Okay, but how well does that version of history line up with the reality of Japanese government in the second half of the 20th century? Johnson brings a lot of evidence to back up his claim that Japan is still secretly ruled by the bureaucracies, chief among them MITI. He points out, for example, that hardly any bills proposed by individual legislators and representatives go anywhere, while bills proposed by MITI itself are almost always instantly approved by the parliament. But MITI’s authority isn’t limited to the government, it’s pretty clear that they control the entire private sector too. That might seem tautological — if MITI’s will always becomes law, then they can unilaterally impose new regulations or mandates that can destroy any company, with zero recourse, so everybody will naturally do what MITI says. But it’s subtler than that — the real mechanism is tangled up in MITI’s dynastic and succession customs.
Remember, this may look like an economic planning bureaucracy, but it’s actually a secret samurai clan. So they’re constantly doing the kinds of stuff that any good feudal nobility does. For instance, the economic planning bureaucrats frequently cement their treaties by marrying off their sister/daughter/niece to a mentor or to a protegé. They also sometimes legally adopt each other, ancient Roman-style. Naturally they also have an extremely complicated set of rules governing their internal hierarchy, rights of deference, etc. But remember, this isn’t just a secret samurai clan, it’s also a government agency! Agencies have rules too — explicit rules written down in binders, rules governing promotion and succession and all the rest. Sometimes, the official rules and the secret rules conflict, butt against each other, and out of that friction something beautiful emerges.
The highest rank in MITI is “Vice-Minister” (the “Minister” is one of those elected political guys who don’t actually matter). But it’s also the case that somebody who’s been at MITI longer or who’s older than you (these are actually the same thing, because everybody joins at the same age) is strictly superior to you in seniority. But that can create a paradox! What happens if a young guy becomes Vice-Minister? He would then be more senior than his older colleagues by virtue of office, but they would be more senior by virtue of tenure, and that would mean either an official rule or a secret rule being broken. To resolve this impossible conflict, the instant a new Vice-Minister is selected, everybody who’s been in the bureaucracy longer than him resigns immediately, so that his absolute seniority is unambiguous and unquestionable. And then … the first act of the new Vice-Minister is to give everybody who fell on their swords powerful jobs as executives and board members of the biggest Japanese corporations. The entire process is called amakudari, which means “descent from heaven”.
Amakudari is really a win-win-win-win: the new Vice-Minister has unchallenged power within the agency and a whole host of new friends in the private sector, the guys who resigned all have cushy new jobs that come with better pay and perks, the companies that are descended upon now have an employee with great connections to the agency that controls their fates, and MITI as a gestalt entity can spread its tentacles throughout the economy, aided by cadres of alumni who think its way and help translate policy into reality.
John Psmith, “REVIEW: MITI and the Japanese Miracle by Chalmers Johnson”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2023-04-03.
April 26, 2024
QotD: The secret rulers of Japan
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