A Big Bang for Japanese Mandarins?

The Civil Service

Reform of 2014

Ko Mishima (2017) A Big Bang for Japanese Mandarins? The Civil Service Reform of 2014,
International Journal of Public Administration, 40:13, 1101-1113, DOI:
10.1080/01900692.2016.1242615

ABSTRACT
In 2014, the largest reform since the US postwar occupation was enacted in Japanese civil
service. It was designed as the final step of the two-decade-long effort to restructure the
“1955 System,” that is, the politico-administrative system developed under the Liberal
Democratic Party’s hegemony. Its purpose was to remold Japan’s independent-minded
bureaucrats into the elected officials’ obedient servants. Unfortunately, the reform is unlikely
to deliver expected results. The failure’s major reason concerns the fact that Japanese
bureaucracy’s unusually large role in policymaking paradoxically discourages elected
officials to use their major reining tool against it, namely, appointive power.

Keywords:

Bureaucratic autonomycivil service reformJapanpoliticizationsenior civil service

Previous article Next article

In April 2014, a major revision was made to the National Public Service Law (NPSL, Kokka
Komuin Ho), the basic law to organize Japanese civil service, under Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe’s leadership. It is fair to say that it is the largest civil service reform since the US
occupation reform in the late 1940s. The reform’s noteworthy feature concerns its expansive
scope that goes beyond the usual realm of public administration. Of course, like typical civil
service reforms, it is targeted at the bureaucracy and aims to improve the latter’s
organizational performance.Further, it tries to benefit from recent trends in public-sector
reform. However, at its core, the reform is a vital component of the historic political
experiment that intends to transform the structure of Japanese national politics fundamentally.
Concretely, it is planned as the final step of the two-decade-long endeavor to restructure the
“1955 System,” namely, the politico-administrative arrangements established under the
lengthy dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).1 Indeed, when Abe launched this
reform drive in 2006, he associated it with his grandiose slogan “Departure from the Postwar
Regime.” As far as the reform’s original intent is concerned, he made no exaggeration.

The reform’s main purpose is to enhance political control over the bureaucracy. In the 1955
System, Japanese mandarins held a high degree of autonomy and enjoyed sizeable discretion
in policymaking. Their strength owed much to their distinctive organizational behavior called
“ministerial loyalism” in this article, which arose from the “kyaria system,” that is, the
unique personnel policy for Japanese senior civil service. Thus, reformers wanted to remake
Japan’s independent-minded bureaucrats into elected officials’ diligent subordinates by
revising the kyaria system fundamentally. This article proceeds as follows. The following
section presents an overall picture of the political reform movement in the last two decades
and identifies this civil service reform’s locus there. The second section tells how ministerial
loyalism contributes to bureaucratic power, and the third section elucidates how the kyaria
system causes ministerial loyalism. The fourth section examines the reform’s underlying
motives, and the fifth section reviews its contents in detail. The final section provides an
initial assessment of the reform. There, I argue that the reform is likely to be a failure—the
kyaria system will probably continue and the outlook and power of Japanese mandarins will
remain unaltered.

Restructuring of the 1955 system

As Figure 1 illustrates the modern representative democracy functions on the duality of
delegation–accountability relationships. First, voters delegate their sovereign authority for
governance to elected officials/political parties based on the latter’s electoral platforms. Next,
elected officials/political parties sub-delegate their entrusted authority further to the
bureaucracy, while they define the overall direction of public policies by undertaking
legislative actions and filling leadership positions in the cabinet. In the late 1980s, Japanese
reformers began to claim that in the 1955 System, both delegation–accountability
relationships became obscure, making the government’s programs fail to serve the voters’
interests properly.2 And their movement has eventually resulted in three major institutional
reforms: the electoral reform of 1994, the Central Government Reform (CGR) of 2001, and
the civil service reform of 2014.

Figure 1. Major institutional reforms to restructure the 1955 system.

Display full size

There is no doubt that despite the LDP’s continued electoral victories, open and competitive
elections were generally conducted in the 1955 System (Pempel, 1990; Sartori, 1976).3
Surely, there were problems of malapportionment and corruptions, but they were no more
serious than in other advanced democracies. Yet, reformers asserted that the conduct of open
and competitive elections would be merely one of the necessary conditions for the proper
functional delegation–accountability relationship between voters and elected
officials/political parties, but never be its sufficient condition. Specifically, it was pointed out
that the LDP’s electoral dominance deprived voters of opportunities to choose between
competing policy visions and prevented them from signaling their policy preference to
legislators meaningfully. Indeed, in the 1955 System, the weight of policy debates tended to
be small in electoral campaigns—whereas opposition parties’ candidates were fragmented
and clung to unrealistic campaign promises, LDP’s ones mobilized votes by trumpeting their
ability of constituency services including pork from the national government (Curtis, 1971).
The LDP government’s premiership saw frequent changes, but they were caused by power
struggles among factional bosses and had little to do with policymaking (Curtis, 1988;
Thayer, 1969).

The electoral reform of 1994 intended to rejuvenate the delegation–accountability

relationship between voters and elected officials/political parties. Concretely, it aimed to
create a competitive two-party system after the Britain’s Westminster model. By creating a
new large party that could replace the LDP as the ruling party, it planned to enable voters to
choose between competing policy alternatives and make it possible for them to punish the
ruling politicians, if necessary, by switching support between two major parties. Furthermore,
by bringing Japanese democracy closer to the majoritarian rule, it sought to enhance the
cabinet’s power so as to promote policy changes. Based on the “Duverger’s Law,” which
states that the use of single-member districts is likely to cause the two-party system
(Duverger, 1954, pp. 216-228), reformers chose to introduce a mix of single-member and
proportional representation districts to replace old multimember districts.4 As a result of this
electoral reform, Japanese party politics has metamorphosed (Rosenbluth & Thies, 2010).
Most importantly, the newly launched Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)5 grew to become the
LDP’s genuine rival, and the dynamics of partisan competition came to resemble the two-
party system. In September 2009, the DPJ handsomely defeated the LDP in the lower house
election and started its rule that lasted until December 2012.

After the 1994 electoral reform, reformers focused on the delegation–accountability

relationship between elected officials/political parties and bureaucrats. In the 1955 System,
administrators possessed considerable autonomy and retained large influence over
policymaking. The Japanese bureaucracy is known for political activism (Muramatsu, 1994;
Shindo, 2001). Informed by the tradition of state-led development in the prewar era, Japanese
bureaucrats think of themselves as more than the technical expert who implements decisions
made by elected officials. They tend to believe that they can define public interests in their
own right and take new initiatives independently. In the 1955 System, the boundary between
politics and administration was not distinguishable. Of course, LDP politicians never blinded
themselves to bureaucratic activities. They ran a monitoring mechanism anchored in the party
committee called the Policy Research Council (PRC). The LDP’s rule stipulates that before
its cabinet submits bills to the legislature, the PRC must scrutinize them for approval. The
PRC’s examination, named the preliminary review, was controlled by so-called “zoku” (tribe)
parliamentarians, that is, senior- and middle-level LDP politicians holding experiences and
expertise in respective policy areas (Curtis, 1988; Inoguchi & Iwai, 1987; Krauss &
Pekkanen, 2011). Zoku politicians’ scrutiny guaranteed that the LDP could set basic
parameters of public programs. As a result of the party’s reliance on clientelistic methods in
electoral mobilization, however, zoku politicians were more interested in delivering pork and
regulatory favors to special interests rather than working on programmatic agendas for
general interests. Given that the design of regulatory details and execution of specific
spending programs fall under the exclusive domain of bureaucratic authority, this meant that
zoku politicians desired symbiotic relationships with administrators. Consequently, the
bureaucracy could still secure substantial discretion in policymaking.6

