MITI and the Japanese miracle

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only one genuine political appointee, the minister, who is named by the prime minister and is a member of the cabinet. The minister is normally but not invariably a member of the Diet (articles 67 and 68 of the Constitution of 1947 require that the prime minister be elected by and from the members of the Diet, but only a majority of the other ministers must be members). All other officials in a ministry are nonpolitical, the most senior being the administrative vice-minister (

jimu jikan

, which I have rendered simply as "vice-minister"). The Japanese prime minister thus has the power to name only about 20 ministers, plus 4 party officials, whereas the American president, for example, appoints at least 1,000 people to posts in the bureaucracy (one Japanese analyst counted 916 bureaucratic appointments made by President Carter during early 1977).

⁵⁰

The prime minister is also guided by the political need to balance factions within the LDP and only rarely by the qualifications of a politician for a particular ministerial post.

^*

The Japanese bureaucracy jealously guards the practice of making no political appointments below the ministerial level; the bureaucrats believe that this helps establish their claim to be above politics and to speak only for the national interest. One of the bureaucracy's greatest fears is "political interference" in its internal affairs or, worse, a ministry's being made subservient to a party or a politician. Even though the minister is legally in command of and responsible for everything that happens in a ministry, a delicate relationship between him and the vice-minister inevitably exists from the outset. The norm is for the minister to fear his bureaucrats and to be dominated by them; one journalist suggests that the only time a minister ever enjoys his post is on the day he is photographed in formal dress at the Imperial Palace as part of the cabinet's investiture ceremony.

⁵¹

If this norm prevails, the bureaucrats are satisfied. But what they really want is a minister who will leave them alone while at the same time taking responsibility for the ministry and protecting it from intrusion by other politicians or

^*

The secretary-general of the LDPone of the 4 party leaders under the party president (who is simultaneously the prime minister)appoints an additional 24 parliamentary vice-ministers, 2 (1 for each house) in the ministries of Finance, Agriculture and Forestry, and International Trade and Industry, and 1 in each of the other ministries. These vice-ministers are supposed to provide liaison between the ministries and the Diet, but "the posts' chief attraction is that they furnish the politicians a chance to use the ministry's facilities to do favors for their constituents (thus bettering themselves in the elections), and for other politicians (thus bettering themselves in the party)." See Nathaniel B. Thayer,

How the Conservatives Rule Japan

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 279. The

Mainichi

observes that, like an appendix in a human body, the parliamentary vice-ministers do not seem to perform a vital function. They are invariably appointed with an eye to rewarding factions within the party and not to the effective functioning of either the bureaucracy or the Diet. See

Japan Times

, May 7, 1974, and December 27, 1975.