MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 60

one side or the other. Nishio Suehiro, chief cabinet secretary and an old socialist, chose Iwasawa. He explained that he personally had been victimized by the police in Okayama during the militarist era, precisely at the time when Ohashi * had served as chief of the Okayama police. As a result of Nishio's choice, the Construction Ministry bureaucrats forged an unwritten rule that the vice-ministership would alternate between administrative and technical officials, a practice that has prevailed to the present day.

⁶⁶

Within MITI only the head of the Mine Safety Bureau is open to a gikan officerin fact, only to a graduate of the School of Engineering, Department of Mining, Tokyo Universityand even here a pattern of alternation between generalists and specialists has developed. All other major posts in MITI and the other ministries, excluding the Construction Ministry and detached research institutes and other specialized organs, are monopolized by administrative officers. And the greatest source of administrative officers is the University of Tokyo's Law School.

According to a calculation of the National Personnel Authority, as of July 1, 1965, among 483 officials at the level of department chief (

bucho

*) and aboveall of whom had university degrees from law, economics, or literature departmentssome 355 (or 73 percent) were graduates of Todai* Law.

⁶⁷

But Todai Law students do not go just to the governmentonly the best of them do. The rest go to top positions in the most important businesses in the country, and their affiliations with each other are legendary. Table 4 details the initial placement of the Todai Law classes of 1975 and 1976. Each class numbered around 690, of whom from 150 to 250 did not seek employment because they were continuing on in graduate work or had failed the Higher-level Public Officials Examination and were waiting to take it again the following year. Some 130 graduates of each class entered government service, choosing ministries in accordance with their own attainments and a rough rank ordering of the ministries in terms of their prestigeFinance, MITI, and Foreign Affairs on top; Welfare, Education, and Labor near the bottom. According to the

Mainichi

, "Before graduation, the Tokyo University counselors direct students to proper jobsgood enough for the Finance Ministry, or maybe not good enough for that but quite suitable for the Health and Welfare Ministry, or if this is undesirable, perhaps a leading business firm."

⁶⁸

Todai classmates in and out of government keep in touch with each other, and one reason private businesses are glad to get them is for purposes of liaison with the government. Perhaps more important, the Todai connection means that both government offices and board