The Japanese civil service employs over three million employees, with the
Japan Self-Defense Forces
The Japan Self-Defense Forces ( ja, 自衛隊, Jieitai; abbreviated JSDF), also informally known as the Japanese Armed Forces, are the unified ''de facto''Since Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution outlaws the formation of armed forces, the ...
, with 247,000 personnel, being the biggest branch. In the post-war period, this figure has been even higher, but the privatization of a large number of
public corporations
A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (list ...
since the 1980s, including
NTT,
Japanese National Railways
The abbreviated JNR or , was the business entity that operated Japan's national railway network from 1949 to 1987.
Network Railways
As of June 1, 1949, the date of establishment of JNR, it operated of narrow gauge () railways in all 46 pref ...
, and
Japan Post
was a Japanese statutory corporation that existed from 2003 to 2007, offering postal and package delivery services, Retail banking, banking services, and life insurance. It's the nation's largest employer, with over 400,000 employees, and run ...
, already reduced the number.
The vast majority of civil servants (2.74 million) are employed by local governments, while around 585,000 are national government civil servants. National civil servants are divided into "special" and "regular" service categories. Appointments in the special service category are governed by political or other factors and do not involve competitive examinations. This category includes
cabinet
Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to:
Furniture
* Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers
* Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets
* Filing ...
ministers, heads of independent agencies, members of the Self-Defense Forces,
Diet
Diet may refer to:
Food
* Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group
* Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake
** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...
officials, and ambassadors.
The core of the national civil service is composed of members of the regular service, who are recruited through competitive examinations. This group is further divided into the General Service and the Comprehensive Service, the latter forming a civil service elite.
Composition of civil service
Composition
As of 2018, there are approximately 3.33 million civil servants in Japan.
Among these, the vast majority of around 2.74 million are local civil servants () working for local governments and agencies.
Among the around 585,000 national civil servants (), roughly 298,000 are in Special Service () and 287,000 are in Regular Service ().
Special Service includes:
# Politicians, such as ministers, senior vice-ministers, ambassadors and
National Diet
The is the national legislature of Japan. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives (Japan), House of Representatives (, ''Shūgiin''), and an upper house, the House of Councillors (Japan), House of Councillors (, ...
members,
# Judges, court employees, and employees of the Diet,
# Employees of the
Ministry of Defense
{{unsourced, date=February 2021
A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...
(approx. 268,000, consisting of the lion's share of Special Service employees), and
# Other employees with special duties, to whom certain civil service principles (e.g. recruitment by examination and guarantee of status) do not apply, such as
Imperial Household Agency employees.
Regular Service employees form the rest of the national civil service, including various
ministries
Ministry may refer to:
Government
* Ministry (collective executive), the complete body of government ministers under the leadership of a prime minister
* Ministry (government department), a department of a government
Religion
* Christian mi ...
and
Incorporated Administrative Agencies.
After the privatization of
Japan Post
was a Japanese statutory corporation that existed from 2003 to 2007, offering postal and package delivery services, Retail banking, banking services, and life insurance. It's the nation's largest employer, with over 400,000 employees, and run ...
, the incorporation of certain Japanese universities, and other civil service reforms, the number of regular service employees decreased from over 800,000 to around 287,000 in 2019.
Recruitment and examination
Civil servants are generally recruited through competitive examinations.
Civil servants are classified into three types: (1) Comprehensive Service, which engages in policy-making and research, (2) General Service, which engages mainly in "routine work", and (3) Specialists, such as tax inspectors, air traffic controllers, doctors and teachers, who are recruited by exams or other forms of assessment.
The Comprehensive Service recruits through several types of exams (known as Level I Examination), testing at levels of a university undergraduate or a graduate degree, with different exams based on the division of the Service.
The General Service also recruits through exams, with an exam aimed at university graduates (Level II Examination) and an exam for high school graduates (Level III Examination).
Successful candidates are interviewed, and final selection takes into account the result of interviews.
Historically, all senior officials were promoted from Comprehensive Service recruits, although there are recent efforts to offer General Service employees opportunities of promotion as well.
In the Japanese
Cabinet Secretariat, for example, among the 4,715 employees in management positions, 73.1% were recruited by Level I examination, while 21.8% were recruited by Level II and III examinations.
Among ''kachō'' level () positions, 87.2% were recruited by Level I examination.
Elite bureaucracy
According to a
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
report published in 1992, many Japan analysts have pointed to the elite
bureaucracy
The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...
as the people who really govern Japan, although they composed only a tiny fraction of the country's more than 1 million national government employees.
[Dolan, R. E. & Worden, R. L. (1992) . Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress: For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Govt. Print. Off. dfRetrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/91029874/.] The elite civil servants' power was especially strong in the years of rapid economic growth, before the 1990s.
