MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 62

rooms are staffed by men who share a common outlookone that is neither "legal" in the sense used in American law schools nor "entrepreneurial" in the sense used in American schools of business administration. Todai * law offers a superb education in public and administrative law of the continental European variety, a subject much closer to what is called political science than to law in the English-speaking countries. Todai students also study economicscompulsory principles of economics in the first year, optional economic policy in the second year, and compulsory public finance in the third year. The resulting homogenization of views between the public and private sectors began before the war. As Rodney Clark observes from the point of view of corporate management: "By the 1920's higher education, particularly at certain great state and private universities, most especially the University of Tokyo, was coming to be seen as the most natural qualification for the management of major companies. . . . The emphasis on such [public law] studies argued (and, of course, promoted) a view of management as a bureaucratic and cooperative venture: the government of a company rather than the imposition of an entrepreneurial will on a market place and a work force by superior skill, courage, or judgment."

⁶⁹

Once in the bureaucracy, the Todai group in an entering class in a ministry works together to ensure that its members prosper and that others are frozen out of choice positions. Sakakibara Eisuke, a bureaucrat turned professor, recalls that his entering class at the Ministry of Finance in 1965 had a total of 18 members, 16 of which were from Todai and 2 from Kyoto University. Among the 18, 5 had economics degrees while the rest had law degrees. More usual was the class of 1966, with 21 members, of whom 20 were law graduates.

⁷⁰

Under such circumstances a young official not from Todai will have difficulties in being promoted much beyond the section chief level. As the

Mainichi

reported, "When a Waseda University man was appointed to a bureau chief's post in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry some time ago, the event was played up prominently in all the newspapers."

⁷¹

Who becomes a bureau chief, a director-general, or ultimately the one vice-minister is a source of intense competition among classes in a ministry. A new class of officers begins its life by circulating among different jobs in the various sections, moving every year or two (the bureaucrats call this

sotomawari

, or "going around the track"). Within MITI, in recent years most members of a class will also be posted overseas for a year in a consulate, an embassy, a university, or an office of JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization). Not all sections or