Chapter Nine
Conclusion

Japan's Administrative Elite: An OverView

What are the most outstanding characteristics of Japan's administrative elite? First and foremost, one is struck by the extent to which higher civil servants indeed constitute an "elite" in Japan. The traditionally high prestige of "career" bureaucrats has helped to make Japan's higher civil-service examinations the most competitive of their kind among industrialized democracies; those who survive the competition tend to be among the best that Japan's educational system has to offer to that country's prospective employers. Given the stratification of Japanese universities, this translates into the dominance of a few elite universities in the recruitment process.

Such an elitist complexion of Japanese bureaucracy persists despite the genuinely open nature of Japan's higher civil-service examinations, which, unlike their counterparts in Western democracies, lack any formal educational requirement. Just as the openness of civil-service examinations in imperial China did not necessarily imply a true equality of opportunity for all, regardless of social class or wealth,^[1] so the absence of educational prerequisites in the Japanese system have thus far failed to neutralize the disadvantages of those without elitist educational credentials.

One aspect of the recruitment process that seems to play a role in perpetuating the elitist nature of the Japanese higher civil service is the

[1] Ichisada Miyazaki, China's Examination Hell: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China , trans. Conrad Schirokauer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963).

decentralization of hiring. Those who pass the higher civil-service examination must apply to individual ministries and agencies on their own; because, overall, only about half of the candidates eventually receive appointments and because competition to enter such ministries as Finance and MITI is particularly intense, most ministries and agencies have considerable leeway in making their final selections. It is generally assumed that products of elite universities enjoy a competitive edge at this stage of the game, an assumption that is buttressed by evidence showing that the proportion of elite-university graduates, particularly those of Todai, is much higher among those who are actually hired than it is among those who pass the higher civil-service examination.

Nonetheless, it would be neither an exaggeration nor a distortion of the reality to characterize Japan's administrative elite as a "meritocratic elite"—an elite chosen on the basis of the universalistic criteria of performance in open, competitive examinations and, indirectly, of educational attainments.

Having said this, we must note that ascriptive features are not totally absent in Japan. For one thing, one's chances of success in Japan's highly stratified and fiercely competitive educational system do not depend exclusively on one's own talents and efforts; they are also affected to a significant degree by the quantity and quality of preparations for entrance examinations to schools at succeeding levels that one can purchase, which obviously is a function of the financial status of one's parents. But there is another sense in which quasi-ascriptive criteria creep into the equation, and this must be viewed as a second distinctive feature of Japan's administrative elite.

Whether or not one can join the coveted ranks of Japan's administrative elite in a narrow sense—that is, those who occupy the positions of section chief or its equivalent and above in the national government—is critically dependent on one's mode of entry into the government bureaucracy. In other words, mode of entry, which is based on a confluence of achievement and quasi-ascriptive factors (for example, the quality and quantity of education one has purchased) exerts an enduring influence on one's career progression in the civil service. Only those who are hired by the various ministries and agencies after passing the higher civil-service examination have a better-than-even chance of being promoted to section chief and beyond. Called "career" civil servants, these cadets for elite administrative positions have been included in the broad definition of Japan's administrative elite in this study.

What is more, it is not simply whether but when one has passed the higher civil-service examination that becomes controlling. For example, someone who passes the higher examination after he has already entered the civil service via other routes, typically the intermediate examination, is not accorded a fullfledged "career" status but relegated to membership in a "separate-list group" (beppyo-gumi ), an anomalous category that lies midway between the "career" and "noncareer" groups. It should be made plain that promotion to the rank of section chief and above is within the reach of both noncareer and beppyo-gumi civil servants. Nonetheless, not only is there a patently unequal distribution of probabilities of promotion that corresponds to the civil servants' mode of initial entry into the bureaucracy but their career paths, in terms of opportunities encountered and psychic satisfactions experienced, also diverge markedly.

