24
But the purge did not really touch the economic bureaucrats themselves.
SCAP's attempts at positive reform of the bureaucratic system as a whole are widely acknowledged to have failed. Foster Roser, a member of the Blaine Hoover Mission, which wrote the National Public Service Law (law 120 of October 21, 1947) on the basis of then current American civil service legislation, concludes: 'The proposed civil service law was submitted to the Diet in the fall of 1947. Unfortunately, the nucleus of feudalistic, bureaucratic thinking gentlemen within the core of the Japanese Government was astute enough to see the dangers of any such modern public administration law to their tenure and the subsequent loss of their power. The law which was finally passed by the Diet was a thoroughly and completely emasculated instrument compared with that which had been recommended by the mission.'
25
Blaine Hoover, former president of the Civil Service Assembly, knew nothing of the efforts made by the military during the 1930's and during the war to bring the ministries under centralized control and take personnel selection and promotion matters out of their handsnor did he know of the successful efforts by the Home and Finance ministries to block these earlier attempts. The ministries had years of experience in sabotaging civil service reform movements.
26
Hoover's law did set up a National Personnel Authority attached to the cabinet to conduct examinations, set pay scales, and hold grievance hearings. But the law did not establish in either the cabinet or the prime minister's office the powers and staff necessary to control the ministries; in particular, the powers of budget-making remained
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in the Ministry of Finance (contrast the U.S. Office of Management and Budget attached to the President's staff).
27
An amendment to the National Public Service Law enacted during 1948 compelled the reexamination of all officials from assistant section chiefs up to and including administrative vice-ministers. Despite protests from older officials, this examination took place on January 15, 1950and instantly became known as the 'Paradise Exam,' since officials could smoke, drink tea, and take as long as they wished (some stayed all night). As a result, about 30 percent of incumbent officials failed to be reappointed, but the government simultaneously undertook a matching 30 percent reduction in force, so the net result was that no new blood entered the bureaucracy except through regular recruitment channels.
Aside from its enhanced status, however, the rapid rise of the economic bureaucracy during the occupation was primarily due to circumstances. First and foremost was SCAP's decision to conduct an indirect occupation, working through and giving orders to the Japanese government rather than displacing it. In the eyes of many Japanese this was probably a desirable decision, but it opened the way for the bureaucracy to protect itself. Seven years of bureaucratic
*
(following orders to a superior's face, reversing them in the belly) is the way one commentator has put it.
28
Prof. Tsuji Kiyoaki, Japan's most prominent authority on the public service, believes the two key reasons for the perpetuation of what he calls the 'Imperial (tenno*) system,' meaning not the Imperial institution itself but the structure of a state bureaucracy unconstrained by either the cabinet or the Diet, were indirect rule and the prompt acceptance by the government of the new American-drafted constitution. The latter forestalled MacArthur's threat to take his constitution to the people in a plebiscite if the government continued to balk. Tsuji acknowledges that the Constitution of 1947 provides for a highly responsible, democratic governmentthe constitution was, in fact, the most important act of positive democratization carried out by the occupation. But he believes the important point was seen by the bureaucrats: the need to avoid direct participation in politics by the people if bureaucratic power was to be preserved. The Constitution of 1947, as liberal as it unquestionably is, was bestowed on the society from above just as was the Meiji Constitution of 1889.
29
A comment made by a Ministry of Finance official to John Campbell elucidates Tsuji's point. Japan, he said, 'has never undergone a 'people's revolution,' which would have created a feeling among citizens
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that 'the government is something we made ourselves.''
30
Tsuji feels that an opportunity was missed during the occupation for such a popular revolution, despite the considerable degree of social mobilization that was achieved in the social, labor, industrial, and farming sectors. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that the effective operation of the developmental state requires that the bureaucracy directing economic development be protected from all but the most powerful interest groups so that it can set and achieve long-range industrial priorities. A system in which the full range of pressure and interest groups existing in a modern, open society has effective access to the government will surely not achieve economic development, at least under official auspices, whatever other values it may fulfill. The success of the economic bureaucracy in preserving more or less intact its preexisting influence was thus prerequisite to the success of the industrial policies of the 1950's.
The bureaucracy did not simply preserve its influence, it expanded itin two ways. First, the requirements of economic recovery led to a vast ballooning of the bureaucracy. Wildes offers figures showing that during the first three postwar years the size of the bureaucracy increased 84 percent over its highest wartime strength.
31
Whether or not SCAP saw the irony in this, the Japanese people certainly did. In a famous lead editorial in
*
* in August 1947, the editors wrote:
The problem of the bureaucracy under present