Since the early 1990s, the bureaucracy’s traditional autonomy and strength have come to be
criticized for the reasons to be detailed in the fourth section. In response, reformers have
sought to strengthen politicians’ oversight over the bureaucracy with a view to constraining
the latter to work only as the former’s obedient servant. Besides, this move has also been the
1994 electoral reform’s extension. As explained, the reform wanted to reinforce the cabinet’s
position in party politics, and to supplement to it, parallel enhancement was requested in the
administrative sphere. As the first step, the CGR was implemented in 2001 to bolster the
cabinet’s administrative functions and increase the number of political appointees sent from
the parliament to ministries.7 Then, the current civil service reform was planned as the
succeeding step. In the summer of 2007, Prime Minister Abe organized the “Discussion
Group for Comprehensive Reform of the Civil Service System,” a committee of non-
governmental exerts, for reform planning, while the parliament passed an initial revision to
the NPSL. Abe resigned soon, but the following Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda inherited the
Group and made the parliament enact the Basic Law for Reform of the Civil Service System
in June 2008, which mandated the government to prepare a reform blueprint based on the
Group’s recommendations. In 2009–2012, though, three cabinets successively failed to
legislate their bills to implement the Group’s recommendations due to the divided legislature.
Finally, in April 2014, the parliament passed the reform bill prepared by the returning Prime
Minister Abe.

Hood and Lodge (2006)’s framework of Public Service Bargains (PSB) can illuminate the
meaning of the 2014 civil service reform (and the CGR) from a comparative perspective.8
According to the PSB framework, politicians and public servants enter the deals whose
components are often based on implicit understandings. The deals determine what kinds of
loyalties and competencies public servants offer to politicians and what kinds of reward they
receive in exchange. Hood and Lodge find that across countries, the PSBs have two basic
types: trustee bargains and agency bargains. In trustee-type PSBs, administrators not only
follow orders from elected officials, but also retain a domain of autonomous actions, so that
they can independently judge public interests if necessary. Elected politicians cannot
manipulate their tenure and reward at will. By contrast, in agency-type PSBs, the principal–
agent relationship as prescribed by agency theory shapes the interactions between public
servants and politicians. Public servants are supposed to devote themselves to fulfilling
politicians’ wills and have no capacity to deem public interests independently. Obviously, the
aforementioned image of Japanese bureaucrats fits in the trustee type. Precisely, it falls under
the sub-type that Hood and Lodge call as the “tutelary” variant. In this sub-type, public
servants’ moral, cultural, and technocratic qualities legitimatize their status as the trustee. As
will be detailed later, Japan’s elite bureaucrats traditionally won the esteem of commoners,
thanks to their excellent educational credentials. They were the architect of prewar
modernization and postwar economic success and continue to remain as the main source of
technocratic knowledge and skills in policymaking until now. Under the kyaria system, their
appointment is quarantined from political control and their promotion is strictly based on
seniority. The 2014 civil service reform wants to rewrite this traditional trustee-type PSB into
a new agency-type PSB—especially, a “directed-agency” bargain wherein bureaucrats are
controlled by political principals on a daily basis—by dissolving the kyaria system.

Ministerial loyalism as the foundation of bureaucratic

power
One key secret of the Japanese bureaucracy’s power concerns its role of working as the pivot
in policymaking processes. The system of Japanese national policymaking is centered around
the bureaucracy, and the latter covers such a wide range of tasks that cannot be observed in
Western democracies (Mishima, 2015). Most notably, it holds primary responsibility for two
crucial duties in policymaking: (1) preparation of policy proposals and (2) political
negotiations. Due to the limited size of policy staffs at the parliament and political parties, the
bureaucracy is usually the only source of technical knowledge and expertise for elected
officials. Thus, legislators and political executives rely on bureaucrats for advice, allowing
the latter to monopolize the task of drafting policy proposals including bills. In fact, the so-
called “cabinet bills,” that is, the bills prepared by ministries, dominate Japanese legislation.
On the other hand, the bureaucracy also works as the hub of negotiations to hummer out
political consensus among related actors. It consults with interest groups through such routes
as “deliberation councils” (shingikai) and trade associations (Schwartz, 1998; Tilton, 1996).
In collaboration with zoku politicians, it talks to LDP’s leaders and rank-and-filers to build
internal accord inside the ruling party. Its consultation reaches even opposition parties if
necessary. In sum, Japanese administrators can secure abundant opportunities to rig
policymaking in their favor while carrying out two vital functions: the lead drafter of policy
proposals and chief negotiator for political consensus building.

At practical levels, undertaking proposal preparations and political negotiations concurrently

is a highly demanding job. The two tasks are very different in their nature. Moreover,
bureaucrats are required to connect the two tasks organically—they must adjust proposals in
line with the evolving status of political negotiations. The fact that the Japanese bureaucracy
has been performing this difficult job smoothly attests that it possesses quite high ability for
concerted organizational behavior. What enables such strong organizational performance?
The most important reason concerns the Japanese bureaucracy’s distinctive pattern of
organizational behavior that I call “ministerial loyalism” here.9 In ministries, ministers and
other political executives tend to be the figurehead that rubberstamps what the bureaucracy
prepares for them. In the 1955 System, the tenure of a minister typically ran for only a year,
making him act as the “guest” in his ministry. On the other hand, senior- and middle-level
bureaucrats, who actually control ministerial decision-making, hold very strong commitment
to their ministry’s organizational interests. The focus of their loyalty is on the ministry to
which they belong—it is on neither the bureaucracy as a whole nor a sub-ministerial
organization like bureaus.10 That also implies that they do not identify with political parties
including the LDP. Besides, they share similar professional outlooks and policy preferences
with ministerial colleagues and are mutually bound by a strong feeling of solidarity. Thus, in
each ministry, there is a highly cohesive group of senior- and middle-level officials intensely
committed to bureaucratic organizational interests and informed by the same policy
philosophy, and this bureaucratic cohort collectively undertakes ministerial decision-making.
Ministerial loyalism means such organizational behavior of Japanese ministerial
bureaucracies. It is the key to efficient bureaucratic actions in policymaking. Surely,
departmentalism is a universal phenomenon. It is true that in any country, bureaucrats have
some dedication to departmental interests and often share a policy stance with departmental
colleagues. However, the unity of Japanese ministerial bureaucracies is clearly outstanding,
and many observers find it as the defining characteristic of Japanese officialdom.11

Concretely, how does ministerial loyalism make it possible for ministerial bureaucracies to
act as the competent mover in policymaking? First, ministerial loyalism creates a unique
pattern of internal burden sharing that allows mandarins to efficiently accomplish their two
primary tasks: proposal preparations and political negotiations. In Japanese ministries,
proposal preparations follow the bottom-up processes (Omori, 1995; Tamaru, 2000). In terms
of hierarchical structure, a Japanese ministry (sho) is composed of five to seventeen bureaus
(kyoku), and a bureau is subdivided into divisions (ka). It is this last middle-level
administrative unit, ka, which takes the lead in preparing policy proposals including bills.
Each division has clearly demarcated jurisdictions and is responsible for implementation of
individual laws. For a given program, the chief of the responsible division directs his staffers
to draft a proposal. Contrastingly, the role of senior managers—the administrative vice-
minister (i.e., the top bureaucrat staying at the apex of the ministerial bureaucracy), the
bureau chief, and councilors—is markedly reactive in the drafting of proposals. What they
usually do is passively conduct quality control over what their junior officials have produced.
They rarely involve themselves in detailed work at the division level. Instead, senior
bureaucrats devote themselves to political negotiations (Muramatsu, 1994; Tamaru, 2000).
Importantly, this division of labor—proposal preparations for middle-level administrators and
political negotiations for senior administrators—becomes possible, thanks to ministerial
loyalism. Ministerial loyalism assures that senior- and middle-level officials share the same
understanding about organizational interests and preferred policy orientations. Thus, being
confident that draft proposals submitted from lower levels will meet their expectation, senior
bureaucrats can concentrate on political negotiations without bothering to monitor juniors
(Muramatsu, 1994).