The relative importance of seniority may be listed as a third characteristic of Japan's administrative elite. Although merit is by no means neglected, it does not really become a criterion of promotion until a cohort of civil servants has reached a certain level, typically assistant section chief or section chief. Among career civil servants, the year of entry, which is bound up with the year of graduation from university, becomes all but sacrosanct in personnel assignments in the sense that a bureau chief will have more seniority than an assistant bureau chief, and so on down the line. As Sahashi Shigeru, a former administrative vice-minister of MITI put it, the concept of "ability" is totally nullified.^[2]

A fourth feature of Japan's administrative elite that merits special mention is the predominance of law graduates in its ranks. Although about one in seven successful candidates in the higher civil-service examination in recent years has chosen law as his field of specialization in the examination, one in four or five of those who are ultimately hired by the government from the pool of successful candidates has been a "specialist" in law. The predominance of law graduates becomes particularly pronounced in the upper rungs of Japanese bureaucracy, namely among its administrative elite in a narrow sense. Between six and seven in ten elite administrators have been law graduates in the postwar period.

In a strict sense, a law "specialist" and a law graduate are distinct categories, for it is theoretically possible for a nonlaw graduate to become a law "specialist" by opting for the field of law in the higher civil-service examination. In practice, the two overlap to a striking

[2] Sahashi Shigeru, "Kanryo shokun ni chokugen suru" [Talking Straight to Bureaucrats], Bungei shunju , July 1971, p. 110.

degree. More important, unlike the situation in most Western democracies, being a law graduate in Japan does not necessarily imply possession of a license to practice law. To qualify for membership in the legal profession, one must pass an exceedingly competitive judicial examination, in which the failure rate averages 98 percent; undergo two years of postgraduate training at the state-run Judicial Training Institute; and pass its graduation examination. For these reasons, the typical law graduate in Japan, who possesses both a fair amount of substantive knowledge of law and a bachelor-of-law degree (hogakushi ), is regarded as a generalist rather than a specialist.

This leads us to a fifth characteristic of Japan's administrative elite, which is a corollary of the phenomenon noted above: the ascendancy of administrative generalists (jimukan ) over technical specialists (gikan ). Even though the term "administrative" elite implies the exclusion of technical personnel, we have actually used it to refer to all higher civil servants in this study; hence it is not tautological to note the predominance of "administrative generalists" among Japan's administrative elite. In fact, technical officials outnumber administrative ones by six to four at the entry level, that is, in the realm of elite-track higher civil servants. It is at higher levels that we discern a reversal of roles; when we focus on those who have crossed the threshold into the administrative elite in a narrow sense, administrative officials emerge as a majority, whereas technical officials become a minority: between six and seven in ten of the senior civil servants are administrative officials. At the level of administrative vice-ministers, a technical specialist is even harder to find. Of the twelve ministries of the national government, only one, the Ministry of Construction, provides equal opportunity for advancement to all of its elite-track bureaucrats: by custom, the top career position is rotated between administrative and technical officials.

The ascendancy of generalists is linked with and sustained by the policy of frequent rotation in the career progression of Japan's administrative elite. Rotation between the headquarters and the field, including overseas posts, and among a wide range of units within the same ministry or agency, is bound to be a broadening experience, allowing the bureaucrat to gain a feel for the diversity of functions and tasks performed by his ministry or agency and enabling him to approach his problems with the interests of the larger organization in view as he moves up the ladder of authority.

Such a policy, even if successful, does not prevent Japan's administrative elite from engaging in jurisdictional rivalries both within and between their respective organizations. Within the same ministry,

different bureaus jealously guard their turfs, and across ministerial boundaries disputes routinely erupt concerning each other's jurisdictions and clienteles as well as over policy issues. Known as "sectionalism," this phenomenon, although by no means confined to Japan, can be viewed as a sixth characteristic of Japan's administrative elite. According to Sahashi Shigeru, sectionalism frequently leads to the subordination of national interests to those of one's ministry (kokka yori shoga yusen ).^[3] Among its many consequences are the obvious waste of resources, duplication of effort, occasional paralysis of government action, and erosion of bureaucratic power.

A well-known feature of Japanese organizations in the private and public sectors alike is consensual decision making; we shall list it as a seventh attribute of Japan's administrative elite. Two devices that are utilized in building consensus are ringisho and nemawashi . Although it is typically drafted by a relatively low-level bureaucrat and then circulated upward, the ringisho is seldom a brainchild of its drafter. It may have originated elsewhere, such as at higher levels of the bureaucracy. Nemawashi , a painstaking process of touching bases with all important persons who probably will impinge upon a decision, occurs both within and across organizational boundaries.

