TRIUMPH OF THE BUREAUCRATS

Japan: An autocracy ruled by bureaucrats (Katsuo Hiizumi, 6/09/03, Asia Times)

In Japan, politically unaccountable bureaucrats manipulate those who are politically accountable. Politicians do whatever the bureaucrats tell them to do.

There are numerous other examples illustrating this peculiar structure. Japan has a large number of mega-banks on the verge of bankruptcy. It is not an exaggeration to say that management failures were predominantly caused by the bureaucrats in the Finance Ministry who provided "administrative guidance" to incompetent managers, often themselves retired bureaucrats. Those bureaucrats paid special attention exclusively to the expansion of the banking system - reminding one of the World War II Imperial Navy leaders and their faith in battleship militarism. The Yamato was the biggest battleship in the world at the time and was ultimately blown to pieces by US air attacks in the sea near Okinawa. At present, Japanese mega-banks are, to varying degrees, the equivalents of the Yamato and have every chance of suffering the same fate.

And take a look at what the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Education and Science are promoting. Widely known as "education reform", the policy can, on the contrary, be taken as "education destruction" in practice. It was agreed that there was too much pressure on primary-school students. So now, thanks to officious bureaucrats, Japanese primary education is being devastated. Teachers are forced to use 3 for the ratio for calculating the circumference of a circle instead of the previously used 3.14, a more correct approximation of pi. Making too much of English-language schooling produces children who are unable to speak, write and read proper Japanese or English. Similarly in higher education, universities are forced to merge and teaching and research plans are drawn up centrally, all in the interest of budgetary efficiency and "fairer", more uniform national standards. They
put an emphasis on the forced integration of a number of national and public universities and assess academic research plans submitted by teaching staff in order to draw up a budget. We are facing bureaucratically imposed educational totalitarianism. The study of philosophy or history, the basic issues in the humanities, is becoming impossible. Such subjects are "impractical".

Japan - after numerous failed efforts at reform - remains filled with politicians who are only interested in power and their ability to hand out concessions to stay in power. Bureaucrats rule. Japan is neither a democratic nor a liberal state. It is an autocratic state ruled by unaccountable bureaucrats manipulating unthinking politicians buying off a dwindling number of voters participating in elections.

Ezra Pound has this one covered, The Passport Nuisance (The Nation, 11/30/1927):

What, gentle reader, are bureaucrats? Hired janitors who think they own the whole building. The French, being more given to speculation than we, have recently produced several students of bureaucracy, several authors who have studied the fonctionnaire as one studies other poisonous insects, and even tried to explain and account for his actions, his inhibitions. The result is not encouraging. One can sympathize with a tyrant, led on by some megalomania or some dream of ultimate benefit to the race or some decoration of his own personal glory; one can sympathize with the crook who does it for excitement, or the poor devil who steals to feed himself or his family; but for the rond-de-cuir who sits in an office devising, in perfect safety, some inane means of annoying others, one can have no tolerance.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 11, 2003 12:50 AM