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CHALMERS JOHNSON AND THE ROLE OF THE JAPANESE BUREAUCRACY IN THE ECONOMY
KAZUO YAGAMI
SAVANNAH STATE UNIVERSITY
Abstract:
There is nothing more scrutinized than the Japanese bureaucracy in the analysis of finding causes of the trade friction between the United State and Japan. This paper attempts to see where such scrutiny stemmed from by analyzing the historical background for the birth and development of the Japanese bureaucracy and what roles the bureaucracy took in forming modern Japanese economy and establishing its astonishing successes and achievements. The paper also closely looks at the Japan bashers’ points of view, particularly one of the most well known Japan bashers, Chalmers Johnson’s: where his contentions come from and what is weakness and strength in his arguments.
Probably there is nothing more scrutinized than the Japanese bureaucracy in the analysis of finding causes of the trade friction between the United States and Japan. Japan bashers show an accordance in their argument that Japan's economic success is a result of the orchestration by Japanese bureaucrats with their calculated effort to secure their power by bringing the public norm to the "supreme objective of making and keeping Japan economically and politically competitive at any cost.
It is true that the orchestration took place-particularly, during the Meiji Restoration 1868 and the following Meiji Era (1868-1912), it was conducted in a vigorous manner, and today, the bureaucracy still remains as a core part of the Japanese political and economic systems, if less conspicuously than before. One ought to be careful, however, before he or she accepts the Japan bashers’ argument. The orchestration has been conducted by the bureaucrats in a far less selfish and less forceful manner than what the Japan bashers claim to be. It does not really take a scholarly eye or knowledge to discern that their arguments are based on distortion and inadequateness in analyzing the social and economic conditions of Japanese society.
The purpose of this paper is to establish a proper understanding of the nature of the Japanese bureaucracy and its role in today’s Japanese economy by examining the historical background of the development of the bureaucratic system and the allegedly unfair practices of the Japanese bureaucracy.
Japanese Bureaucracy
In order to establish a proper understanding about the Japanese bureaucracy, one needs to go into the modern Japanese history. The Japanese bureaucracy was established as a result of the transformation from the ruling class of the samurai during the Tokugawa period (1603-1868) into the administrative class in the Meiji Era. During this transformation, one of the most important decisions which determined the following course of the Japanese bureaucracy in the Modern Era was made. That was the separation between power and authority by adopting the governmental system of Imperial Germany (monarchic constitutionalism). According to the Bismarckian system, the prime Minster was responsible only to the king, not to a parliament, and also the king held the control of the army. It was purposely designed to give power first to Bismarck and then to the Prussian and Imperial bureaucracy. Under this system, the king kept authority but with no power attached. Actual power came to the bureaucracy. The Meiji leaders (bureaucrats) found this system preferable to the other models in the course of their modernization.[1]
There were two things needed to be dealt with in the early stage of modernization. One was how to subdue the growing criticism against their monopolistic power over state affairs. Most of the Meiji leaders were the former samurai from two feudal domains: Satsuma and Choshu, who were mainly responsible for the successful Meiji Restoration. The other was how to achieve an early revision of the unequal treaties which the imperial Western powers forced on Japan. Such revision required the Meiji leaders to demonstrate Japan's readiness and capability to achieve modernization.
Under these circumstances, it was inevitable to develop a political system that would be appealing to the Western powers, which resulted in the birth of political parties and the establishment of a parliament (National Diet). With this development, there was an increasing demand from the party politicians for power sharing with the state bureaucrats.
Subduing such a demand, however, was not necessarily formidable for the bureaucrats for the following three reasons. First, the state bureaucracy preceded the Meiji constitution, the Diet, and the formation of political parties by about five to twenty years, giving the bureaucrats advantageous background in dealing with the political situation. Second, in the process of industrialization, even though the political parties increased their power by gaining support from the zaibatsu (the financial cliques) and the other propertied interest groups, there was no grass root support for them due to bureaucratic control over the enlargement of the franchise. In 1890, only males who were over 25 years old and paid 15 yen or above as direct tax were given the right to vote, which was only 1.3 percent of Japan's population (39.9 million).[2] Over the course of history, there had been some improvement. But the voting right was limited only to a small portion of the population until the 1946 new election law removed all the restrictions over the franchise, allowing all men and women who were twenty or above to vote. Third, there was the domination of one house of the Diet--the House of Peers--by the bureaucracy. It was the bureaucracy which could control the direct imperial appointment to the Peers for its retired members.
These conditions made it possible for the bureaucrats to conduct successfully their modernization plan throughout the Meiji Era, the Taisho Era (1912-1925), and the early Showa Era (1926-1989) until the arrival of world economic and political instability in the early 1930s and the following devastating World War II. They proved their capability in leading the nation. By the early 1900s, with the leadership of the bureaucrats, Japan had succeeded in revising the unequal treaties with the Western nations and established its status as one of the major powers in the world stage with its successful industrialization and militarization.
The Second World War and its outcomes, however, had shattered such bureaucrats' success. They brought drastic changes in Japan's institutional structures, ending, under the guidance of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), all the advantageous conditions the bureaucrats had in governing, except the unchanging cultural norms of Japanese society. For example, when the Emperor lost his divinity, they lost their special status as the officials of the Emperor (kan) who were not constrained by law. Under the new election law of 1946, they also lost their controlling power over the franchise. In an institutional fashion, they had to deal with something unprecedented--a truly democratized society, which was brought about literally overnight. The precipitate rise of power in political parties became inevitable. Furthermore, the public mood was understandably antigovernment. In short, in the beginning of the postwar era, the bureaucrats found themselves in quite a different ball game from that in the prewar era.