In comparative terms, Japan's administrative elite may be among the most powerful in industrialized democracies; hence its extraordinary power may be listed as an eighth characteristic. Paradoxically, the American Occupation played a key role not only in perpetuating but also in bolstering the power of Japanese government bureaucracy. For one thing, the principal rivals of bureaucrats, the military and the zaibatsu, were decimated. Furthermore, the purge program, though it temporarily incapacitated a large number of politicians, hardly touched the bureaucrats. Finally, SCAP's program of civil-service reform ultimately enhanced the position of bureaucrats by spawning a central personnel agency charged with the multiple functions of safeguarding the merit principle, protecting the interests of civil servants, and promoting the goals of democracy, efficiency, and equity in personnel management.

During the first three decades of the postwar era, Japan experienced a system of government in which formal authority lagged behind actual power; in Chalmers Johnson's phrase, politicians "reigned," whereas bureaucrats "ruled."^[4] Among the many factors undergirding bureaucratic power was a national consensus regarding the primacy of

[3] Ibid., p. 108.

[4] Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle , pp. 34-35 and 316.

developmental goals, which, along with an institutional legacy of the prewar and wartime era, helped to sustain a "developmental state." The adoption of an "industrial policy" and the use of "market-conforming methods of state intervention" in the economy, including "administrative guidance," were further sources, or perhaps symptoms, of the formidable power of Japan's administrative elite.^[5]

Although the power of the administrate elite has been waning gradually since the mid-1970s, as LDP politicians acquired more expertise and became more assertive in the exercise of their constitutional authority, reinforced by electoral mandates, senior bureaucrats have by no means relinquished their power. In an important sense, they continue to play a pivotal role in policy formulation, while virtually monopolizing the power of policy implementation.

Finally, we must note the retirement patterns of Japan's administrative elite. Although guaranteed "lifetime employment," the careers of Japanese higher civil servants tend to be remarkably brief; nearly all of them retire in their mid-fifties, and a sizable number retire even earlier. Rooted in the culturally reinforced custom whereby members of the same entering class shun hierarchical relationships among themselves and thus resign when a classmate reaches the top of the career ladder, this phenomenon also serves the organizational need for periodic turnover of personnel in high echelons, thus ensuring the relative youth and vitality of its leadership.

The civil servants who retire in their prime of life do not fade away; most of them find productive "second careers" in private enterprises, public corporations, politics, and other fields. In an overwhelming number of cases, finding a postretirement landing spot is the responsibility not of the retiring civil servant but of his ministry or agency. The options available to the bureaucrats vary, depending on such factors as the nature of linkage between their organization and the private sector, the number and type of public corporations under its jurisdiction, their preretirement rank, and the marketability of their experience and skills. In general, the higher one's last rank, the greater the range of options. Judging from the number of exemptions (that is, waivers of rules proscribing employment that might entail conflicts of interest) granted by the National Personnel Authority, the Finance Ministry has consistently outperformed all others in the reemployment of retirees in the private sector. The Finance Ministry is also the largest source of former bureaucrats who run for the Diet.

[5] Ibid., esp. pp. 17-34.

These, in brief, are the most notable features of Japan's administrative elite. We shall take a further look at most of them by exploring patterns of continuity and change, the universality and particularity of the Japanese experience, and implications of the Japanese model.

Continuity And Change

Nearly all of the attributes noted in the preceding section have their antecedents in the prewar period. As we saw in chapter 2, the prewar Japanese bureaucracy was thoroughly elitist, enjoying high prestige, vast powers, and conspicuous perquisites and dominated by graduates of elite universities, notably Tokyo Imperial University. Moreover, it embraced a virtual caste system in which there were distinctly unequal classes, the sharpest distinction being drawn between ordinary and higher officials. Inasmuch as the mode of initial entry served as the primary basis for differentiation between the two groups, the prewar system, too, was quasi-ascriptive to some extent.

