The Enigma of Japanese Power (17 page)

Few sectors illustrate the relations among the three main categories of administrators as clearly as that of construction. It is also worth taking a close look at the Ministry of Construction and the businesses it controls, because the construction industry has become essential to the preservation of the System. Together with the agricultural business conglomerate, the
nokyo
, described in Chapter 3, it helps guarantee the LDP its domination of the Diet.

The Ministry of Construction does not rank as high in prestige as the Finance Ministry, the Foreign Ministry or MITI , but it receives a larger share (fluctuating between 8 and 14 per cent) of the general accounts budget, and roughly a quarter of the so-called second budget, which is more than any of the other ministries. The ‘second budget’ – the Fiscal Investment and Loan Plan funded by the postal savings system – is roughly two-thirds the size of the formal budget, and is administered by officialdom at its discretion. The Construction Ministry has the authority to issue licences to the entire industry. It directly maintains 232 construction, maintenance and research offices and 655 smaller area offices. In 1986 more than half a million public works projects were carried out, the majority of them under the direct or indirect supervision of the ministry. It also has 162 extra-departmental institutions under its wing, including public corporations that absorb some of its
amakudari
officials.

Construction investment accounts for between 15 and 16 per cent of Japan’s GNP every year, and the industry provides jobs for some 5.3 million workers. Construction Ministry officials must thus be counted among Japan’s most powerful bureaucrats. Their power dates from the time when the Korean War energised the government’s construction policy, and accumulated profits from that war led to an urban building boom and massive electric power projects.

The powerful role of the ministry in the distribution of the national wealth is witnessed nearly every day of the year by the large number of petitioners visiting its offices. The offices of bureau chiefs and the vice-minister draw such large crowds that since the early 1960s signs on the doors instruct petitioners to return in the afternoons, enabling the highest officials to do their administrative work in the mornings. Among them are many representatives of local government, interested for example in the ministry’s authority to designate the classification of roads. It can elevate a municipal or prefectural road to the rank of national road, whereupon it will be maintained by the government, freeing money that the local government can spend for other purposes.

Since the minister of construction is in an ideal position to attract ‘political funds’ for himself and his associates, the portfolio is one of the most sought after among powerful LDP members. For the purposes of
jinmyaku
-building the post of construction minister is considered to be of equal value to that of prime minister or secretary-general of the LDP. Prime ministers always try to make sure that the position goes to a member of their own
habatsu
. It is a sign of very great strength within the government party if a
habatsu
leader who is not prime minister can get one of his followers appointed construction minister. Tanaka Kakuei is the most famous example of such a leader.

Construction Ministry officials, like other Japanese bureaucrats, are ambivalent about ‘strong’ ministers. On the one hand, they want their department to be nominally headed by an LDP politician powerful enough to help them get a larger share of the national budget. On the other, they are afraid of political intervention in staff assignments. The normal relationship between Japanese bureaucrats and their ministers is clearly demonstrated by one case that was considered the height of abnormality – that survives, indeed, in Japanese bureaucratic memory as a true reign of terror. Kono Ichiro, minister between 1962 and 1964, notoriously ignored all the unwritten rules of personnel administration, just as he had done before at the Agriculture Ministry. He imported three officials from the National Police Agency and gave them top positions, including that of director of the minister’s secretariat, which is the second highest bureaucratic position after that of administrative vice-minister.
¹¹
His chief sin here was to undermine the still fragile bureaucratic identity of the Construction Ministry, since the latter had been fashioned out of remnants of the disbanded Naimusho, whose central core had been the police force.
¹²

The unwritten rules were designed to alleviate tensions caused by the ubiquitous bureaucratic sectionalism. Most Japanese ministries and government agencies suffer from being divided into factions that sometimes quarrel to the point of mutual paralysis. In the Construction Ministry the latent conflict, which goes back to the time when the construction bureaucrats occupied a low-ranking position in the engineering bureau of the pre-war Naimusho, is between technical career officials (
gikan
) and administrative career officials (
jimukan
). To preserve a balance between the power of the
jimukan
and
gikan
groups, the ministry is wisely organised so that the roughly 10,000 employees of the first group and the roughly 13,000 belonging to the second cannot trespass on each other’s territory. Representatives of the two groups take turns in occupying the top position of administrative vice-minister (in no other ministry are technical bureaucrats promoted to that level). The directorships of the regional bureaux go to the
gikan
, but the vitally important secretariat of the ministry is dominated by the
jimukan
. The chiefs of the road bureau and the river bureau are always
gikan
. The city bureau and economic affairs bureau are always headed by
jimukan
, while the headship of the housing bureau is passed back and forth between the two groups. A division of labour is strictly observed in each bureau, with a
gikan
supporting a
jimukan
boss, or vice versa.
¹³

By disregarding bureaucratic sensitivities Kono’s appointments wrought havoc in the ministry. Although it has been headed by other uncommonly strong ministers (compared with the ministries that have more prestige), none of them has dared to intervene in bureaucratic routine. Kono had graduated not from Todai but from Waseda, and had been a newspaper reporter before he entered politics in the early 1930s. Another major politician who had no bureaucratic background, and had not even attended university, was Tanaka Kakuei. Using methods very different from the brute force approach of Kono, Tanaka showed how politicians can control Japanese bureaucrats. He never went against the grain of bureaucratic expectations; he gave the construction bureaucrats increased confidence, and increased discretionary powers. They loved him while he was construction minister, when he was prime minister and long after that as he continued to dominate the ministry. And they love him to this day.