Second, ministerial loyalism facilitates senior administrators’ negotiations with other political
actors. As explained above, inside the LDP, zoku parliamentarians play the central role in
sanctioning policy proposals prepared by the bureaucracy. In reality, zoku parliamentarians
keep only weak unity among themselves and often act individually, so senior bureaucrats
usually need to consult with each of them separately. Senior bureaucrats need to speak also to
other players such as cabinet leaders, party managers, interested LDP rank-and-filers, and
pressure groups. This reality means that the ministerial bureaucracy must negotiate
simultaneously with a large number of actors to build up the necessary political agreement. In
fact, multiple officials—the administrative vice-minister, the bureau chief, councilors, and the
division chief, along with various staffers of the minister’s secretariat—share the task of
political negotiations, and their efficient internal coordination is a vital prerequisite for
successful consensus building. Notably, ministerial loyalism reduces transaction costs for
such internal coordination. It implants high mutual trust among ministerial peers, making
them willing to share information. Their collective understanding about organizational
interests helps them consistently present a single position toward many different players even
in the midst of evolving political negotiations.

Third, as mentioned above, Japanese bureaucrats have a strong propensity for political
activism. Their activism is typically underpinned by unique policy paradigms that ministries
have nurtured over many years. For example, the prewar Ministry of Interior and its postwar
remnants have endorsed the so-called “shepherd-ship philosophy” (bokuminkan tetusgaku),
which claims that the state has paternalistic responsibility for guiding ignorant commoners,
and have tried to “mold” Japanese society on their conservative ideal (Garon, 1997; Nakano,
2013). Officials at the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry (METI) are convinced of
the indispensability of state-guidance in economic development and implement various
interventionist programs for industrial promotion (Johnson, 1982). Importantly, ministerial
loyalism is the vehicle of ministries’ unique policy paradigms—it assists in transmitting
distinctive policy ideologies between different generations of mandarins.

Finally, as will be explained next, ministerial loyalism is embodied by the elite administrators
called “kyaria” officials, who are commonly graduates of top universities (especially,
University of Tokyo). In Japan, as many call their country as “education record society,”
academic credentials are a major determinant of social prestige. Hence, the dominance of
ministries by bureaucrats with excellent educational backgrounds and their ministerial
loyalism put on an authoritative aura in the eyes of Japanese public. It makes Japanese people
more submissive to bureaucratic leadership.

Causes of ministerial loyalism

Why do Japanese bureaucrats possess ministerial loyalism? Some scholars try to answer the
question from the cultural perspective. For example, according to Nakane (1970)’s theory of
“vertical society,” the Japanese social fabric is woven on the basis of “frames” rather than
“attributes,” making workers in both public and private sectors intensely dedicated to their
employing organization. Looking into Japanese administrative organizations specifically, Jun
and Muto (1995) argue that Japanese administrators’ collectivism is derived from such
cultural factors as Confucianism and social norms practiced in feudal villages. Probably,
these cultural analyses have some merit. Yet, it is also true that the “kyaria system,” that is,
the personnel policy for Japanese senior civil service, is a significant source of ministerial
loyalism. And most importantly, this view is the underlying assumption of the current
reform.12

Japanese civil service builds on the closed-career model (Self, 1977). Typically, one takes a
recruitment examination just after graduating from a high school or university. A new recruit
is assigned to an entry-level position and promoted to higher positions based on seniority and
performance. He continues to work for the same ministry through his career. Notably, those
recruited through the Level I Examination are labeled as kyaria officials and placed on a fast
track for promotions—in 2012, the Level I Examination was renamed as the Comprehensive
Service Examination.13 As a result of this elitist promotion policy, kyaria bureaucrats
monopolize senior- and upper-middle positions14 and dominate organizational decision-
making. Significantly, kyaria officials unanimously hold intense loyalty to the ministerial
bureaucracy to which they belong and are tied together by robust team spirit. Also, they
embrace a similar set of policy visions and identify with their ministry’s unique policy
philosophy. It is kyaria bureaucrats who embody ministerial loyalism at respective ministries.

Why do kyaria administrators have such characters? Unsurprisingly, one possible reason is
the fact that kyaria officials continue to work at the same ministry except for temporary
secondments to other ministries. Under this circumstance, they naturally foster bonds with
ministerial fellows and take on ministerial views. However, this process is common to many
other countries’ bureaucracies and therefore cannot fully explain the unusual degree of
cohesion that Japanese ministerial loyalism generates. To understand ministerial loyalism’s
exact causes, it is necessary to look into specific personnel practices applied to kyaria
bureaucrats. Concretely, their personnel practices implant ministerial loyalism among them
via four main channels: autonomous and centralized personnel administration, seniority
promotion, professional socialization, and post-retirement employment (Mishima, 2004).

First and most important, whereas the actual exercise of appointive power over kyaria
bureaucrats is off-limits for politicians, it is placed under centralized control within each
ministerial bureaucracy (Aoki, 1988; Muramatsu, 1994; Shindo, 2001). The NPSL gives the
minister formal authority to appoint all bureaucrats belonging to his ministry, but in reality,
he exercises it according to his bureaucracy’s advice. On the other hand, at the bureaucratic
level, there is no central system of controlling bureaucratic postings, and the appointive
power for kyaria officials is completely devolved to individual ministerial bureaucracies. And
each ministerial bureaucracy manages bureaucratic appointments in a centralized manner.
Concretely, the personnel division (jinjika) of the minister’s secretariat, under the supervision
of the administrative vice-minister, makes all assignment decisions (recruitments,
promotions, transfers, secondments, etc.) for kyaria bureaucrats. The lack of political
intervention into bureaucratic placements means that personnel incentives are used purely to
align individual officials with bureaucratic organizational interests. The concentration of
appointive power at the ministerial level ensures that the focal point of kyaria bureaucrats’
loyalty is at their home ministry, not either the whole bureaucracy or some sub-ministerial
organization like bureaus. Thus, kyaria administrators become strongly committed to their
ministry’s organizational interests and share strong fellowship with ministerial colleagues.

Second, the promotion rule based on seniority keeps personal favoritism from eroding kyaria
administrators’ devotion to organizational interests (Inatsugu, 1996; Koike, 1991). Table 1
summarizes the kyaria officials’ promotion pattern. Usually, all kyaria bureaucrats are
uniformly promoted up to the division-chief level as the table shows. But at the councilor-
level and above, differentiation in promotions happens, and only successful ones can follow
the indicated pattern. This promotion rule implies that competitive selection for senior
management occurs only after the kyaria officials’ tenure runs for more than 20 years.
Notably, this late timing of competitive selection deters possible noises of personal favoritism
by ensuring that the ministerial bureaucracy makes selections on the basis of long-term
performance records accumulated since recruitment. That is, the selection for senior
management is based on performance evaluations contributed by a large number of
supervisors, so that there remains little room for personal favoritism in promotion decisions.