The domination by law graduates, known as hoka banno , was much more pronounced in the prewar period than it is in the postwar era. So, too, was the preferential treatment of generalist administrators over technical specialists. Practices that gave rise to "sectionalism" originated in the prewar period: decentralized hiring of officials, lifetime employment, and the low frequency of interministerial transfers. Also traceable to the prewar bureaucracy is the custom of early retirement, which was rooted in the same considerations that govern its postwar practice: the need to obviate a conflict between the cultural norm of equality among peers and the bureaucratic norm of hierarchical authority based on rank regardless of age or length of service. Since the mean retirement age may have been slightly lower in the prewar period—retirement in the late forties as compared with the mid-fifties in the 1980s—the need to find "second careers" was equally present. Amakudari in a narrow sense, that is, descending onto private firms, however, appeared to have been less frequent in the prewar era than it is today.

If there are striking continuities in broad patterns, one can also detect slight but nonetheless significant changes. Most of these have to do with a decline in some of the prewar tendencies rather than their complete disappearance. Particularly noteworthy in this connection are a slight decline in elitism and a slow but steady increase in the number of women.

A decline in elitism can be seen in a number of trends: (1) a strong showing of universities other than Todai and Kyodai in the higher civil-service examination, (2) a notable increase in the proportion of private-university graduates who enter the higher civil service, and (3) advancement of "noncareer" bureaucrats to elite administrative positions.

Although Todai and Kyodai have consistently maintained their positions as the first- and second-largest sources, respectively, of successful candidates in the higher civil-service examination throughout the postwar period, their combined share of the total has frequently fallen short of 50 percent. In the eighteen-year period from 1970 to 1987, for example, the two top universities' share fell below the 50-percent mark eleven times (see table 9 in chapter 4). This means that the majority of successful candidates in the higher civil-service examination came from other institutions of higher learning in those years. In the 1980s, private universities surpassed the 10-percent mark for the first time, reaching 12.6 percent by 1986 and 13 percent in 1987. In the ten-year period from 1976 to 1985 the number of private-university graduates who passed the higher civil-service examination increased 3.5 times.^[6]

If we examine the situation at the hiring stage, we find the same trend: a steady increase in the proportion of private-university graduates. Since 1980, private-university graduates who passed the higher civil-service examination had a greater probability of being hired than graduates of national universities. In 1983 and 1984, six in ten of the former, as compared with four in ten of the latter, were hired. In the ten-year period from 1976 to 1985, the number of private-university graduates who entered the higher civil service quadrupled.^[7]

A slight decline in the elitist character of Japan's higher civil service is suggested by a steady increase in the number of "noncareer" civil servants who advance to elite administrative positions. As we saw in chapter 4 (table 8), graduates of the intermediate civil-service examination began to appear in grade-1 positions (assistant bureau chief, division chief, and senior-level section chief) in increasing numbers since 1974; in 1981, a graduate of the lower examination attained grade 1 for the first time, and a small but growing number of others followed in his footsteps in subsequent years. By 1986, the National Personnel Author-

[6] "Komuin Q &; A" [Questions and Answers About Civil Servants], Jinji-in geppo 426 (July 1986): 11.

[7] Ibid.

ity disclosed that two in ten civil servants at the rank of section chief or its equivalent and above in the national government had not gone beyond junior colleges, implying that they were "noncareer" bureaucrats.^[8]

Women were allowed to compete in the higher civil-service examination for the first time in 1909, and beginning in 1928 a handful of women passed its judicial section and one passed its administrative section. The lone woman, however, was never offered an appointment to the higher civil service. In contrast to this dismal picture, the postwar period is a paradise for women. The proportion of women among successful candidates in the higher civil-service examination has ranged from 3.3 to 8.7 percent; in absolute numbers, between 42 and 160 women have passed the higher examination each year (see table 14). There has been a steady increase during the 1980s in women's share, in both absolute and proportional terms; in 1986, 128 women, accounting for 7.5 percent of the total, passed the higher examination. In 1987, however, women's share declined slightly, to 116 successes (6.8 percent).

These developments have been reflected in a steady infusion of women into the higher civil service in recent years. Since the mid-1970s, between 3 and 4 percent of all new appointees to elite-track administrative service I positions have been women. However, only a handful of women have attained the rank of section chief or above in most ministries and agencies. Although a few of them have advanced to the rank of bureau chief, the ultimate prize of administrative vice-minister-ship has thus far eluded them.

In sum, although there are striking continuities between the prewar and postwar periods insofar as the elite of Japanese-government bureaucracy is concerned, that bureaucracy is by no means a static institution. It has demonstrated a capacity for change, and the incremental changes that have occurred in the past two or three decades point toward a steady democratization of Japan's higher civil service.

