August 21, 2010.
Had the top bureaucrats who supported Japan’s miraculous recovery during the first forty postwar years left for the private sector around twenty years earlier, leaving behind people adept at following precedent and protecting their own positions?
This essay raises the possibility that a decline in bureaucratic capability caused Japan’s twenty-year stagnation and proposes the preparation of white papers on the bureaucracy and the Bank of Japan.
Compared with successive Liberal Democratic Party prime ministers, who possessed a thorough knowledge of the bureaucracy, Democratic Party politicians placed excessive emphasis on dealing with the mass media and neglected this task.
An incisive essay that reexamines what constitutes the “caliber” of a prime minister.
From the perspective of August 21, 2010, this essay seeks the root cause of Japan’s profound stagnation over the preceding twenty years in changes in the quality of its bureaucrats rather than in its politicians.
It conjectures that the departure of outstanding bureaucrats for the private sector during the bubble era deprived the country of the top talent needed to run it, leaving behind mediocre bureaucrats intent on protecting their own positions.
It identifies the “ability to know and assess the bureaucracy,” possessed by the successive prime ministers who supported Japan’s miraculous postwar recovery, as the true quality of a leader, and criticizes the politicians of the day for lacking that quality.
As Twenty Years Ago… An Important Issue No One Mentioned.
August 21, 2010
Do today’s bureaucrats possess the same abilities as those who served until twenty years ago—for example, Kiichi Miyazawa, Mr. A, a distinguished alumnus of my alma mater many years my senior, and their juniors—who played such a powerful role in Japan’s miraculous recovery during the first forty postwar years?
Would Japan’s very best talent really bring about as many as twenty years of profound stagnation?
Twenty-five years ago, there was an era that the mass media labeled simply a bubble.
It was an era when their classmates and juniors, whom they considered far less capable than themselves, began making enormous amounts of money.
How many bureaucrats, increasingly questioning and resenting having to serve LDP politicians clearly less capable than themselves, moved to the private sector, where they could expect far higher remuneration, and what were their qualities… Did the very best people in each ministry leave en masse?… The same question applies to the Bank of Japan.
I propose that, now more than ever, we urgently prepare a white paper on the bureaucracy and a white paper on the Bank of Japan to examine precisely this.
Could it be that, starting twenty years ago, the top officials in each ministry—those capable of making bold decisions to resolve the issues at hand for the sake of the nation’s prosperity—had in fact left en masse, while many bureaucrats remained who could think no differently from local officials concerned only with following precedent, yet were adept at protecting their own positions… at securing amakudari appointments for themselves well into old age?
Would it not be more natural to think that this is why the tragedy of these twenty years occurred?
In any event, the successive LDP prime ministers who brought about the miraculous recovery of the first forty postwar years must have known all the outstanding bureaucrats in Kasumigaseki.
Their abilities, their qualities, even the composition of their families.
Was that not, in fact, precisely the quality that qualified someone to become prime minister?
Compared with those successive prime ministers—up until eighteen years ago—had Democratic Party politicians, who were needless to say immature as politicians, been excessively conscious only of the mass media and entirely neglected this task?
According to articles by reporters covering him and well-informed writers in the more reputable magazines, Prime Minister Kan, who should have been doing precisely that work during this summer recess, had apparently been enjoying online games of Go…
I believe this essay, too, makes an extremely important point.
Was the LDP’s decline not due to the fact that, eighteen years earlier, it had lost all those who possessed such qualities and qualifications to be prime minister?
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles… Was it not because Japan knew neither its enemy nor itself that it kept losing for twenty years?…
Was that not what people called “caliber”?