The Enigma of Japanese Power (23 page)

Nakasone’s strenuous efforts to govern and initiate policy did not, in the end, produce substantial changes in policy or programme. But the changes he wrought in style, symbolism and atmospherics were important enough in themselves. His major achievement was a breakthrough in relations with South Korea – thereby fulfilling the American wish that Japan should be more considerate of its Asian ally. Perhaps equally important was that he gave Japan stature at the annual summit conferences, and earned the respect of his counterparts when he had to chair one himself in 1986. The national railways were privatised during his tenure, and he challenged a number of ‘taboos’ connected with Japan’s wartime past.

But the bureaucrats and special interest groups in the LDP, jealous guardians of their own territory, showed no intention of solving the problems that were thrown into their laps, even after agreeing that they were urgent. Nakasone found himself encapsulated by these semi-autonomous forces. He had no say over the Agriculture Ministry or, for that matter, the Ministry of Finance.

One interesting innovation in the exercise of power by a Japanese prime minister was introduced when Nakasone found a new use for the deliberation council, or
shingikai
. As we have seen, the
shingikai
is commonly used by bureaucrats to help defuse or avoid opposition to their plans. Special
shingikai
are also established by or for prime ministers in order to present high-minded schemes, long on abstract ideals and short on concrete proposals, which they can pass off as policy. But where his predecessors commanded their
shingikai
to contemplate edifying but vague subjects such as ‘the life cycle’ (Miki), ‘the development of society’ (Sato), ‘discussion for the future’ (Fukuda) or ‘garden cities’ (Ohira), Nakasone used his in an attempt to break through taboos and bureaucratic obstacles and to prepare legislation. He established
shingikai
that reported directly to him, and he hand-picked their chairmen and key members; nor did he leave it to their imagination how he expected to be ‘advised’.

Before becoming prime minister Nakasone had been closely associated with the Ad Hoc Committee on Administrative Reforms, a type of
shingikai
in which top businessmen, academics and retired bureaucrats studied ways of reducing the size and burdens of government. Three of its assignments so far completed are: the break-up of the Japan National Railways, the creation of the Management and Co-ordination Agency (by combining the Administrative Management Agency with some elements from the Prime Minister’s Office) and the ostensible privatisation of Nippon Telephone and Telegraph. Nakasone himself compared the changes aimed at by the administrative reform committee and his other
shingikai
to the changes Japan underwent following the Meiji Restoration, or immediately after the Second World War. He exaggerated, of course; during his tenure there was no sense of acute crisis such as might have encouraged the cumbersome System to embark on a project of self-renewal. In the end, Nakasone’s innovations in overcoming bureaucratic obstacles had little more than a marginal effect.

It became fashionable to decry Nakasone’s use of
shingikai
as undemocratic. Decisions, it was said, were taken even before the groups conferred; moreover, several of their top members had been at school or in the Imperial Navy with Nakasone, or had been in the Naimusho, in which Nakasone served briefly as police inspector. All this was true, but it merely corresponded to the accepted way in which the bureaucracy had always used the
shingikai
and to the equally accepted way of using one’s
jinmyaku
. The remarkable aspect of Nakasone’s approach was that he manned his advisory groups with an unusually high proportion of specialists lacking a bureaucratic background. This had the effect of making the bureaucrats, after some hesitation, begin to realise that they would to some extent have to accommodate these ‘amateur’ groups with information and cooperation, if only to safeguard the interests of their ministries and bureaux.

There were other causes for the slight alteration that came about in the relationship between the LDP and the bureaucrats. The gradual shifting of the Japanese economy into less frenetic growth; increasing budget deficits and the resulting increased friction between segments of the bureaucracy; the failure of the ‘break fiscal rigidification’ movement; and territorial struggles between ministries involving the new industrial sectors: all these had their effect.

Nakasone’s talk of changes comparable to those of the Meiji period was not mere political rhetoric, and his experiments with
shingikai
were more than a passing indulgence. In fact, he was continuing a campaign begun by Tanaka Kakuei to increase the leverage of LDP politicians over the bureaucrats. To understand this better it is necessary here to introduce, in its theory and its widely diverging practice, one last formal institution of the administrators.

