Chalmers Johnson - MITI and the Japanese miracle

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

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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-

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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

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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.