MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 59

niors, those of later entering classes). Both promotion to the level of section chief and retirement are in accordance with strict seniority. This age grading (

nenko

*

joretsu

) and "respect for seniority" (

nenji

soncho

*) among bureaucrats influences everything they do, not just their activities in a ministry. For example, as an aged man and a former prime minister, Kishi Nobusuke still habitually referred to Yoshino Shinji as his sempai, recalling their earliest relationship in the old Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce.

⁶⁴

More poignantly, when Oba* Tetsuo, a former official of the Transportation Ministry and later president of All Nippon Airways, was hauled into the Diet to testify as a witness in the investigation of the Lockheed corruption case (1976), the press wrote that he shook with barely controlled anger under questioning. The explanation, the journalists said, was that the Diet member interrogating him was his former junior at the Transportation Ministry, and he was overcome by the impudence of a junior questioning a senior.

⁶⁵

In place of the term gakubatsu, some Japanese analysts prefer

Todaibatsu

* (cliques of Tokyo University classmates) because of the predominance of Tokyo University graduates in the bureaucracy and in the upper echelons of the banking and industrial worlds. Even among the Todaibatsu*, there is the batsu of all batsuthe alumni of the Tokyo University Law School. In order to understand their influence it is necessary to know that when an entering class joins a ministry, its members are permanently divided into two career pathsthe path of "administrative officials," or generalists (

jimukan

), and the path of "technical officials," or specialists (

gikan

). This distinction differs from that between career (class A exam) and noncareer (class B exam) officials, but it has almost equally serious consequences. It is based on academic specialization in the university.

Only one ministry promotes technical officers to the top positionthe vice-ministershipand that is the Ministry of Construction. It was created after the war around the nucleus of the old Home Ministry's Civil Engineering Bureau, plus many jimukan officers drawn from the Home Ministry's regular ranks. The struggle by the technicians to achieve equal treatment in Construction was both famous and fierce. It fell to the socialist government of Katayama Tetsu during the occupation to name the first vice-minister of the new Ministry of Construction. The old Home Ministry cadres proposed as their candidate the jimukan official Ohashi* Takeo, a former police officer; and the engineers put forward as their candidate the gikan official Iwasawa Tadayoshi. The unions of the various segments of the old Home Ministry put intense pressure on the Katayama government to favor