Table 1. Kyaria officials’ typical promotion pattern.

CSVDisplay Table

The third reason is related to kyaria bureaucrats’ professional socialization. Many kyaria
officials enter the civil service only with a bachelor’s degree, and the primary form of
professional development in Japanese civil service is on-the-job training (Okochi, 1987).
Accordingly, kyaria administrators naturally become indoctrinated into their ministry’s
policy paradigm. Further, it is important to emphasize that the same ministry’s kyaria
officials follows similar career paths in their formative years. All ministries implement the
assignment policy designed to make kyaria bureaucrats generalists. Typically, younger
kyaria officials are ordered to change their assignment every 2 years or so, so that they can
practice in a wide range of jurisdictions. This generalist orientation guarantees that the same
ministry’s kyaria cohort experience similar job histories to foster similar policy inclinations.
Also it is noteworthy that the Japanese bureaucracy’s collectivist office culture augments the
impact of professional socialization. As is known as “obeya shugi” (big room-ism), teamwork
is the norm in Japanese ministries, with the duties of individual positions being defined only
vaguely (Omori, 1995). Further, kyaria bureaucrats often engage in after-work social
activities with colleagues (Miyamoto, 1994). This office culture undoubtedly facilitates
kyaria officials’ absorption of their ministry’s ideology.

The fourth reason concerns amakudari. As explained above, for kyaria bureaucrats,
competitive selection for promotions begins only at the level of councilors. Importantly, those
who fail to be promoted at the councilor level and above will not stay in the bureaucracy.
They will retire by accepting the employment that their ministry arranges outside the civil
service. This practice, known as “amakudari” (decent from heaven), also works to strengthen
kyaria bureaucrats’ commitment to their ministry via two channels. First, amakudari provides
less successful bureaucrats with sufficient incentive to retain loyalty to his ministry (Inatsugu,
1996; Inoki, 1995). Even if a middle-level official self-diagnoses himself as a likely loser in
the promotion race, amakudari will keep him devoted to his ministry. For if his ministry finds
him to be defecting, it can punish him by offering inferior post-retirement employment.
Second, amakudari also helps to assure the loyalty of successful bureaucrats who reach
senior management. At the dead end of the hierarchical ladder, a senior bureaucrat may
become willing to take action out of his personal conviction to damage his ministry’s
interests. Yet, amakudari offers him disincentive to do so because he can also be punished in
the arrangement of amakudari.

Criticisms against ministerial loyalism

This section examines three major criticisms raised against ministerial loyalism: weak
political control, vertical administration, and skepticism on kyaria bureaucrats’ professional
capability.

Above all, ministerial loyalism is disapproved from the viewpoint of political control. During
the period of economic growth until the 1980s, bureaucratic independence was not found
problematic. Japanese society enjoyed broad consensus on the national goal of catching up
with Western countries, and there was little risk that the ruling LDP and bureaucracy would
fundamentally disagree in policymaking. Even if there was a minor gap between them,
expanding fiscal revenues enabled both demands to be met. In the last two decades, however,
the wisdom of bureaucratic independence has come to be doubted, and reformers have been
demanding politicians to command bureaucrats more tightly. The primary reason for this shift
is prolonged economic slump. Swelling public debts make elected officials more rigorous in
prioritizing spending programs and less willing to tolerate bureaucratic wastes. More
significantly, the bureaucracy is regarded as a major obstacle to neoliberal reforms necessary
for economic recovery (Mishima, 2013). Bureaucrats generally hesitate to endorse the
neoliberal-type liberalization since it damages their interventionist policy paradigms and
reduces their political resources like budget and regulatory power. Further, ministerial
loyalism nurtures parochial sector-based perspectives among senior officials, which makes it
difficult for them to understand reform needs from a broader viewpoint.

The necessity of enhanced political control over the bureaucracy is appreciated also from the
partisan standpoint. When the LDP’s hegemony seemed unchallengeable, its politicians never
doubted administrators’ partisan allegiance. In the 1990s, however, as the birth of major non-
LDP parties—the New Frontier Party first and then the DPJ—made regular alternation of
ruling parties a real possibility, they increasingly became anxious about bureaucrats’ partisan
loyalty and began to question the desirability of the latter’s autonomy. For example, when the
LDP returned to power after the non-LDP eight-party coalition’s short-lived rule in 1994, it
bitterly bashed the Ministry of Finance because it saw the latter’s administrative vice-minister
as allying with Ichiro Ozawa, the non-LDP coalition’s kingpin (Shiota, 1995). Likewise, in
launching its first cabinet in 2009, the DPJ took a strong anti-bureaucracy stance partly
because of its suspicion of bureaucrats’ continued loyalty to the LDP.

As the ministerial loyalism’s predictable byproduct, Japanese bureaucrats are very poor at
cross-ministerial coordination. Condemned as “vertical administration” (tatewari gyosei), this
problem is regarded as a major source of administrative inefficiency. The example recently
covered by the media concerns the reconstruction from the Tohoku Great Earthquake in
2011. Initially, ministries unsystematically created assistance programs for devastated areas,
placing a major burden on local authorities. For example, ministries ran overlapping
programs, causing confusion among local officials. To demarcate turfs, they often prohibited
their subsidies from being spent along with other ministries’ subsidies in a single project. In
response to censures, in February 2012, the government launched the Reconstruction Agency
and endowed it with legal power to centrally control key programs and conduct inter-
ministerial coordination. But critics still blame that the agency is dominated by officials
seconded from ministries and far from an effective means for cross-ministerial cooperation.

Ministerial loyalism is also discredited due to increasing doubts about kyaria bureaucrats’
professional qualities. As mentioned above, Japanese people used to respect their elite
mandarins. Yet, successive revelation of policy failures now makes them suspicious about the
bureaucrats’ professional abilities (Mishima, 2013). First, the kyaria officials’ generalist
orientation is criticized as making them wanting in specialized knowledge and expertise
needed to deal with complex issues. For example, critics find that the flawed regulatory
system that resulted in the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Crisis in 2011 had been put in
place because METI regulators relied too much on the power companies’ advice due to their
limited knowledge. Second, the kyaria-first promotion policy is disapproved as stopping able
non-kyaria officials from receiving important assignments and resulting in suboptimal use of
human resources. Last, critics believe that the practice of amakudari tempts bureaucrats to
take corrupt behavior. As demonstrated by the frequent occurrences of “kansei dango”
(bureaucracy-sanctioned bid rigging), bureaucrats may take questionable actions to protect
the interests of commercial companies employing amakudari officials. Besides, ministries
consistently fail to offer reasonable justification for their large financial aids to non-profit
organizations that hire retired bureaucrats.

