculation, a former bureaucrat turned politician must be elected an average of seven times to reach this level, whereas an ex-journalist or a representative of an economic interest group will require nine successful elections, and a local politician ten.

  35

  Not surprisingly, the influence of former bureaucrats within the Diet has tended to perpetuate and actually strengthen the prewar pattern of bureaucratic dominance. Spaulding notes that 91 percent of all laws enacted by the Diet under the Meiji Constitution (18901947) originated in the executive branch and not in the Diet.

  36

  The pattern is similar in the postwar Diets. For example, in the first Diet under the new constitution, May 20 to December 9, 1947, the cabinet, which acts on behalf of the bureaucracy, introduced 161 bills and saw 150 enacted, while members of the House of Representatives introduced 20 bills and saw 8 enacted. In the 28th Diet, December 20, 1957, to April 25, 1958, the cabinet introduced 175 bills and saw 145 enacted, while members of the House of Representatives introduced 68 bills and saw 15 enacted.

  37

  This pattern more and more has become unfavorable to private members' bills. Cabinet bills originate and are drafted exclusively within the ministries. They are then passed to the LDP for its approval and introduction in the Diet. As a matter of routine, ministerial officials are also present in the Diet to explain their legislation and answer questions.

  Genuine deliberation on laws takes place within and among the ministries before they are sent to the cabinet, and civilians do play some role. A kind of ministry-dominated quasi deliberation occurs in the 246 (as of 1975) "deliberation councils" (

  shingikai, shinsakai

  ,

  kyogikai

  *,

  chosakai

  *, and

  iinkai

  , known collectively as shingikai) that are attached to the ministries. These are official standing organs created by a minister and composed of civilian experts selected by him to inquire into and discuss policies and proposed legislation of his ministry. In 1975 the largest number of deliberation councils (51) was attached to the Prime Minister's Office, but MITI operated the next largest number (36).

  To the extent that laws are scrutinized and discussed at all in Japan by persons outside the bureaucracy, it is done in the councils. Even such critical matters for a parliament as tax and tariff laws are merely rubber-stamped by the Diet after having been considered by the deliberation councils. For example, the Tax System Deliberation Council (Zeisei Chosa* Kai) annually recommends revisions of the tax laws and

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  tax rates with no input from the Diet, and usually no Diet changes in its recommendations. Similarly, the Customs Duties Deliberation Council (Kanzeiritsu Shingikai) sets tariff rates and procedures, and the Diet then approves them without change.

  38

  There is no question that the deliberation councils handle some very important matters; the problems relate to the selection, procedures, and degree of independence from the bureaucracy of the councils.

  And on those questions there is considerable debate. Do the councils actually provide civilian input to the bureaucracy's decisions, or are they merely covers for bureaucratic power, intended to provide the public with a façade of consultation and consensus? Former MITI Vice-Minister Sahashi said in an interview that as far as he was concerned deliberation councils were important primarily as a device to silence in advance any criticism of the bureaucracy.

  39

  Kawanaka Niko* believes that deliberation councils are actually important weapons of the bureaucracy in the struggles that occur within and among ministries to promote particular policies: the important names that appear as members of a council are not so much intended to impress the public as they are to influence and warn off rival bureaucrats, one ministry's clients serving to counterbalance those of another ministry.

  40

  Some Japanese journalists are even harsher. A group of

  Mainichi

  economic specialists calls the deliberation councils ''gimmicks," noting that the councils do not have independent staffs and that all proposals submitted to them have been approved in advance by the sponsoring ministry. On the other
hand, they believe that the most important councils in the economic spherethe Economic Council (Keizai Shingikai) attached to the Economic Planning Agency, the Industrial Structure Council (Sangyo* Kozo* Shingikai) attached to MITI, and the Foreign Capital Council (Gaishi Shingikai) attached to the Ministry of Financeare not mere "ornaments."

  41

  Concerning one of these, the Foreign Capital Council, the MITI Journalists' Club disagrees, suggesting that at least before capital liberalization it was a

  kakuremino

  a magic fairy cape thrown over something (in this case MITI's influence over all foreign capital ventures in Japan) in the hope of making it invisible.

  42

  If these criticisms are at all valid, we may ask why the Diet itself does not perform the vital tasks of writing and deliberating laws. The answer is that the Japanese Diet is not a "working parliament" in Weber's sense, "one which supervises the administration by continuously sharing in its work."

  43

  The most important work of the government is done elsewhere and is only ratified in the Diet. As we have already stressed, the Diet's dependent relationship with the bureau-

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  cracy originated in the prewar structure. It persisted and was reinforced because of the harsh period of postwar reconstruction. During the late 1940's and early 1950's the bureaucracy fought for its policies, and against interference by the none-too-competent political parties of the time, by invoking the old idea that the bureaucracy speaks for the national interest and the political parties only for local, particular, or selfish interests. General wisdom was said to reside in the state and only particular wisdom in the society, a political philosophy that was not at all alien to Japan, in contrast to some of the democratic institutions founded by SCAP Kojima Akira traces this ideology to the state's monopoly in the Meiji era of the power to establish the "orthodoxy of the public interest," everything not so designated being, by definition, part of the private interest and therefore subordinate.

  44

  Interest groups exist in Japan in great numbers, but there is no theory of pluralism that legitimates their political activities. The parties developed what strength they had before the war by representing private interests to the government, and this heritage too was passed on to their postwar successors. One of the reasons that there are so few private members' bills passed is that virtually all of them are based on appeals from constituents or are intended to serve some special interest. Many party politicians themselves accept the orthodoxy of a vertical relationship between the state's activities and their own activities. "They tend," writes Campbell, "to perceive voters as animated almost solely by particularistic, pork-barrel desires rather than by concern over issues of broad social policy."

