[Today's Newspaper] from [The New York Times]
[Asia Pacific]
Fresh Off Victory, Japanese Party Flexes Muscle
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: September 2, 2009
TOKYO — Moving quickly to fulfill an election promise, Japan’s newly victorious Democratic Party has begun its battle to rein in the nation’s powerful bureaucracy by challenging a seemingly mundane appointment at the consumer affairs agency.
The unusually heated fight began on Tuesday, when Japan’s lame-duck prime minister, Taro Aso, whose long-governing Liberal Democratic Party was routed in Sunday’s election, ignored Democratic objections to appoint a retired Land Ministry official.
The Democrats immediately criticized Mr. Aso for rushing to fill the post with a former bureaucrat, a common practice here that has allowed Tokyo’s central ministries to exert broad influence over government. On Wednesday, the national daily Asahi Shimbun quoted a top party official, Tetsuro Fukuyama, as saying that the Democrats may reverse the appointment when they formally take power later this month.
Controlling the bureaucracy was the signature campaign pledge of the Democrats, and one that found overwhelming support among voters fed up with the nation’s insider-driven politics. But many former bureaucrats and political analysts are doubtful that the Democrats, as the inexperienced former opposition party, can make much headway against a force that has run this country for decades.
“I wish the Democratic Party the best of luck,” said Hiro Kishi, a professor of public policy at Tokyo’s Keio University, a former Trade Ministry bureaucrat who has himself battled bureaucrats. “But I am afraid that they will fail.”
If so, they will not be the first to battle in vain against the elite career officials at the nation’s central ministries, who write the laws and divvy up government budgets in backroom negotiations.
For most of their postwar rule of Japan, the Liberal Democrats were content to let the bureaucracy steer the nation, which they did spectacularly well during the economic miracle. But recent prime ministers have tried to curtail the bureaucracy’s powers after corruption scandals and a failure to end the nation’s long stagnation made it the target of growing populist ire.
This anger helped drive Sunday’s landslide victory by the Democrats. But while the Democrats may win some high-profile battles like the one this week, political analysts and former bureaucrats warn that they may end up losing the war.
For one, they say, the bureaucrats have an overwhelming advantage in experience and know-how, from running the nation literally for generations.
Of the 308 Democrats elected on Sunday, 143 are first-time lawmakers; of the rest, only a handful have ever held a cabinet post. What is more, they have few outside sources of help. Japan does not have the United States’ vast number of research groups with their legions of policy experts. And unlike on Capitol Hill, Japanese lawmakers also lack the large staff of aides knowledgeable on policy issues.
This makes it hard for lawmakers to shake their dependence on bureaucrats, who are often the only people who know where in the stacks of paperwork to find important information, and how to navigate laws and regulations to get things done.
This greater experience also extends to the techniques of political combat, say political experts and former bureaucrats.
Mr. Kishi, the professor, said that when he was as an adviser in the government of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a reformist, bureaucrats in the Financial Services Agency did everything they could to block efforts to force banks to undertake an expensive bad-loan cleanup.
He said officials hid information, went behind his back to lobby sympathetic lawmakers and even leaked damaging stories to the press.
“They tried their best to stop us,” Mr. Kishi said. “They’ll fight much harder against the Democrats” since their own interests are at stake.
The Democrats have vowed to shift key powers, including drawing up national budgets and filling top bureaucratic posts, into a new National Strategy Agency, which will answer to the prime minister. The party also promised to shrink the number of career bureaucrats and to bar retired ministry officials from taking comfortable jobs in government or the private sector, a practice known as “amakudari,” or “descent from heaven.”
In the weeks before Sunday’s election, ministries rushed to fill amakudari spots ahead of the widely forecast Democratic victory. The Land Ministry, which manages public works, put a retiring official in charge of Japan’s housing finance agency, while a retiring Education Ministry bureaucrat became an executive director at the Tokyo National Museum.
This angered Democrats, setting the stage for this week’s fight. On Monday, the Democratic leader and presumptive next prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, signaled his displeasure at Mr. Aso’s plans to name a former bureaucrat to fill the top job at the newly created consumer agency.
“Given that the Democratic Party is going to take over government, why rush to establish the agency and make personnel appointments?” Mr. Hatoyama asked reporters.
Mr. Aso went ahead anyway the following day with appointing Shunichi Uchida, who also served as a vice minister in the Cabinet Office. When Mr. Fukuyama responded by threatening to remove Mr. Uchida, major Japanese newspapers pronounced the dispute the first battle between politicians and bureaucrats.
The fight seems to have fed a growing mood of bureaucrat-bashing. Besides Mr. Uchida, several ministry officials who long worked behind the scenes have suddenly come under unheard of public scrutiny. Newspapers have begun criticizing top bureaucrats by name, while television news programs show footage of them humbly ascending Nagatacho, Japan’s Capitol Hill, to answer the summons of Democratic lawmakers.
Still, in the end, political analysts and former bureaucrats say, the Democrats may be forced to quietly make peace with the bureaucracy, to get its help in achieving other parts of their agenda — like strengthening Japan’s social safety net and cutting wasteful spending — to show voters before upper house elections next July.
The Democrats already seem to be toning down their rhetoric. Mr. Hatoyama no longer says he will fire every bureaucrat above the level of agency chief, as he first vowed in February. On Monday, he even backed away from his party’s campaign slogan, which called for a “post bureaucrat” Japan, saying that what he meant was getting beyond an over-reliance on bureaucrats.
“The Liberal Democrats needed the bureaucracy to run the country,” said Masayasu Murakami, a former Finance Ministry bureaucrat who is now executive director of the Japan Forum on International Relations, a Japanese research group. “The Democrats will realize they need the bureaucracy, too.”