Universality And Particularity

To what extent are the salient attributes of Japan's administrative elite shared by the government bureaucracies of other industrialized democracies? In what ways are they idiosyncratic? Although none of the attributes is duplicated in identical form or to the same degree in the

[8] Ibid.

four advanced industrial democracies with which Japan has been compared in this study, a few of them come very close to being common denominators. One is elitism. In three of the four Western democracies—Britain, France, and West Germany—careers in the higher civil service are sufficiently well regarded to attract the cream of the crop among their university-educated youth. In two of those countries—Britain and France—products of elite educational institutions outnumber those of lesser institutions. In all three, merit as demonstrated in examinations, whether competitive or qualifying, plays a decisive role in the recruitment of their higher civil servants. In sum, the phrase, "meritocratic elite," is no less apt for the latter than for those in Japan.

The situation in the United States is different. Although the competition for the presidential management internship is keen, the successful candidates are distributed among a large number of institutions without domination by a few elite universities. Nor can it be said that either the government service in general or the PMIP in particular necessarily attracts "the best and the brightest" among the age cohort in the United States. Moreover, the extensive use of political appointees in the high and intermediate echelons of the American federal bureaucracy dilutes its meritocratic complexion to a significant degree.

Another quasi-common denominator appears to be the ascendancy of generalists, particularly its twin phenomenon of rotation of higher civil servants among a wide range of assignments. One can find similar practices in the three European democracies. A major difference, however, is that rotation occurs across organizational boundaries far more frequently in Europe than it does in Japan.^[9] Members of the grands corps in France are notable for the versatility of their contributions in a wide array of organizations, including private enterprises. West German higher civil servants move back and forth between the federal government and Lander administrations. Once again, the American practice differs from the Western European pattern; there is marked emphasis on specialized career paths, in terms of both function and organization.

A third feature that may approximate a common denominator is the power of the administrative elite. Senior civil servants in all four Western countries wield considerable influence; their actual power

[9] According to Spaulding, "generalism and rotation were hallmarks of the oldest examination, the Chinese imperial, and the Chinese precedent may have had more influence (centuries later) on Europe than on Japan (which may have adopted the two principles because the Germans had)." Robert M. Spaulding, Jr., prepublication review of an earlier version of this study, 27 May 1987.

tends to be appreciably greater than their formal authority. In a fundamental sense, this is a function of the indivisibility of policy and administration; because no policy is self-executing, those who are charged with the task of executing it must necessarily use their judgment and discretion, which more often than not translates into the exercise of power. Another major source of bureaucratic power is their expertise, an indispensable ingredient of public policy in the contemporary era. In all three European democracies, the responsibility for drafting legislation rests primarily on the shoulders of bureaucrats. The relative power of administrative elites varies from country to country; it tends to be greater in a developmental nation such as Japan than in a regulatory state such as the United States. Another important variable in the equation is the power of competing institutions, notably parliament. Its relative weakness in Japan serves to bolster bureaucratic power, and its relative strength in the United States helps to diminish bureaucratic power.

Another phenomenon that finds its echo in the Western democracies is the underrepresentation of women. In none of the four countries have women attained full equality, in the sense of numerical parity with men at upper levels of the higher civil service. However, the degree of women's underrepresentation varies widely: whereas the United States displays near parity in the key recruitment channel, the PMIP, Britain hovers around the 10-percent mark in its administrative-trainee program. One in four or five candidates who enter the French Ecole Nationale d'Administration is a woman. On this score, the Japanese record, which, as noted, has improved markedly in the postwar period, still falls short of the Western norm.

Finally, the propensity of Japanese bureaucrats to engage in territorial disputes is by no means unique. Jurisdictional disputes occur among bureaucratic organizations everywhere. What is nonetheless noteworthy is their frequency and scope in Japan. Their manifestation not merely between but also within organizations does seem to be peculiarly Japanese. As noted, decentralized hiring, coupled with lifetime employment within single organizations, accentuates that universal bureaucratic tendency.