Consequently, today, mistrust over the bureaucracy runs deep among the Japanese public. In
the late 1990s, in reaction to concentrated exposure of policy failures and corruption
scandals, a massive eruption of commoners’ discontent with the elite bureaucracy occurred,
which media reporters tabbed as “bureaucrat bashing.” There, many books were published to
sensationally reveal elite bureaucrats’ inside stories, and the tabloids carried numerous
articles blaming them. Such blunt expression of disapproval has subsided, but it never means
recovered trust in administrators. For example, last year, a major polling agency conducted a
survey to gauge the public’s trust in 10 political/social actors (Self-Defense Forces, hospitals,
banks, judges, police, teachers, big corporations, media, bureaucrats, and parliamentarians).
The result found that bureaucrats were the second least trusted (Central Research Services,
2016).
Reform program
The civil service reform of 2014 is enacted to address the criticisms reviewed above.
Specifically, it aims to solve those problems by abolishing the kyaria system. Reformers
calculate that the system’s removal will break the Japanese bureaucracy’s traditional mode of
organizational behavior, ministerial loyalism, and turn independent-minded bureaucrats into
elected officials’ obedient servants. They also believe that the system’s end will improve
administrators’ abilities and performance. The reform implements five key measures: (1) the
prime minister’s augmented authority over bureaucratic personnel policy, (2) a new selection
mechanism for senior civil service, (3) a new official career development program for senior
civil service, (4) tightened regulations on amakudari, and (5) the increase of political
executives. As discussed above, the kyaria system is premised on the shielding of
bureaucratic appointments from political intervention. The first two measures want to change
this reality by assisting political leaders in influencing bureaucratic postings.

First, a new Cabinet Bureau of Personnel Affairs (CBPA, Naikaku Jinjikyoku) is established
directly under the prime minister,15 so that he can affect bureaucratic personnel administration
more effectively. Until the reform, the NPSL delegated substantial authority to the National
Personnel Authority (NPA), a cabinet-level administrative commission.16 The NPA set up
general principles and guidelines under which respective ministries would decide individual
appointments and other personnel matters. Given the NPA’s independent status from the
cabinet, it meant that the bureaucracy could design its personnel system singlehandedly.
Interestingly, this arrangement was the historical product of the US occupation reform in the
1940s. Both NPSL and NPA were instituted by the US occupation authority as a part of its
democratization drive. Guided by the notion of scientific management, US reformers tended
to see their civil service reform as a management exercise rather than a political reform, and
paradoxically chose to allow the bureaucracy to retain large autonomy in its personnel
administration (Koh, 1989; Pempel, 1987). Reformers believe that the NPA’s large authority
hindered political leaders’ participation in the shaping of bureaucratic personnel policy
including individual appointments. Hence, some of the NPA’s traditional functions are
transferred to the CBPA, including training and career development, recruitment
examinations, and staff number control. Besides, the CBPA is given legal authority to direct
ministries regarding recruitment, promotion, training and career development, and
performance appraisal.

Second, a new mechanism is introduced to improve political leaders’ participation in the

selection of senior civil servants.17 As explained already, in the past, ministers effectively
abdicated their legal power to post bureaucratic subordinates. As for appointments at the
bureau chief level and above, it was necessary to go through the inspection by a cabinet
committee chaired by the Chief Cabinet Secretary, but it was regarded as ceremonial. Thus,
at all ministries, the selection for senior management always took the form of internal
promotion and was based on the bureaucracy’s long-term succession planning. Table 2
summarizes the procedure of the new selection mechanism. As shown there, the Chief
Cabinet Secretary first conducts an independent screening and creates a government-wide list
of candidates for senior civil service. While ministers continue to possess legal authority for
appointments as before, they must now choose appointees from the Chief Cabinet Secretary’s
list. Moreover, they must obtain advance consent from the prime minister and Chief Cabinet
Secretary regarding their selection. The new arrangement expects ministers to use their
appointive power actually. It should also serve as the political message that reminds senior
administrators that their professional standing depends on the political master’s will. If the
minister wants to make appointments against his ministerial bureaucracy’s wish, he can now
count on political backing from the cabinet center. The government-wide list of candidates
allows the minister to bring more submissive officials from other ministries. The Chief
Cabinet Secretary can include even qualified professionals from the private sector in his list.

Table 2. Steps of the new selection mechanism.

CSVDisplay Table

The third measure introduces an official career development program for senior civil service.
The kyaria system is not based on a legal stipulation. It was informally created as the
successor of the prewar Higher Civil Service Examination (Kawate, 2005). Until the reform,
it served as the de facto instrument of career development and selection for senior civil
service. To eliminate the kyaria system, all ministries are now legally mandated to run a
formal career development program to produce future generations of senior managers. The
program is designed to provide promising young officials systematically with opportunities
for career development, including off-the-job-training and secondments to local governments
and international organizations, with a view to making its graduates dominate senior civil
service. The program seeks to meet two key objectives. First, the program is made open to
non-kyaria officials to halt the kyaria’s monopoly of senior management. Second, it wants to
replace traditional seniority-based promotion with performance-based promotion. The
participants’ performance will be regularly evaluated, and those who are found as
underperforming must leave the program. Along with this development program, a new
unified scheme of performance appraisal is introduced across the civil service.

Fourth, amakudari-related regulations are substantially enhanced. This tightening began with
the NPSL’s revision in 2007, which prohibited ministries from negotiating directly with
potential amakudari employers and instead demanded them to arrange amakudari jobs
through a new Center for Personnel Interchanges between the Government and Private
Entities at the Cabinet Office. When the DPJ came to power in September 2009, though,
Prime Minister Hatoyama issued an administrative directive to suspend the new center’s
brokerage functions. This policy has been inherited by all succeeding cabinets since. So
today, ministries are totally banned from arranging post-retirement employment for retiring
officials in any form.
The fifth measure is strengthening of political leadership at ministries. This one is not directly
related to bureaucratic personnel administration, but similarly intends to reduce bureaucratic
independence. As explained, in the 1955 System, ministers and other political executives
tended to refrain from engaging in their ministry’s organizational processes. Yet, as
bureaucratic autonomy attracts growing criticisms, they are called on to direct bureaucratic
subordinates more proactively. Accordingly, in 2001, the CGR took the first step by
introducing the new system of state ministers (fukudaijin) and parliamentary vice-ministers
(seimukan) to increase the number of political appointees at ministries. With the current
reform, each minister can appoint one more political appointee who has the title of “special
adviser” (hosakan). Initially, reform planners unsuccessfully tried to authorize ministers to
hire a team of non-bureaucratic staffers, but eventually settled for this minor revision in face
of bureaucratic resistance.

Initial assessment
The civil service reform of 2014 is still in the midst of implementation, and some of its
details are undetermined. Further, we would need to observe multiple cabinets to discern
patterns in the actual usage of new mechanisms. It takes several more years before we can
know the reform’s full effects. Thus, this section provides my personal prediction about the
reform’s likely impact. I predict that the reform will cause only marginal vibrations to
Japanese officialdom overall. Most importantly, to alter the bureaucracy’s traditional mode of
organizational behavior, ministerial loyalism, the reform aims to abolish the kyaria system.
And out of the five measures reviewed above, the new selection mechanism and new official
career development program are central to successful termination of the kyaria system. I
believe, however, that neither of them will be effective.

The reform’s most controversial element concerns political leaders’ augmented involvement
in the selection for senior civil service (Mishima, 2013). This change can be discussed from
two different perspectives: normative and practical. In the normative context, Japanese
experts’ opinions are divided about the prudence of this amendment. Indeed, finding an ideal
model in the British civil service, some strongly argue for political neutrality in bureaucratic
appointments even at the senior level (Muramatsu, 2012; Nonaka, 2012). I disagree with
them. Japanese administrators play a much larger role in policymaking than British
counterparts do. Further, the two countries have dissimilar bureaucratic cultures. As written
above, Japanese mandarins tend to believe in their ability to define public interests in their
image, and the distinction between politics and administration is highly murky in actual
practices. These facts suggest that Japanese politicians should demand more powerful means
to keep the bureaucracy in line. In this sense, the degree of politicization in bureaucratic
appointments that can be found in the current reform is seen as legitimate.