  45

  Although Japan's fused relationship between the executive and legislative branches may be disappointing to liberals, from the point of view of the developmental state it has some hidden advantages. In the postwar world the Diet has replaced the Imperial institution in the role of what Titus has called "the supreme ratifier," the agency that legitimates decisions taken elsewhere.

  46

  Like the emperor under the Meiji Constitution, the Diet is the public locus of sovereignty, but the same discrepancy that existed earlier between authority and power is still maintained, and for at least some of the same reasons. There is, however, one major difference: the Diet performs these vital functions much more safely, effectively, and democratically than the Imperial institution ever did. For the bureaucracy to have mobilized resources and committed them to a heavy industrial structure as it did in postwar Japan, the claims of interest groups and individual citizens had to be held in check. Although the high-growth policies of the bureaucracy ultimately raised the economic level of all citizens and may thereby have served their diverse interests, the citizens themselves

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  were not consulted. The funds, legislation, and institutions the bureaucracy needed for its programs were enacted by what Wildes has called the "puppet Diet."

  47

  This "puppet Diet," working through its LDP majority, has nevertheless served as a mediator between the state and society, forcing the state to accommodate those interests that could not be ignoredagriculture and medium and smaller enterprises, for exampleand, on occasion, requiring the state to change course in response to serious problems such as pollution. At the same time, it has held off or forced compromises from those groups whose claims might interfere with the development program. By and large, it has done so equitably, maintaining a comparatively level pattern of income distribution and of hardships.

  48

  The Diet's unproclaimed mediating role has been the subject of much scrutiny and analysis in Japan. Although there are many different formulations, most of them end up dividing Japanese society into two sets of social groups and institutions, those that are central and those that are peripheral (or privileged and ordinary, first class and second class), with the central groups operating the developmental state for the sake of the society as a whole and not just for their own particular interests. The central institutionsthat is, the bureaucracy, the LDP, and the larger Japanese business concernsin turn maintain a kind of skewed triangular relationship with each other. The LDP's role is to legitimate the work of the bureaucracy while also making sure that the bureaucracy's policies do not stray too far from what the public will tolerate. Some of this serves its own interests, as well; the LDP always insures that the Diet and the bureaucracy are responsive to the farmers' demands because it depends significantly on the overrepresented rural vote. The bureaucracy, meanwhile, staffs the LDP with its own cadres to insure that the party does what the bureaucracy thinks is good for the country as a whole, and guides the business community toward developmental goals. The business community, in turn, supplies massive amounts of funds to keep the LDP in office, although it does not thereby achieve control of the party, which is normally oriented upward, toward the bureaucracy, rather than downward, toward its main patrons.

  This triangular relationship sometimes looks conflict ridden and sometimes consensual, but both impressions are deceptive according to Kawanaka Niko*, who maintains that interest groups representing the strategic industrieshe calls them the "prime contractor groups"always hold a privileged relationship with the bureaucracy. The two will sometimes be in conflict, however, with private indus-

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  trial groups or enterprises asking for flexible execution of governmental policies or for partial or technical changes in policies that will benefit one or another of them. The government will be forthcoming, seeking compromises, brokering mergers, offering financial incentives, confronting foreign competitors, and so forth, but the government will also impose on the industries new conditions that are conducive to the government's goals. This conflict is important and time-consuming, but according to Kawanaka it should always be understood as

  miuchi

  (among relatives).

  In the case of outsidersfor example, consumer groups, local conservationists, or groups hostile to the alliance with the United Statesthe government's policy is to ignore them, or if they become very powerful, to seek a compromise with them through the LDP. The Japanese people understand these relationships and support them not as a matter of principle but because of the results they have achieved. They have developed what Kawanaka labels a "structure of organizational double vision," by which he means the tendency for subordinate or dependent parts of the structure to perceive the intentions of the dominant or guiding parts and to formulate their own policies as if the superior's policies were their own. It all looks like consensus to outsiders, but it is, in fact, dictated by a calculation of the balance of forces and a sense of Japan's vulnerability. Rather than consensus, Kawanaka proposes the concept of "interlocking decision-making," which acknowledges the symbiotic relationships among the bureaucracy, LDP, and the business community. The characteristics of such interlocking decis
ions, he suggests, are bureaucratic leadership, obscured responsibility, and fictive kinship ties.

  49

  An even more important characteristic for our purposes is a differential access to the government by various groups: the "prime contractors" and vital political support groups have ready access, the less strategically placed groups little accessalthough more than they had under the Meiji Constitution. The channels of preferential access are not formalized, but they exist in the deliberation councils, in a circulation of elites from the bureaucracy to both the political and industrial worlds, and in a vast array of other "old boy" networks to be discussed below. The result is a developmental state much softer and more tolerable than the communist-dominated command economies (with much better performance, too) but with a considerably greater goal-setting and goal-achieving capability than in the market-rational systems.

  Personal relations between bureaucrats and politicians in this subtle, malleable system can be quite complex. In each ministry there is

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  only one genuine political appointee, the minister, who is named by the prime minister and is a member of the cabinet. The minister is normally but not invariably a member of the Diet (articles 67 and 68 of the Constitution of 1947 require that the prime minister be elected by and from the members of the Diet, but only a majority of the other ministers must be members). All other officials in a ministry are nonpolitical, the most senior being the administrative vice-minister (