[Asia Pacific]
Fresh Off Victory, Japanese Party Flexes Muscle
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: September 2, 2009
TOKYO — Moving quickly to fulfill an election promise, Japan’s newly victorious Democratic Party has begun its battle to rein in the nation’s powerful bureaucracy by challenging a seemingly mundane appointment at the consumer affairs agency.
The unusually heated fight began on Tuesday, when Japan’s lame-duck prime minister, Taro Aso, whose long-governing Liberal Democratic Party was routed in Sunday’s election, ignored Democratic objections to appoint a retired Land Ministry official.
The Democrats immediately criticized Mr. Aso for rushing to fill the post with a former bureaucrat, a common practice here that has allowed Tokyo’s central ministries to exert broad influence over government. On Wednesday, the national daily Asahi Shimbun quoted a top party official, Tetsuro Fukuyama, as saying that the Democrats may reverse the appointment when they formally take power later this month.
Controlling the bureaucracy was the signature campaign pledge of the Democrats, and one that found overwhelming support among voters fed up with the nation’s insider-driven politics. But many former bureaucrats and political analysts are doubtful that the Democrats, as the inexperienced former opposition party, can make much headway against a force that has run this country for decades.
“I wish the Democratic Party the best of luck,” said Hiro Kishi, a professor of public policy at Tokyo’s Keio University, a former Trade Ministry bureaucrat who has himself battled bureaucrats. “But I am afraid that they will fail.”
If so, they will not be the first to battle in vain against the elite career officials at the nation’s central ministries, who write the laws and divvy up government budgets in backroom negotiations.
For most of their postwar rule of Japan, the Liberal Democrats were content to let the bureaucracy steer the nation, which they did spectacularly well during the economic miracle. But recent prime ministers have tried to curtail the bureaucracy’s powers after corruption scandals and a failure to end the nation’s long stagnation made it the target of growing populist ire.
This anger helped drive Sunday’s landslide victory by the Democrats. But while the Democrats may win some high-profile battles like the one this week, political analysts and former bureaucrats warn that they may end up losing the war.
For one, they say, the bureaucrats have an overwhelming advantage in experience and know-how, from running the nation literally for generations.
Of the 308 Democrats elected on Sunday, 143 are first-time lawmakers; of the rest, only a handful have ever held a cabinet post. What is more, they have few outside sources of help. Japan does not have the United States’ vast number of research groups with their legions of policy experts. And unlike on Capitol Hill, Japanese lawmakers also lack the large staff of aides knowledgeable on policy issues.
This makes it hard for lawmakers to shake their dependence on bureaucrats, who are often the only people who know where in the stacks of paperwork to find important information, and how to navigate laws and regulations to get things done.
This greater experience also extends to the techniques of political combat, say political experts and former bureaucrats.
Mr. Kishi, the professor, said that when he was as an adviser in the government of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a reformist, bureaucrats in the Financial Services Agency did everything they could to block efforts to force banks to undertake an expensive bad-loan cleanup.
He said officials hid information, went behind his back to lobby sympathetic lawmakers and even leaked damaging stories to the press.
“They tried their best to stop us,” Mr. Kishi said. “They’ll fight much harder against the Democrats” since their own interests are at stake.
The Democrats have vowed to shift key powers, including drawing up national budgets and filling top bureaucratic posts, into a new National Strategy Agency, which will answer to the prime minister. The party also promised to shrink the number of career bureaucrats and to bar retired ministry officials from taking comfortable jobs in government or the private sector, a practice known as “amakudari,” or “descent from heaven.”
In the weeks before Sunday’s election, ministries rushed to fill amakudari spots ahead of the widely forecast Democratic victory. The Land Ministry, which manages public works, put a retiring official in charge of Japan’s housing finance agency, while a retiring Education Ministry bureaucrat became an executive director at the Tokyo National Museum.
This angered Democrats, setting the stage for this week’s fight. On Monday, the Democratic leader and presumptive next prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, signaled his displeasure at Mr. Aso’s plans to name a former bureaucrat to fill the top job at the newly created consumer agency.
“Given that the Democratic Party is going to take over government, why rush to establish the agency and make personnel appointments?” Mr. Hatoyama asked reporters.
Mr. Aso went ahead anyway the following day with appointing Shunichi Uchida, who also served as a vice minister in the Cabinet Office. When Mr. Fukuyama responded by threatening to remove Mr. Uchida, major Japanese newspapers pronounced the dispute the first battle between politicians and bureaucrats.
The fight seems to have fed a growing mood of bureaucrat-bashing. Besides Mr. Uchida, several ministry officials who long worked behind the scenes have suddenly come under unheard of public scrutiny. Newspapers have begun criticizing top bureaucrats by name, while television news programs show footage of them humbly ascending Nagatacho, Japan’s Capitol Hill, to answer the summons of Democratic lawmakers.
Still, in the end, political analysts and former bureaucrats say, the Democrats may be forced to quietly make peace with the bureaucracy, to get its help in achieving other parts of their agenda — like strengthening Japan’s social safety net and cutting wasteful spending — to show voters before upper house elections next July.
The Democrats already seem to be toning down their rhetoric. Mr. Hatoyama no longer says he will fire every bureaucrat above the level of agency chief, as he first vowed in February. On Monday, he even backed away from his party’s campaign slogan, which called for a “post bureaucrat” Japan, saying that what he meant was getting beyond an over-reliance on bureaucrats.
“The Liberal Democrats needed the bureaucracy to run the country,” said Masayasu Murakami, a former Finance Ministry bureaucrat who is now executive director of the Japan Forum on International Relations, a Japanese research group. “The Democrats will realize they need the bureaucracy, too.”
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