Even if the political leaders’ larger involvement in the selection for senior civil service is
acceptable in the normative sense, is it practically feasible? My answer is negative. I
emphasize that at practical levels, without a drastic overhaul of the whole policymaking
system, it would be impossible to cease the quarantine of bureaucratic postings from political
influence. As seen above, in Japanese policymaking, the bureaucracy works as the pivot and
carries out many indispensable tasks. Significantly, the bureaucracy’s such critical role is
sustained by ministerial loyalism, which is in turn premised on the political neutrality of
bureaucratic appointments. The flipside of this fact means that once politicians politicize
bureaucratic postings, it would taint the ministerial bureaucracies’ organizational order based
on ministerial loyalism and make them unable to work as the pivot in policymaking. For
obvious reasons, bureaucrats with partisan loyalty would have much weaker commitment to
bureaucratic organizational interests. They would also find it difficult to build a strong trust
and fellowship with politically neutral colleagues. Thus, the inclusion of partisan bureaucrats
would undermine the ministerial bureaucracies’ cohesiveness and distort their organizational
behavior, which would ultimately lower the overall productivity of policymaking greatly.
After all, the truth is that it is impossible to tighten control over bureaucrats by using their
appointive power while asking them to continue to carry the same amount of burdens in
policymaking. Here exists the paradox wherein the Japanese bureaucracy’s huge role in
policymaking would limit the political master’s use of a major reining tool against it, namely,
appointive power.

Based on their long experiences with the Japanese bureaucracy, LDP politicians seem to
understand this paradox. This is the case especially after the fiasco of DPJ government’s anti-
bureaucracy policy. Despite their aggressive rhetoric in selling the reform to voters, Prime
Minister Abe and his ministers are actually very reluctant to influence bureaucratic postings
by using the new selection mechanism. Since the enactment of the reform, three annual
personnel changes have happened in Japanese elite officialdom. There, all major
appointments have gone along with the bureaucracy’s long-term succession planning, and
bureaucrats’ complaints have been unheard. Some observers find that more female
bureaucrats are awarded important posts in line with Abe’s drive for women’s empowerment,
but this occurs within the margin of the bureaucracy’s succession planning and never
undermines its autonomy. The only exception concerns appointment of Ichiro Komatsu as
chief of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau in August 2013.18 Komatsu was a career diplomat and
did not follow the established career path leading to this position. Unquestionably, his
appointment was politically motivated. However, it was made as an emergency measure in
the historic political fight over the interpretation of the constitution’s Article 9 (i.e., the non-
war clause). In fact, Komatsu occupied the position only for 8 months, and his successor
returned to normal patterns. Komatsu’s case cannot be seen as shaking the kyaria system.

Other factors also contribute to the LDP’s hesitancy to use augmented power over
bureaucratic placements. One such factor concerns LDP backbenchers’ general lack of
reform zeal. As explained already, LDP parliamentarians are traditionally dependent on
clientelistic vote-mobilization methods that use governmental largesse and regulatory favors.
This remains true despite the zoku’s decline inside the LDP in the last two decades (Mishima,
2007). In turn, it suggests that many LDP backbenchers find little merit in the new
arrangement. After all, they can secure chances to manipulate pork distributions and
regulatory details only through symbiotic relationships with administrators. Certainly, they
would lose such chances if their leaders’ forceful intervention into bureaucratic appointments
caused backlash from the bureaucracy. Another factor is related to the fact that Japan has
only small labor markets for senior professionals because of stubborn prevalence of “life-time
employment.” This means that it is not easy for senior- and upper-middle-level officials to
find new jobs in the private sector if they leave the civil service totally voluntarily. Hence,
Japanese bureaucrats lack the “exit” option and have all the more reason to “voice”
opposition to political interferences. Likewise, the reformers’ idea of recruiting private-sector
professionals to the bureaucracy is unrealistic for the same reason. Probably, the only
possible way-out would be to temporarily borrow senior management personnel from large
corporations. But this solution would dangerously heighten the risk for conflicts of interest.

The new career development program for senior civil service is also unlikely to be effective.
First, since the detailed design and implementation of the program is left to the bureaucracy,
there is a great risk that the kyaria system would be effectively preserved owing to its
sabotage. It is very possible that ministries would simply let kyaria officials dominate the
new program with a token inclusion of a small number of non-kyaria officials. If this
happens, the end result would be legalization of the kyaria system. Second, the program
would likely face substantial difficulty in introducing performance-based promotion. In the
Japanese corporate sector also, seniority promotion used to be the standard practice, but in the
1990s, many companies began to introduce performance-based human resource management
(Conrad, 2013). Yet, these experiments were unsuccessful generally—while seniority
promotion continued to be practiced in disguised manners in many cases, positive results
were not reported even in those minority cases that seriously implemented performance-
based promotion (Jo, 2004; Takahashi, 2010). Many reasons are suggested for this failure.
For example, in Japanese offices, the contents of individual jobs are not described clearly,
and teamwork is emphasized. In this environment, gauging individual performance and
contribution is never an easy task. It is also pointed out that the practice of bottom-up
decision-making is incompatible with performance-based human resource management.
Given that Japanese corporate and administrative bureaucracies share many traits, the above
evidence from the private sector implies that performance-based promotion is unlikely to
work smoothly in Japanese civil service either. In fact, the government’s initial review of the
new performance appraisal scheme confirms this. It finds that Japanese public managers tend
to avoid ranking subordinates’ performance by inflating appraisal scores (Shiraishi, 2014).

Finally, amakudari is also likely to remain. At the moment, tighter regulations successfully
diminish the number of senior officials who resign before the mandatory retirement age.
However, the decrease of amakudari cases also reduces the frequency of open posts at senior
levels and progressively slows down the kyaria officials’ promotion speed (NPA, 2013).
Thus, worrying about detrimental effects on younger officials’ morale, ministries are now
making every effort to find loopholes in regulations. For example, they are increasing the
number of senior officials who are seconded to non-profit organizations and commercial
enterprises without losing their civil servant status. This and other steps are likely to let
amakudari survive in modified forms.

Conclusion
The civil service reform of 2014 is the final step of the ambitious political experiment to
remake the politico-administrative system developed under the LDP’s lengthy hegemony. Its
most important purpose is to restrict the Japanese bureaucracy’s traditional autonomy and
“normalize” the delegation–accountability relationship between elected officials and
administrators. Unfortunately, however, the reform is unlikely to deliver anticipated results.
The power and posture of Japanese mandarins is likely to remain unchanged. The Japanese
bureaucrats’ unusually large role in policymaking paradoxically makes it difficult for
political masters to control them by using their appointive power. Besides, delegating reform
implementation to the bureaucracy is obviously a self-defeating strategy for reformers.

Notes
1 The LDP was founded and came to power in 1955. Thus, the term “1955 System” is
commonly used in Japanese public disclose to describe its traditional ruling system (Krauss
& Pekkanen, 2011, pp. 15–16).
2 A succinct summary of the reformers’ diagnosis of the 1955 System’s pathologies can be
found in the widely circulated report that Minkan Seiji Rincho, a blue-ribbon committee of
business and labor leaders and scholars, published in 1993. See Minkan Seiji Rincho (1993).

