Chalmers Johnson - MITI and the Japanese miracle

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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.

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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

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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never achieved due to the resistance of the private sector. Tsuji thinks that SCAP never fully appreciated the 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.

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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.

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.