has called a 'governmentalized class' or a 'service nobility.'
7
Constituting some 6 to 7 percent of the population, these samurai did not yet form a modern bureaucracy, if by this one means what Weber has called the most rational and imper-
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sonal form of state administration. For Weber true bureaucratic power is vested in an 'office,' and bureaucratic power in this sense 'does not establish a relationship to a
, like the vassal's or disciple's faith under feudal or patrimonial authority, but rather is devoted to
and
purposes.'
8
During the Tokugawa period the samurai became administrative officials rather than warriors, but they still occupied a status for which they received a stipend, rather than offering a particular competence for which they were paid a salary.
9
This emphasis on status rather than on the performance of an occupation was passed on under the Meiji Constitution to the bureaucrats, who enjoyed such a position legally until the Constitution of 1947 ended it, and to
successors, who still enjoy it informally more than thirty years later because of the persistence of tradition and bureaucratic dominance in postwar Japan.
The Meiji leaders did not plan to perpetuate samurai government under a new guise, nor for that matter were they much interested in creating a modern state officialdom. Their reasons for creating a 'nonpolitical' civil bureaucracy were, in fact, highly political. They were trying to respond to strident public criticism of the monopoly of power by the two feudal domains (Satsuma and Choshu*) that had led the successful movement against the Tokugawa shogunate, and the corruption that this domination was generating. They also hoped to demonstrate their 'modernity' to the West in order to hasten revision of the unequal treaties that had been forced on Japan. And, most important, they wanted to retain authoritarian control after 1890, when the new parliament (National Diet) opened and political parties began public campaigning for a share of power.
10
The state bureaucracy and the cabinet both preceded the Meiji Constitution, the Diet, and the formation of political parties in Japan by some five to twenty years. The results were predictable. In seeking to forestall competitive claims to their own power by the leaders of the political parties, the Meiji oligarchs created a weak parliament and also sought to counterbalance it with a bureaucracy they believed they could staff with their own supporters, or at least keep under their personal control. But over time, with the bureaucracy installed at the center of government and with the passing of the oligarchs, it was the bureaucratsboth military and civilianwho arrogated more and more power to themselves.
11
The bureaucrats of prewar Japan were not liked, but they were respected. Many Japanese had resented the persistence of Satsuma and Choshu privilege after Japan became a unified nation, and the new bureaucracy, expertly trained and open to all men who had demon-
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strated their talent in impartial examinations, was clearly an improvement over Satsuma and Choshu * dominance. The political parties were an alternative to state officialdom, but they always suffered from the weakness of having arrived second on the political scene. The bureaucracy claimed to speak for the national interest and characterized the parties as speaking only for local or particular interests. As Japan industrialized, the parties slowly gained clout as representatives of zaibatsu and other propertied interests, but they never developed a mass base. One reason was the careful control exercised over the enlargement of the franchise (see Table 2). Another reason was that one house of the Diet, the House of Peers, was dominated by the bureaucracy, which arranged for the direct Imperial appointment of its senior retired members to the Peers, where they easily outclassed the titled members in political skill.
12
In short, whether the military and civilian bureaucrats of the post-Meiji era were really the most capable leaders of the nation became a moot question: they had effectively preempted most of the centers of power from which they might be challenged. There were many fights, and the final outcome was not a foregone conclusion, but ultimately a bureaucratic career became the most important route to political power. For example, not a single minister of the Tojo* cabinet, installed in October 1941, had served in the Diet as an elected member.
Prewar bureaucrats were not 'civil servants' but rather 'officials of the Emperor' (
*
) appointed by him and answerable only to him. Imperial appointment bestowed on them the status of
, the primitive meaning of which in its Chinese original is the residence of a mandarin who presides over a city, and which still retains some of this early meaning in its contemporary usage to refer to judges (according to one legal authority, kan connotes officials with power who are not highly constrained by law).