Despite all these changes, however, the bureaucrats have managed to stay in power, achieving astonishing success in rebuilding Japan. How could this be possible? There are two things to be considered in order to answer this question.
First, as Japan had faced in the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration, there was a strong sense of urgency for having an early recovery of the economic and political structures from the war destruction. Such urgency and the emerging communist threat from the Soviet Union forced SCAP's attempt for reforming the bureaucracy to fall short of anything drastic. SCAP reformed the Japanese bureaucracy only partially, purging only the war bureaucrats. The economic bureaucrats were left intact. Chalmers Johnson claims that the power of the economic bureaucrats was even enhanced when vacuum was created in the power structure by the elimination of the military and the transformation of the zaibatsu into a much weaker body by SCAP. Although this claim is questionable, it is clear that the bureaucrats found themselves once again in a position to play a major role in rebuilding Japan.
Second, one needs to give an observation as to how the institutional changes took place throughout the modern Japanese history. From the Meiji Restoration to the "Showa Democratization" in the late 1940s, or even up to today when Japan is under pressure from the West to force Japan to reform its economic system, all of the drastic changes that have taken place during the Modern Era have been made under pressure from the outside--”gaiatsu.” Throughout the history of Modern Japan, there has been nothing revolutionary caused by a public uprising. Starting from the Meiji Restoration, as stated earlier, Japan was literally forced to open itself by the Western powers. Although Japan was responsible for whatever decisions it made in the following events, it is undeniable that gaiatsu had been one of the key elements in Japan's decision making. In the Showa Democratization, one sees a similar trend. The Constitution of 1947 was conferred from above just as was the Meiji constitution of 1889. For the first time and at least in an institutional sense, a truly democratic government was established. It was, however, not something acquired through public demand. It was forced upon Japanese society by SCAP. Although the public accepted it, this notion that the government was not their own creation naturally brought a lack of public attachment to the new government.
An important implication one sees here is that, although these changes that have taken place in the postwar era were indeed drastic, in terms of the separation between power and authority, there was hardly any change. The only change taking place was the transference of authority from the monarch to the Diet. With regard to power, the bureaucracy was still in control. Even though there was enlarged public participation in politics due to the end of the restrictions over the franchise and the considerable degree of social mobilization achieved in the labor, industrial, and farming sectors, the lack of public attachment to the government hardly brought any significant grass root support to the career politicians which might have given them the controlling power in Japanese politics. Thus, along with the urgency of the economic recovery, public indifference to the government put the bureaucrats again in position to carry out the economic and political reconstruction of Japanese society almost single-handedly, as they did during the Meiji Era.
Is the Japanese Bureaucracy Coercive?
As one can see from the above discussion, it is more valid to say that the continuous control of power in the economical and political stages of Japanese society by the bureaucracy is not so much due to something they had control of but rather due to something they did not have much control over. This creates room in the public mind to tolerate the way the Japanese bureaucracy functions. Accordingly, in policy implementation, the bureaucrats are not as coercive and influential as Chalmers Johnson and the other Japan bashers claim them to be.
In order to support his argument that the Japanese bureaucracy is coercive and unusually influential, Johnson raises two points. One is the overwhelming percentage of bureaucracy-drafted legislation in comparison with the scarcity of member bills introduced in the Diet. The other is the perpetuation and strengthening of the prewar pattern of bureaucratic dominance by the influence of former bureaucrats within the Diet.
According to Johnson, 91 percent of all laws enacted by the Diet under the Meiji Constitution originated in the executive branch, not in the Diet.[3] Similarly, in the first Diet under the new constitution, May 20 to December 9, 1947, the cabinet introduced 161 bills and saw 150 enacted, while members of the House of Representatives introduced only 20 bills and saw 15 enacted.[4] Johnson depicts this Japanese bureaucratic dominance on legislation as if it were happening only in Japan.
As John Owen Haley points out in his book, Authority without Power: Law and the Japanese Paradox, contrary to Johnson's argument, bureaucratic dominance over legislation is not a peculiar occurrence seen only in Japan. It is quite a common practice among nations with parliamentary systems such as the United Kingdom, Germany, or France. For example, in the United Kingdom, the administrative department predominantly prepares and drafts legislation, and a very small proportion of the work of Parliament comes from private member bills.[5] Similarly, both in Germany and France, the bureaucrats dominate legislation by originating about 75 percent of all legislations.[6]
With regard to the influence of former bureaucrats within the Diet, the bureaucrats indeed seemed to strengthen their influence by their participation in the Diet. Particularly, in 1949 when Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, a former high-ranking bureaucrat of the ministry of Foreign Affairs, established in his third government the bureaucratic leadership structure (kanryo shudo taisei), bureaucratic dominance in politics seemed to be perpetuated.[7] During the postwar period, as represented by Yoshida, most of the prime ministers in Japan started their careers as bureaucrats, indicating that such perpetuation could be real.
However, contrary to Johnson's claim, the postwar constitutional order has actually reduced bureaucratic influence. Except in the 1949 and 1952 elections, in which a substantial number of former government officials entered the Diet, 37 and 48 respectively, the political gains by the ex-bureaucrats in any postwar election have been rather insignificant. They exceeded no more than a dozen in number of the seats in the Diet.[8] Also, as well illustrated in the fact that, just in the last two decades, career politicians such as Kakuei Tanaka, Noboru Takeshita, or Toshiki Kaifu became Prime Ministers without any prior administrative experience, professional politicians have actually enhanced their political power with strong bases of local support.