MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 48

tax rates with no input from the Diet, and usually no Diet changes in its recommendations. Similarly, the Customs Duties Deliberation Council (Kanzeiritsu Shingikai) sets tariff rates and procedures, and the Diet then approves them without change.

³⁸

There is no question that the deliberation councils handle some very important matters; the problems relate to the selection, procedures, and degree of independence from the bureaucracy of the councils.

And on those questions there is considerable debate. Do the councils actually provide civilian input to the bureaucracy's decisions, or are they merely covers for bureaucratic power, intended to provide the public with a façade of consultation and consensus? Former MITI Vice-Minister Sahashi said in an interview that as far as he was concerned deliberation councils were important primarily as a device to silence in advance any criticism of the bureaucracy.

³⁹

Kawanaka Niko* believes that deliberation councils are actually important weapons of the bureaucracy in the struggles that occur within and among ministries to promote particular policies: the important names that appear as members of a council are not so much intended to impress the public as they are to influence and warn off rival bureaucrats, one ministry's clients serving to counterbalance those of another ministry.

⁴⁰

Some Japanese journalists are even harsher. A group of

Mainichi

economic specialists calls the deliberation councils ''gimmicks," noting that the councils do not have independent staffs and that all proposals submitted to them have been approved in advance by the sponsoring ministry. On the other hand, they believe that the most important councils in the economic spherethe Economic Council (Keizai Shingikai) attached to the Economic Planning Agency, the Industrial Structure Council (Sangyo* Kozo* Shingikai) attached to MITI, and the Foreign Capital Council (Gaishi Shingikai) attached to the Ministry of Financeare not mere "ornaments."

⁴¹

Concerning one of these, the Foreign Capital Council, the MITI Journalists' Club disagrees, suggesting that at least before capital liberalization it was a

kakuremino

a magic fairy cape thrown over something (in this case MITI's influence over all foreign capital ventures in Japan) in the hope of making it invisible.

⁴²

If these criticisms are at all valid, we may ask why the Diet itself does not perform the vital tasks of writing and deliberating laws. The answer is that the Japanese Diet is not a "working parliament" in Weber's sense, "one which supervises the administration by continuously sharing in its work."

⁴³

The most important work of the government is done elsewhere and is only ratified in the Diet. As we have already stressed, the Diet's dependent relationship with the bureau-