These seem to exhaust the list of the more notable aspects of bureaucratic elites that are more or less common to the industrialized democracies. There is at least one facet of the Japanese case that is replicated in another industrialized democracy, namely, the dominant position of law graduates. If anything, the phenomenon is more pronounced in West Germany than it is in Japan, where, as previously noted, it shows signs of tapering off in the postwar period. The

occurrence of the same phenomenon in the two countries seems to reflect the German influence on the Japanese system a century ago as well as the relative continuity in both during the ensuing years.

The characteristics that set Japan apart from the Western democracies the most appear to be the quasi-ascriptive nature, consensual decision making, and retirement practices of its administrative elite. To be sure, Japan is not alone in having a highly stratified government bureaucracy; all three European democracies have distinct groups and classes within their respective civil services. In terms of their relative rigidity, however, only West Germany resembles Japan. But the West German system is considerably more permeable than the Japanese one.

The consensual mode of decision making noted earlier is clearly a distinctive Japanese phenomenon. There is nothing in the Western repertoire of administrative practices that resembles the ringisei . If touching bases with other players in the decision-making arena is fairly widespread in all advanced industrial democracies, very few if any can rival Japan in the thoroughness with which such preparatory work is carried out. The nemawashi , in other words, does seem to be uniquely Japanese.

The early retirement of Japan's administrative elite is not duplicated elsewhere. Nor is the reemployment of retired senior bureaucrats in private firms and public corporations matched in the other democracies in terms of its scope. Only in the area of bureaucratic penetration of the political arena, notably parliaments, do two of the four Western democracies, France and West Germany, parallel or surpass Japan.

In sum, then, Japan shares many attributes of its bureaucracy with the three advanced industrial countries in Western Europe, although there are significant variations in degree. Nonetheless, very few of the attributes can be characterized as universal, because the United States either does not exhibit them at all or exhibits them to a negligible degree. On the other hand, a few practices do appear to be either idiosyncratic to or more pronounced in Japan: the rigidity of the multiple-track system, consensual decision making, and the early retirement and reemployment of elite administrators.

An Assessment Of The Japanese Model

Whether there is a Japanese model of government bureaucracy worthy of emulation is open to debate. If the existence of a normative Japanese model is debatable, however, the reality of an analytic or empirical model is undeniable. To contribute to the debate on the normative implications of the Japanese experience, let us essay a tentative and

necessarily subjective assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the empirical model of Japanese bureaucracy sketched in the preceding pages.

Most aspects of Japanese bureaucracy or Japan's administrative elite appear to have multiple consequences, some positive and some negative. We shall, however, delineate the positive side of the coin first. Perhaps the most noteworthy is the exceptional caliber of Japan's administrative elite, broadly defined. They are the veritable cream of the crop—extraordinarily competent, highly dedicated, and singularly hard-working. As T. J. Pempel points out, this, along with internal structural features and the mode of interaction between bureaucrats and politicians, may go a long way toward explaining the apparent efficiency of Japanese-government bureaucracy and the efficacy of Japan's public policies.^l0

The policy of frequently rotating elite-track and elite administrators and the preferential treatment of generalists, too, have their positive side: they help facilitate the task of coordination, particularly, within the various ministries and agencies. Consensual decision making undoubtedly enhances the sense of participation and commitment among the bureaucrats concerned; it also contributes to the implementation of decisions that, theoretically, most of the key players have played a part in shaping.

The character of the nexus between bureaucrats and politicians can also be listed as a strength of the Japanese model. The modes of interaction between the two groups, the bureaucratization of politics, and the politicization of bureaucracy in Japan result in an unusually high degree of cooperation between them, which can be construed as functional not only for the government bureaucracy but for the larger society as well.

The early retirement of Japan's administrative elite performs a manifest organizational function: it enables each organization to sustain a healthy rate of personnel turnover, not only infusing new blood but also promoting relatively young members to leadership positions on a continuing basis. If this helps to make the Japanese government bureaucracy a repository of vitality and fresh outlook, its outputs, both in terms of policy and implementation, can benefit the citizenry at large. So, too, can one accentuate the positive aspects of amakudari . For the penetration of former elite bureaucrats into the private sector, the public corporations, and the political arena can bolster the ability of Japanese society as a whole to function smoothly. Their valuable experience,

[10] Pempel, "Organizing for Efficiency," pp. 72-106.

expertise, and connections can both increase the efficiency of the various organizations in which the retired bureaucrats have relocated themselves and facilitate the interaction of the myriad structures to a striking degree.

