Sectionalism
Nakane Chie has coined the term tate shakai (vertical society) to underscore the precedence of vertical over horizontal relationships—or ba (frame) over shikaku (attribute)—in Japan.[42] In organizational terms, this idea implies the development of a strong sense of identification with the organization and intense feelings of solidarity among all members of the organization. Two personnel practices helped to bolster such a tendency: decentralized recruitment and lifetime employment. The former meant that although the civil-service examinations were centrally administered, the actual recruitment and appointment of qualified candidates was the responsibility of each ministry. Hence one became an official, not of the Japanese imperial government as such, but of the Home Ministry, the Finance Ministry, and so on. The custom of lifetime employment meant that one was expected to stay in the same organization until retirement. Temporary assignments outside one's own ministry were more frequent than interministerial transfers on a permanent basis. Within the same ministry, however, officials were rotated between the headquarters and the field as well as between different bureaus, divisions, and sections.[43]
[41] Lt. Col. Hugh H. MacDonald and Lt. Milton J. Esman, "The Japanese Civil Service," Public Personnel Review 7. no. 4 (Oct. 1946): 218-19; Watanabe, "Nihon no komuinsei," p. 130. Of the 186 gikan covered by table 4, 145 (78 percent) were Todai graduates and 20 (10.8 percent) were graduates of Kyodai. All of the remainder had gone to either Kyushu or Tohoku University. On the other hand, 142 of the 152 jimukan (94 percent) were Todai men. The remainder were all Kyodai graduates. See Jinji-in, Kyuyokyoku, "Kyu kanri seidoka ni okeru kotokan no keireki chosa no kekka gaiyo" [A Summary of the Results of an Investigation into the Background of Higher Officials Under the Old Bureaucratic System], Kikan jinji gyosei [Public Personnel Administration Quarterly] 25 (Aug. 1983): 96.
[42] Nakane Chie, Tate shakai no ningen kankei: Tan'itsu shakai no riron [Human Relations in a Vertical Society: The Theory of a Homogeneous Society] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1967), pp. 26-67 and passim.
[43] The administrative officials in Jinji-in's study, on which table 4 was based, experienced between eleven and thirteen changes of assignment; the average duration of each assignment was less than two years. Jinji-in, Kyuyokyoku, "Kyu kanri seidoka ni okeru kotokan no keireki chosa no kekka gaiyo," p. 108.
Takahashi Hideki's analysis of the career patterns of 145 officials who entered the Finance Ministry after passing the higher civil-service examinations during the Taisho era (1912-26) shows that those who eventually achieved the positions of bureau chief or administrative vice-minister typically served as financial clerks (zaimu shoki ) in overseas diplomatic or consular missions within the first year or two of appointment and then as heads of local tax offices (zeimushocho ) before being assigned to the headquarters. After serving in a number of posts, they would reach the post of section chief in their fourteenth year of service.[44]
Such practices, reinforced by the cultural norms of tate shakai , bred jurisdictional rivalries between ministries that were dysfunctional for the government as a whole. Jealous guarding of turfs even occurred within the same ministry in some cases.[45]