Retired Construction Ministry officials generally do well in elections. This is very gratifying to the ministry, because strong representation in the LDP is necessary to prevent rival interests from hindering the passage of bills beneficial to the construction sector. With every ministry, the more ex-officials it has among the ranks of the LDP, the more readily its budget proposals and draft bills are accepted.

The strength of construction bureaucrats in elections was discovered during the Upper House elections of 1959, when a former vice-minister for only six months, Yoneda Masafumi, gained a record number of votes in the national constituency. A very close second to this record was marked by Kajima Morinosuke, chairman of Kajima Corporation, one of the major construction companies.
¹⁴

It is common in Japanese election campaigns to hear all candidates listing the roads, bridges and tunnels they helped to have built. But the main strength of construction-related candidates derives from local organisations under the control of the Construction Ministry. The regional construction bureaux are potential co-ordinators of election campaigns in nearly every locality. They unabashedly support former construction officials running for office; sometimes the current minister of construction himself joins openly in the campaigns.
¹⁵
The Construction Ministry also has a strong though unofficial voice in the appointment of heads of prefectural engineering departments, which likewise translates into considerable electoral power.
¹⁶
And there is close co-operation between the river bureau of the ministry and the flood-prevention unions that exist in most of Japan’s numerous inhabited valleys.
¹⁷

The construction companies themselves form enthusiastic and hardworking pivots for the
koenkai
, the support associations that build and maintain vote-getting networks. The president of some large construction firm or other is likely to figure prominently in the campaign machine of an LDP candidate, whether or not the latter is specifically identified with the construction world as such. The companies typically lend secretaries and cars to the candidate, so that he can give continued evidence of his existence during the years between elections.

The truly symbiotic relationship between LDP politicians and the construction business is built on a system of rigged tenders. Reduced to its essentials, the system works as follows: for a construction firm to be allowed to bid on a public works project, it must first bribe a powerful politician. It will then meet with all the other nominated contractors for a negotiating session, called
dango
, at which it is decided which of them will get the job. The session is presided over by a local boss, called
dangoya
; if the locality has no
dangoya
, a major contractor will mediate.
¹⁸
The
dango
system ensures that all participating contractors will get to work on a government project at one time or another.
¹⁹
For large-scale public projects the politician may receive more than one billion yen from a single firm.
²⁰

While the formal authorisation of contractors is governed by law, the bureaucrats are not in a position to refuse inclusion of specific firms recommended by LDP members. The
dango
that contractors conduct among themselves behind the façade of public bidding does not formally concern the government officials. The contractor appointed through the
dango
process decides his price in accordance with inside information from the officials, and his ‘competitors’ set their bids above it.
²¹
The committee that officially makes the choice is controlled by a few influential men, and its deliberations are largely perfunctory.
²²
In 1982 the Ministry of Construction, in response to public criticism of the
dango
system, gave ‘administrative guidance’ to the effect that the number of contractors participating in tenders for public work projects be doubled from ten to twenty. But a year later this instruction was retracted under severe pressure from the group of LDP members most intimately connected with the construction industry.
²³

The ministry itself is not averse to rigged bidding either. A firm that accepts an
amakudari
bureaucrat from the construction ministry is guaranteed at least one large construction project. A tacit agreement exists among the ‘competing’ firms to respect political decisions from the ministry in such a context. For example, if one of the companies participating in ‘competitive’ bidding to build a dam intends to provide a retiring Construction Ministry official with his second, lucrative career, this particular company is promised that it will win the contract. If it takes ten years to construct the dam, the company can survive for ten years by accepting a single
amakudari
.
²⁴
There is no outcry against these practices by opposition politicians, since a fair number of them are also trying to gain electoral advantage through the construction industry.

One of the most powerful LDP politicians of the late 1980s, Kanemaru Shin, played a major role in preserving and strengthening the
dango
system against measures planned by the Fair Trade Commission.
²⁵
Kanemaru, a pivotal figure amidst LDP members representing the construction industry, is expected to profit enormously from major public works projects such as the planned bridge across Tokyo Bay.
²⁶
It is unlikely that Takeshita Noboru could have become prime minister without Kanemaru’s help.

Since the 1970s marriage ties with the progeny of bosses in the construction industry have been much sought after among LDP politicians. Former prime minister Nakasone’s daughter is married to the son of the president of the giant Kajima Corporation.
²⁷
Takeshita is also extremely well ensconced in construction business circles. His eldest daughter married Kanemaru’s eldest son. His half-brother, who is also his secretary, is married to the daughter of the president of a medium-sized construction company (Fukudagumi). His third daughter married the second son of the former president of Takenaka Komuten, one of Japan’s better-known construction firms.
²⁸
He is also directly supported by eighteen construction companies.
²⁹
Shortly after he became prime minister, almost all the requests for projects from Takeshita’s own prefecture, Shimane, were included in the first draft of the 1988 budget. Prefectural authorities are accustomed to expending much energy every year in petitioning to have initially ignored projects ‘restored’ in subsequent budget drafts prepared by the Ministry of Finance, but this time the governor of Shimane found himself expressing his appreciation for what he termed the (bureaucrats’) ‘congratulatory gift’ to the newly appointed prime minister. The local government of Ehime prefecture, which elected to the Diet the construction minister in Takeshita’s first cabinet, was similarly happy to discover that its proposals for public works projects had been accepted in the first budget draft.
³⁰