The much-maligned "sectionalism," too, is not without its virtues. For example, it contributes crucially to the curbing of bureaucratic power. By competing against each other, by jealously guarding their respective turfs, and by exposing the excesses of their rivals, bureaucratic agencies, in effect, perform the much-needed function of checking and balancing each other.^[11]

As already noted, most of these features also have negative consequences. The price Japan pays for the high caliber of its administrative elite is the stifling rigidity of the multiple-track system, a system in which there are second-class citizens, lack of representativeness, and demoralization of "noncareer" bureaucrats who, in fact, not only devote their entire careers to government service but also bear a great share of the burden in public administration.

No less serious is the problem of discrimination against technical specialists. The lack of an equal opportunity for this numerical majority in Japan's higher civil service is not only an anomaly but also a betrayal of the goal of democracy to which Japanese bureaucracy is officially committed. It may also lead to bureaucratic inefficiency and create increasing problems for the Japanese government in this technological age.

Consensual decision making has two obvious shortcomings: it is time-consuming and it stifles individual initiative. The key question here is how to weigh the benefits and the costs. It is possible that, in the Japanese context, the benefits generally outweigh the costs, although each organization and each case may well entail a different mix of both.

The question of the net balance of benefits over costs is also germane to the other features of Japanese bureaucracy, such as early retirement, amakudari , and "sectionalism." Early retirement, for example, may mean the loss of valuable talent for the organization concerned. The accumulated experience and wisdom of the retiring bureaucrat may well be more valuable to the organization than to his postretirement destination. This is true because a person in his mid-fifties in Japan, which boasts the longest life expectancy in the world, is probably still in the prime of life.^[12]

[11] Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle , p. 78.

[12] In 1985, the life expectancy of the Japanese male was 74.78 years, whereas that of the Japanese female was 80.48. Asahi shinbun , 26 Mar. 1987.

Reemployment Of retired bureaucrats may, in one sense, signify the redeployment of talent or reallocation of human resources. From the standpoint of society at large, there may not be a net loss at all; on the contrary, it may lead to a healthy circulation, and hence wider utilization, of available talent. Nonetheless, the phenomenon is not without costs, of which the most obvious is a conflict of interest. Neither the existing law nor actual practice appears to be effective in curbing such conflicts. Another cost is the "presumably inevitable increase in (a) average age and (b) number of people in high-level positions in the public corporations and some private corporations." A rigorous evaluation of this cost, however, would necessitate an inquiry into "which positions are functional and which are sinecures"—something that is beyond the scope of this study.^[13]

If "sectionalism" helps to spawn the phenomenon of checks and balances in the rough and tumble of the bureaucratic world, it also leads to a wasteful expenditure of energy and resources. In its intraorganizational manifestation, sectionalism sets bureau against bureau; in its larger incarnation, sectionalism engenders a displacement of goals in which the ultimate loser may well be the country as a whole and hence the citizenry at large.

In sum, the empirical model of Japanese bureaucracy is so intermingled with both positive and negative features as to preclude an unambiguous verdict on its normative implications. If one chooses to accentuate the positive or to assume that the positive features tend to eclipse the negative ones, that choice can probably be defended with a fair amount of cogency. If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, any objective observer cannot but be struck by the amazing development of the Japanese economy and, by implication as well as on the strength of direct evidence, of the Japanese government. The latter in turn bespeaks the high efficiency of Japanese-government bureaucracy.

Nothwithstanding all this, the unmistakable lesson of the Japanese experience in bureaucratic organization and administration is that the Japanese have paid a high price for their success. They have also demonstrated an unsurpassed aptitude and capacity for creative adaptation of structures and practices developed in alien settings. Moreover, one sees in the Japanese record a powerful confirmation of the tenacity of culture—of the enduring effects of culture over structure.^[14]

[13] Spaulding, prepublication review of an earlier version of this study.

[14] A notable example is "consensual decision-making both in the bureaucracy and elsewhere." According to Spaulding, it "reflect[s] a very ancient Japanese preference traceable all the way back to Shinto legends in the Kojiki and Nihongi and visible throughout centuries of changes in political and economic systems." Ibid.