The most important institutional interface between LDP politicians and the bureaucracy is the Seichokai, or Policy Affairs Research Council (PARC). It consists of seventeen divisions that cover roughly the same administrative territory as the ministries. The politician who becomes chief of some of these divisions gains access to a magnificent
jinmyaku
incorporating both industrialists and bureaucrats. After an average one and a half years as division chief, he automatically becomes a member of the
zoku
(‘tribe’ or ‘family’ within the LDP) that concerns itself specifically with the sector in question, monitoring developments and influencing it through support for legislative proposals by the bureaucrats. Former ministers and parliamentary vice-ministers also often become members of the
zoku
relating to the ministry they served.

The Seichokai divisions do not normally make decisions. They provide a point of interaction between bureaucracy and LDP that is hidden from scrutiny and, as far as can be gathered, totally informal. In co-operation with the small group of officials concerned and powerful
zaikai
representatives, the politicians can bring pressure or subtle blackmail to bear, against which background legal stipulations are almost totally irrelevant. In cases of structural changes in a particular sector, or of the emergence of a new branch of industry, the
zoku
politicians carry considerable weight. But in the final analysis their involvement is mostly parasitic. Through its contacts with trade and industrial associations and federations, PARC helps organise obligatory ‘voluntary donations’ and the inevitable ‘help’ in elections. A phone call by the chairman of a division requesting the corresponding business circles to provide funds often elicits an instant response.
⁹⁰

The politicians wielding power via the divisions of PARC began their climb to recent prominence in the second half of the 1960s, when bureaucrats of the corresponding ministries with client interest groups joined them in confronting the guardians of the budget.
⁹¹
The latter eventually were obliged to satisfy the politicians with real instead of ritual explanations.
⁹²
But the biggest factor in the growth of
zoku
power was Tanaka’s initiatives.
⁹³
The
gundan
has exploited the gradual structural shift in the relationship between bureaucrats and politicians better than any normal
habatsu
could. It dominates many
zoku
, including such newly important ones as that of post and telecommunications. Because they remain interested in a particular policy area for relatively long periods,
zoku
members are generally much better informed than LDP politicians used to be. This fact alone has given them a new type of leverage over the bureaucrats.

The ranking of a politician within the LDP and thus his access to and position within a
zoku
depends, first of all, on the number of times he has been re-elected. Appointments to cabinet posts in the late 1980s generally require some six or even seven successful elections. One election can make one a junior member of a Diet committee or PARC division. A two-term Diet member can become vice-chairman of a division or executive member of a Diet committee. For a parliamentary vice-ministership, which is a very lucrative post because of the contacts one can make in the business world, three terms are needed. A fourth- or fifth-term Diet member can become a committee or division chairman. But the latter post is not the most important. To join the small inner circle of
zoku
bosses the LDP member must almost always have served first in an executive position in a division, returning there after holding the cabinet post of its corresponding ministry.
⁹⁴

We have seen in Chapter 3 that whereas the Japanese System may superficially qualify as a ‘pluralist’ or ‘corporatist’ political system, it differs from the countries most often mentioned as models of these systems in ways so basic that one doubts how much such labels actually explain. Japan has also been referred to fairly frequently as an ‘administrative state’. This poses the question of how the System compares with a good example of a Western ‘administrative state’ such as France.

There are many similarities. French bureaucracy, dating from the absolutist state of the seventeenth century and strengthened by Napoleon as a mechanism for national policy-making, has long been one of the most powerful in the world. It is permanent and highly centralised, and no one in power can ignore its entrenched opinions on many issues. As in Japan, the central bureaucracy has jurisdiction over local government, most education, public works, the courts, the police and other areas that in most other Western countries are either under the control of independent local authorities or in private hands.

Like Japan, France has institutionalised the élite-forming process to a high degree. Another striking resemblance is the phenomenon of
pantouflage
, meaning the continual shift of civil servants into the private sector. Again, many French bureaucrats move into politics.
⁹⁵
They maintain important informal relations with each other across the division between the private and public realms (which are less clearly separated than in the Anglo-Saxon world or West Germany). It would seem at first sight that France has come closest to developing a class of administrators akin to that of Japan,
⁹⁶
a class, moreover, that in the post-war period has been similarly preoccupied with creating optimum conditions for economic expansion.

