An essay discussing why Japan’s most talented graduates increasingly avoid careers in Kasumigaseki. It argues that harsh working conditions, political attacks from opposition parties, and relentless media criticism have weakened the appeal of public service and damaged Japan’s administrative system.

2019-02-14.
Year after year, Japan’s most talented young people increasingly avoid Kasumigaseki and instead take jobs in foreign firms.
For the nation, this is a deeply troubling problem.
The reason they began avoiding Kasumigaseki is simple.
First, the working conditions are close to the worst imaginable.
And yet, if anything happens, opposition politicians seize upon trivial points and launch all-out attacks.
In the first place, they have no desire to lecture politicians who are far less knowledgeable and capable than themselves.
Thus, the more talented and capable officials are precisely the ones who have been leaving Kasumigaseki.
In other words, capable people naturally refuse to spend their careers explaining policy to individuals who are both ignorant and incompetent, yet receive enormous salaries of forty-five million yen or more while arrogantly sitting in judgment.
As a result, the most capable officials are leaving one after another.
The true root of the problem lies with politicians who could fairly be called traitors to the nation, and with the mass media such as Asahi Shimbun and NHK, which have joined them in relentlessly attacking bureaucrats.
In reality, these media outlets merely echo the positions of the Ministry of Finance.
In principle, the finest workplace for Japan’s brightest elite—those blessed with the greatest intellects and trained at the nation’s highest institutions—should be Kasumigaseki.
There is no greater calling than participating in the governance of Japan, a country that could rightly be described as one of the greatest nations in the world.
To stand at the helm of such a nation.
No greater work exists.
Yet the opposite has occurred.
Agents connected with China and the Korean Peninsula have infiltrated institutions.
As a result, the mass media—including Asahi, Mainichi, Tokyo, and NHK—continue to broadcast reports that could fairly be described as treacherous and harmful to the nation.
Political parties such as the Constitutional Democratic Party and the Communist Party also exist.
The very existence of such parties is questionable.
Germany should be studied in this regard.
These individuals who may fairly be called traitors to the nation.
If they ever came to power, they would be capable of nothing except relying completely on bureaucrats.
That is only natural.
People who have spent their careers merely attacking governments together with foolish media organizations cannot possibly manage or govern a country like Japan, which has maintained one of the world’s most enduring systems of governance for more than 2,600 years.
The Democratic Party administration clearly demonstrated this fact.
It was, quite literally, a nightmare-like government.
The assessment by Prime Minister Abe—one of the greatest realist politicians in postwar Japan—is entirely correct.