MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 63

posts in a ministry are equal. The general affairs section of each bureau is the most important section in the bureau, and the three main sections in the Minister's Secretariat (Daijin Kanbo *)those for personnel, general coordination, and budget and accounts, as they are known in MITIare the most important sections in the ministry. A member of a class who passes through or heads several of these on his sotomawari is said to be on the "elite course" (

erito

*

kosu

*).

Nonelite class B exam bureaucrats do not circulate nearly so frequently. The pattern among them is to settle down in one section for years and become what is called a "walking dictionary" or "human encyclopedia" (

iki-jibiki

), the common term for those who do the detailed work of a section and who show the new career officers the ropes. Occasionally a walking dictionary will be promoted to section chief, but this is rare, and it never occurs in a key policy-making section.

^*

Promotion to section chief is virtually guaranteed to every career officer who does not make some major mistake. Table 5 shows the relative speed of promotion as of the end of 1975 for the various classes in the five economic ministries. It reveals that although both the Finance and MITI vice-ministers were from the classes of 1944, Finance was three years slower than MITI in making its new officers chiefs of section (in 1975, the class of 1958 at Finance was just getting their sections while at MITI the class of 1961 was already at that point). Competition over promotion begins beyond the section chief level.

There are only a limited number of bureau chief positions in a ministry, and obviously not every member of an entering class can have one. Those who are promoted are still in the running for the vice-ministership; those who are not are compelled to resignor, as it is known in the Japanese government, to "descend from heaven" (amakudari) into a lucrative job in a public corporation or private industry. Ultimately everyone must "descend" because of the implacable pres-

^*

In MITI, for example, Abe Shinshichi, a former army paymaster who entered MITI service without taking the higher officials exam, rose to head the Vehicles Section in the Heavy Industries Bureau and ultimately became chief of the Shikoku regional bureau before retirement. Neither, however, is an important post. The Vehicles Section is avoided by career officers because it supervises bicycle and auto racing; it is said to be the only office in MITI with a regular subscription to the sports newspapers. During the last years of the occupation, criminal elements came to dominate bicycle racing in Japan; and after many public protests, the government turned bicycle racing over to MITI to clean up and to generate income from gambling at the tracks for public utilities and local finance. The Vehicles Section manages this; it should be distinguished from the Automobile Section in the same bureau, which is an important post. See Policy Review Company, ed.,

Tsusan-sho*

,

sono hito to soshiki

(MITI: its personnel and organization) (Tokyo: Seisaku Jiho* Sha, 1968), pp. 2056.