3 According to Sartroi’s classification, the LDP’s dominance is a case of the “predominant

party system,” which is a subclass of competitive party pluralism.

4 For details about the 1994 electoral reform, see, for example, Christensen (1996).

5 Due to its merger with the Japan Innovation Party in March 2016, it is now called
Democratic Party (DP).

6 There has been a long-running scholarly debate to gauge the size of bureaucratic power in
the 1955 System. For this debate, see, for example, Wright (1999).

7 For details about this reform, see, for example, Mishima (2004); Okamoto (2001); Shinoda
(2013). In 2009, the DPJ cabinet led by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama implemented
another round of institutional reform to strengthen cabinet functions, but most of its
arrangements were soon annulled by succeeding cabinets (Mishima, 2015).

8 I would like to thank a reviewer for suggesting this idea.

9 I first used the concept of ministerial loyalism in Mishima (2004).

10 As a result of the CGR in 2001, nine ministries and cabinet-level agencies were merged
into three mega ministries—namely, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
(MIC), Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, and Ministry of Health,
Labor and Welfare. At these ministries, older bureaucrats tend to identify themselves on the
basis of old ministries and agencies. However, younger officials hired after the merger are put
under unified personnel control, making them loyal to new mega ministries as a whole.

11 For example, Aoki (1988) finds that the Japanese political system is fundamentally
segmented by ministerial bureaucracies and calls it “bureaupluralism” (pp. 258–297). In
comparing Japanese and Western state-making, Boyd (2006) argues that the Japanese
bureaucracy is distinguished by its (ministry-based) “sectionalism” along with its
“administrative transcendence.” Iio (2007) observes that the Japanese cabinet is dominated by
administrators, but also emphasizes that ministerial cleavages among them make the Japanese
state look like the “United Ministries of Japan.” Based on a similar observation, Inoguchi
(2010) argues that the autonomy of Japanese ministerial bureaucracies is derived from the
feudal system of the Tokugawa Period (1603–1867), in which semi-autonomous domains
constituted political federation, and that the fundamental structure of Japanese politics is still
defined by that federative legacy.

12 Indeed, it is correct to see the kyaria system as constituting the core of Japan’s traditional
trustee-type PSB. Further, the image of kyaria bureaucrats portrayed here shows that this
PBS’s mix of reward, competency, and loyalty most resembles the “hierarchist type” (Hood
& Lodge, 2006, p. 135). Concretely, autonomous appointment and seniority promotion show
that its reward bargain is the “escalator-type.” Kyaria bureaucrats’ superior educational
backgrounds and systematic professional socialization show that its competency bargain is
the “wonk type.” Their strong loyalty to ministerial bureaucracies underpinned by unique
policy philosophies indicates that its loyalty bargain is the “judge type.”

13 For further details about the kyaria system, see, for example, Hayakawa (1997); Inatsugu
(1996); Koh (1989); Mishima (2013).

14 As of October 2015, 87.5% of all division chiefs at the headquarters of ministries were
kyaria officials (CBPA, 2015). 94.2% of the 69 officials who were promoted to the director-
general level in 2013 were kyaria officials (MIC, 2014).

15 Organizationally, the CBPA is part of the Cabinet Secretariat and headed by a Deputy
Cabinet Secretary.

16 In 1964, the Personnel Bureau was established in the then Prime Minister’s Office to
expand the prime minister’s jurisdiction over personnel administration, but the NPA’s
authority remained largely intact. Later, the bureau was transferred to the Management
Coordination Agency in 1984 and the MIC in 2001 and is now absorbed by the CBPA.

17 In this mechanism, senior civil servants are basically defined as those belonging to the
Designated Service (Shiteishoku) schedule, such as administrative vice-ministers, bureau
chiefs, and councilors. Their total number is about 600.

18 This post belongs to the Special Service (Tokubetsu Shoku) and therefore is not under the
purview of the new selection mechanism. In fact, Komatsu’s appointment occurred before the
implementation of the current reform.

