MITI and the Japanese miracle

Page 68

bureau chief he should become submissive toward the ministry's clients with a view to enhancing his own amakudari.

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Misono* Hitoshi asserts that the combination of early retirement and inadequate pensions has made government service ''only an apprenticeship for favorable employment after retirement."

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And Takeuchi Naokazu, a disgruntled former Ministry of Agriculture bureaucrat who quit and became active in the consumer movement, charges that the Budget Bureau of the Ministry of Finance has been known to increase the budget shares of ministries that were willing to find positions for retiring finance officers in the public corporations those ministries control, or among their clients.

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Actual corruption among higher officials in Japan has occurred but is uncommon. In general, the Japanese public places greater trust in the honesty of state officials than in the honesty of politicans or business leaders. Such petty corruption as does occurgifts from businessmen, golf club fees, dinner parties, junketsis more common among noncareer officials than among the higher bureaucrats, and was more common in the period of shortages in the 1950's than in later years.

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When such incidents do involve higher officials, the press and public are quick to condemn them. For example, charges of the misuse of public funds in several public corporations and efforts to apprehend the guilty were national causes célèbres during 1979 and 1980.

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And the press and opposition parties are very watchful. The

Mainichi

, for example, reports that "toward the end of November of 1973, Nozue Chimpei, a member of the House of Councillors, conducted a unique study. He and his staff examined the trash cans at the construction and transport ministries to study how conservation policies were being carried out. After seven days of investigation, they found that the trash cans at the two ministries were filled with empty bottles of Johnny Walker and other expensive foreign liquor, and empty gift boxes bearing the names of senders."

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The serious issue in Japan is not the occasional abuse of office by a higher official but a pattern of cooperation between the government and big business that may have unintended consequences. Throughout its modern history Japan has experienced a series of major governmental corruption scandals, the most famous of which are the Siemens case of 1914, the Yawata state steel works case of 1918, the Teijin case of 1934, the Showa* Denko* case of 1948, the shipbuilding bribery case of 1954, the Tanaka "money politics" case of 1974, and the Lockheed case of 1976. These are only the most sensational; numerous others have occurred, and four resulted in the fall of governments.

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Less flagrant but possibly more important have been incidents of