But a closer look shows revealing differences. The higher-ranking French civil servants have had a relatively wide-ranging education at one or the other of some five
grandes écoles
. Good memories may be valued, but so are a liberal education, intellectual prowess and an extreme articulateness. The top bureaucrats have generally entered one of the five major
grands corps d’état
(Inspection of Finance, the Diplomatic Corps, the Court of Accounts, the Council of State, and the Bridges and Roads) before being placed in various ministries. They are much more mobile than Japanese bureaucrats, and can be temporarily detached to occupy leading positions in other government agencies, state enterprises, banks or the private sector. The general view of the élite-school-and-corps background is that it enables the individual to grasp rapidly the essentials of any kind of situation, so that he or she is fitted to almost any type of executive position.
⁹⁷
In Japan, top bureaucrats are moved from section to section to increase their versatility, but they remain in their first ministry and must identify with it to an extent that is detrimental to the functioning of officialdom as a whole.

In the same context,
pantouflage
is not quite the same as
amakudari
. With the exception of newly created government corporations or agencies, the Japanese companies and banks opening their doors to an
amakudari
bureaucrat expect him to ensure smooth relations with the ministry he has retired from, but not to perform the kind of decision-making and leadership role expected of a French bureaucrat entering the private sector.

Another vital difference is the presence of that other strong French tradition: political thought that is made articulate and represented by a non-bureaucratic élite. As one French specialist sums it up:

Covered by a protective law and enjoying tremendous job security and enormous prestige owing both to their élite backgrounds and their technical competence, the senior civil servants form a distinct professional group, whose views on almost every point are at odds with the views of that other important group of professionals, the politicians. Thus two different concepts of the profession of state-craft are in constant danger of clashing with each other.
⁹⁸

Members of the
grands corps
are indispensable in helping draft and control legislation. But the French minister is generally a considerably more significant figure than his Japanese counterpart.
⁹⁹
On the other hand, the French bureaucracy cannot take its role as much for granted as can the Japanese bureaucracy. It has undergone political vicissitudes depending on the degree of political confusion created by party politics and the relative strengths or weaknesses of French presidents, and it faced heavy attacks as an élite institution before the First World War, in the 1930s, after the Second World War and in 1968.

The crucial difference, of course, is that the French bureaucracy serves a highly centralised state. For all its expertise, it requires directives from an identifiable government to function properly. The power of a De Gaulle or a Mitterrand is beyond comparison with that of any Japanese prime minister. The French administrators, in other words, have a means to shift national priorities.

In the late 1980s many Japanese political commentators and some scholars were claiming to detect major structural changes in the direction of more political guidance over Japanese policies – changes illustrated, they asserted, by the
zoku
phenomenon. The same argument was much used to counter criticism from Japan’s trading partners, the implication being that the Japanese political economy would gradually become better capable of changing or adjusting priorities. To interpret the emergence of the
zoku
as a sign of essential changes in the relationship between bureaucrats and politicians, and thus as a harbinger of a change in the way Japan would be governed, was, however, more than a little premature.

The more things changed, the more, or so it appears, they stayed the same. Indeed, the old patterns were more pronounced in the late 1980s, because better organised. Many LDP politicians hoped to follow Tanaka’s example and systematise what they were already doing. This may have resulted in spreading somewhat more of the national wealth, but the spreading is as haphazard as it was before. There is still no mechanism for ordering national priorities. The weaknesses of the budgeting system in the absence of such a mechanism have, if anything, become more marked.

Two essential and interrelated aims of the administrators – to retain control and to keep to a minimum the political influence of the common people – have not changed in any way. Since 1945 the Japanese people have become more politically sophisticated, but this sophistication is offset partly by the way in which they are bought off with subsidies and other regular income guaranteed by the LDP-bureaucratic combination, and partly by employment policies, to be discussed in Chapter 6.

Of course, certain shifts in power among the administrative bodies of politicians,
zaikai
and bureaucrats are constantly taking place. But they do not mean the development of essentially different relationships among these three major categories of administrator, or of essentially new motives. It would be wrong to conclude that higher civil servants are becoming the foot soldiers of LDP politicians. They have found a way to pretend that Diet members are in charge while in fact clinging to the principles and prerogatives of bureaucratic rule. The bureaucracy is still the
de facto
legislator for budgetary appropriations. LDP politicians belong to
zoku
primarily because of the financial and electoral advantages, not because they have suddenly realised that Japan ought to have new priorities and must shape new policies in accordance with them.

The only ultimate goal of the administrators is to preserve the System. Since 1945 this has been accomplished by nurturing a high-growth economy with the emphasis on industrial expansion at the cost of other desirables, and by social control. The participants in the System described in this chapter continue to show that, for all their mutual conflict, they excel in both these fields.