Previous article Next article

References
 Aoki, M. (1988). Information, incentives, and bargaining in the Japanese economy.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
 Boyd, R. (2006). The making of state-bureaucracy relations in Japan. In R. Boyd & T.
Ngo (Eds.), State making in Asia (pp. 53–90). New York, NY:
Routledge. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
 Cabinet Bureau of Personnel Affairs. (2015). Kanrishoku heno ninyo jokyo to kohyo
nitsuite Heisei 27nendo [On publicizing the state of appointments to supervising posts
Fiscal Year 2015]. Retrieved February 20, 2016, from
http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/gaiyou/jimu/jinjikyoku/kanri_h271222.html. [Google
Scholar]
 Cabinet Bureau of Personnel Affairs. (2016). Kanbu shokuin jinji no ichigen kanri
[Centralized management of senior-level personnel]. Retrieved March 28, 2016, from
http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/gaiyou/jimu/jinjikyoku/jinji_kanbu_kanri.html. [Google
Scholar]
 Central Research Services. (2016). Giin, kanryo, daikigyo, keisatsu tono shinraikan
chosa [Survey on trust in parliamentarians, bureaucrats, big corporations, police, etc.].
Retrieved September 18, 2016, from
http://www.crs.or.jp/backno/No702/7021.htm. [Google Scholar]
 Christensen, R. V. (1996). The new Japanese election system. Pacific Affairs, 69, 49–
70. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
 Conrad, H. (2013). Converging to a market-based type of human resource
management?: Compensation system reforms in Japan since the 1990s. In K. E.
Kushida, K. Shimizu & J. C. Oi (Eds.), Syncretism: The politics of economic
restructuring and system reform in Japan (pp. 173–197). Stanford, CA: The Walter
H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. [Google Scholar]
 Curtis, G. L. (1971). Election campaigning Japanese style. New York, NY: Columbia
University Press. [Google Scholar]
 Curtis, G. L. (1988). The Japanese way of politics. New York, NY: Columbia
University Press. [Google Scholar]
 Duverger, M. (1954). Political parties: Their organization and activity in the modern
state. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons. [Google Scholar]
 Garon, S. (1997). Molding Japanese minds: The state in everyday life. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]
 Hayakawa, S. (1997). Kokka komuin no shoshin kyaria keisei [Civil servants’
promotion and career formation]. Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha. [Google Scholar]
 Hood, C., & Lodge, M. (2006). The politics of public service bargains: Reward,
competency, loyalty – and blame. Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
 Iio, J. (2007). Nihon no tochi kozo [Japan’s governing structure]. Tokyo: Chuo
Koron. [Google Scholar]
 Inatsugu, H. (1996). Nihon no kanryo jinji shisutemu [Japan’s bureaucratic personnel
system]. Tokyo: Toyo Kieizai Shinpo. [Google Scholar]
 Inoguchi, T. (2010). Nihon seiji no nazo: Tokugawa moderu wo sutekirenai Nihonjin
[Puzzle of Japanese politics: The Japanese cannot abandon the Tokugawa model].
Tokyo: Nishimura. [Google Scholar]
 Inoguchi, T. & Iwai, T. (1987). Zoku giin no kenkyu [Study of zoku parliamentarians].
Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shimbun. [Google Scholar]
 Inoki, T. (1995). Japanese bureaucrats at retirement: The mobility of human resources
from central government to public corporations. In H. Kim, et al. (Eds.), The
Japanese civil service and economic development: Catalysts of change (pp. 213–234).
Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar]
 Jo, S. (2004). Uchigawakara mita Fujitsu: Seika shugi no hokai [Fujitsu’s inside:
Breakdown of result-orientation]. Tokyo: Kobunsha. [Google Scholar]
 Johnson, C. (1982). MITI and the Japanese miracle: The growth of industrial policy,
1925–75. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar]
 Jun, J. S., & Muto, H. (1995). The hidden dimensions of Japanese administration:
Culture and its impact. Public Administrative Review, 55, 125–134. [Crossref], [Web
of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
 Kawate, S. (2005). Sengo Nihon no komuin seidoshi [History of postwar Japanese
civil service system]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. [Google Scholar]
 Koh, B. C. (1989). Japan’s administrative elite. Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA:
University of California Press. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
 Koike, K. (1991). Habahiroi senmonsei [Extensive specialization]. In. K. Koike (Ed.),
Daisotu howaito kara no jinzai kaihatsu [Human resource development for
university-educated white collars] (pp. 3–28). Tokyo: Toyo Kezai Shinposha. [Google
Scholar]
 Krauss, E. S., & Pekkanen, R. J. (2011). The rise and fall of Japan’s LDP: Political
party organizations as historical institutions. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press. [Google Scholar]
 Minkan Seiji Rincho. (1993). Nihon henkaku no bijon: Minkan seiji kaikaku taiko
[The vision for reforming Japan: Minkan seiji’s reform outline]. Tokyo:
Kodansha. [Google Scholar]
 Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. (2014). Saiyo shonin to kihon
hoshin nimotoduku ninyo no jokyo Heisei 24 nendo [The state of appointments based
on the basic policy for recruitment and promotion Fiscal Year 2012]. Retrieved May
19, 2014 from http://www.soumu.go.jp/menu_news/s-
news/01jinji02_02000105.html. [Google Scholar]
 Mishima, K. (2004). The politics of political reform in Japan: The case of the Central
Government Reform, 1993-2003. Doctoral dissertation, the Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore, MD. [Google Scholar]
 Mishima, K. (2007). Grading Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi’s revolution: How far
has the LDP’s policymaking changed? Asian Survey, 47, 727–748. [Crossref], [Web
of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
 Mishima, K. (2013). A missing piece in Japan’s political reform: The stalemate of
reform of the bureaucratic personnel system. Asian Survey, 53, 703–727. [Crossref],
[Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
 Mishima, K. (2015). Unattainable mission? The Democratic Party of Japan’s
unsuccessful policymaking system reform. Asian Politics & Policy, 7, 433–
454. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
 Miyamoto, M.(1994). Straitjacket society: An insider’s irreverent view of
bureaucratic Japan. Tokyo : Kodansha International. [Google Scholar]
 Muramatsu, M. (1994). Nihon no gyosei [Japanese public administration]. Tokyo:
Chuo Koron. [Google Scholar]
 Muramatsu, M. (2012). Komuin no seiji churitsusei [Public servants’ political
neutrality]. In M. Muramatsu (Ed.), Saishin komuin seido kaikaku [Update on civil
service reform] (pp. 73–117). Tokyo: Gakuyo Shobo. [Google Scholar]
 Nakane, C. (1970). Japanese society. Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA: University of
California Press. [Google Scholar]
 Nakano, K. (2013). Sengo Nihon no kokka hoshushugi: Naimu jichi kanryo no kiseki
[State conservatism in postwar Japan: Interior and home affairs bureaucrats’
trajectory]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. [Google Scholar]
 National Personnel Authority. (2013). Nenji hokokusho Heisei 24nendo [Annual
report Fiscal Year 2012]. Retrieved April 13, 2016, from
http://www.jinji.go.jp/hakusho/. [Google Scholar]
 Nonaka, N. (2012). Seiji shudo to kanbu komuin no seijiteki churitsusei [Political
leadership and senior officials’ political neutrality]. In M. Muramatsu (Ed.), Saishin
komuin seido kaikaku [Update on civil service reform] (pp. 21–72). Tokyo: Gakuyo
Shobo. [Google Scholar]
 Okamoto, M. (2001). Shocho kaikaku no genba kara: Naze saihen ha susundaka
[From the field office for ministerial reform: Why reorganization progressed]. Tokyo:
Gyosei. [Google Scholar]
 Okochi, S. (1987). Komu niokeru soshiki noryoku to shokuin no noryoku hyoka
[Organizational capacity and assessment of officials’ abilities in the civil service]. In
Nihon Gyosei Gakkai (Ed.), Komuin seido no doko [Developments in the civil service
system] (pp. 125–149). Tokyo: Gyosei. [Google Scholar]
 Omori, W. (1995). Shocho no soshiki to teiin [Ministries’ organization and staff
number control]. In M. Nishio & M. Muramatsu (Eds.), Seisaku to kanri [Policy and
management], vol. 4 of Koza gyoseigaku [Lecture on public administration] (pp. 1–
38). Tokyo: Yuhikaku. [Google Scholar]
 Pempel, T. J. (1987). The tar baby target: “Reform” of the Japanese bureaucracy. In
R. E. Ward and Y. Sakamoto (Eds.), Democratizing Japan: The allied occupation (pp.
157–187). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. [Google Scholar]
 Pempel, T. J. (1990). Introduction. Uncommon democracies: The one-party dominant
regimes. In T. J. Pempel (Ed.), Uncommon democracies: The one-party dominant
regimes (pp. 1–32). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar]
 Rosenbluth, F. M., & Thies, M. F. (2010). Japan transformed: Political change and
economic restructuring. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
 Sartori, G. (1976). Parties and party systems: A framework for analysis. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]
 Schwartz, F. J. (1998). Advice and consent: The politics of consultation in Japan.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]
 Self, P. (1977). Administrative theories and politics: An inquiry into the structure and
processes of modern government. 2nd ed. London, UK: George Allen and
Unwin. [Google Scholar]
 Shindo, M. (2001). Kogi gendai Nihon no gyosei [Lecture modern Japan’s public
administration]. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. [Google Scholar]
 Shinoda, T. (2013). Contemporary Japanese politics: Institutional change and power
shifts. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]
 Shiota, U. (1995). Okura jimujikan no tatakai [MOF administrative vice-minister’s
battle]. Tokyo: Toyo Keizai Shinpo. [Google Scholar]
 Shiraishi, M.(2014). Kokka komuin no jinji hyoka nitsuite [Regarding civil servants’
performance appraisal]. Kikan Gyosei Kanri Kenkyu [Quarterly Public Administration
Study], 145, 43–51. [Google Scholar]
 Takahashi, N. (2010). Kyomo no seika shugi: Nihongata nenkosei fukkatsu no susume
[Groundless result-orientation: Recommendation for revival of the Japanese-style
seniority system]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo. [Google Scholar]
 Tamaru, D. (2000). Hoan sakusei to shocho kanryosei [Bill preparation and
ministerial bureaucracy]. Tokyo: Sinzansha. [Google Scholar]
 Thayer, N. B. (1969). How the conservatives rule Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press. [Google Scholar]
 Tilton, M. (1996). Restrained trade: Cartels in Japan’s basic materials industries.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar]
 Wright, M. (1999). Who governs Japan? Politicians and bureaucrats in the policy-
making processes. Political Studies, 47, 939–954. [Crossref], [Web of Science
®], [Google Scholar]