Several hundred of the elite are employed at each
national ministry or agency.
Although entry into the elite through open examinations does not require a college degree, the majority of its members are alumni of
Japan's most prestigious universities.
The
University of Tokyo
, abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...
law faculty is the single most important source of elite bureaucrats.
After graduation from college and, increasingly, some graduate-level study, applicants take a series of difficult higher civil service examinations:
in 2009, for example, 22,186 took the tests of higher (the 1st grade) civil service, but only 1,494, or 6.7 percent, were successful. Of those who were successful, only 660 were actually hired.
Like the scholar-officials of imperial China, successful candidates were hardy survivors of a grueling education and testing process that necessarily began in early childhood and demanded total concentration.
The typical young bureaucrat, who is in most cases male, is an intelligent, hardworking, and dedicated individual.
But some bureaucrats, critics argue, lack imagination and compassion for people whose way of life is different from their own.
The public's attitude toward the elite is ambivalent. The elite enjoy great social prestige, but its members are also resented. They live in a realm that is at least partly public, yet far removed from the lives of ordinary people. Compared with politicians, they are generally viewed as honest.
Involvement of top officials in scandals such as the
Recruit affair, however, had to some extent tarnished their image.
Japan's elite bureaucrats are insulated from direct political pressure because there are very few political appointments in the civil service.
Cabinet
Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to:
Furniture
* Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers
* Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets
* Filing ...
ministers are usually career politicians, but they are moved in and out of their posts quite frequently (with an average tenure of under a year), and usually have little opportunity to develop a power base within a ministry, or force their civil service subordinates to adopt reforms.
Below the cabinet minister is the administrative vice minister (
:ja:事務次官). Administrative vice ministers and their subordinates are career civil servants whose appointments are determined in accordance with an internally established principle of seniority.
Reform of the elite civil service since the 1990s
The autonomy and power of the bureaucracy has been substantially reduced since the 1990s.
In the 1990s, electoral reforms gave politicians stronger links to their constituencies, strengthening their position. In the 2000s,
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
Junichiro Koizumi
Junichiro Koizumi (; , ''Koizumi Jun'ichirō'' ; born 8 January 1942) is a former Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2001 to 2006. He retired from politics in 2009. He is ...
reduced the power of “tribal politicians” who spoke for special interests such as farmers, and brought in policy advisers to circumvent the civil service.
Successive reforms also restricted the practice of ''amakudari'' (), the “descent from heaven”, where retiring bureaucrats were sent to lucrative jobs at the public body they used to oversee.
Because of these reforms, since the late 1990s, many top-class candidates in Japanese universities prefer to choose to join investment banks rather than the civil service.
Finally, in 2014, Prime Minister
Abe Shinzo again reduced bureaucratic autonomy by centralizing the appointment of all senior civil servants in the Cabinet Office.
Civil servants must now impress the prime minister's lieutenants to reach to the top, instead of their civil service colleagues.
Certain commentators have linked the reduction of the civil service's autonomy to recent scandals, including allegations of sexual harassment,
falsified documents, obvious lies to parliament and misplaced military records.
Women in the civil service
In 2020, the Japanese government reported that 36.8% new civil servants hired in fiscal year 2020 were women, a new high.
Of 8,461 civil servants hired in the career-track, general, and specialized positions, 3,117 were women.
In the percentage of women hired is 1.4% higher than in 2019. By type of positions, 35.4% of new hires in career-track positions were women, compared to 39.1% in general positions, and 33.8% in specialist work.
As late as 2014, the percentage of women in new hires was 20–25%, before a jump to 30% in 2015 and further increases since 2017.
The increase in 2015 was accredited to the Cabinet's Fourth Basic Plan for Gender Equality, which set a goal of 30% for new hires in the civil service.
From 1990 to 2003, around 10% to 15% of new civil service recruits each year were women.
History
Japan before World War II
The Japanese had been exposed to bureaucratic institutions at least by the early seventh century A.D. (
Nara period
The of the history of Japan covers the years from CE 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the cap ...
), when the imperial court adopted the laws and government structure of
Tang
Tang or TANG most often refers to:
* Tang dynasty
* Tang (drink mix)
Tang or TANG may also refer to:
Chinese states and dynasties
* Jin (Chinese state) (11th century – 376 BC), a state during the Spring and Autumn period, called Tang (唐) b ...
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
.
However, the distinctive Chinese (
Confucian
Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a Religious Confucianism, religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, ...
) institution of
civil service examinations
Civil service examinations are examinations implemented in various countries for recruitment and admission to the civil service. They are intended as a method to achieve an effective, rational public administration on a merit system for recruitin ...
never took root, and the imported system was never successfully imposed on the country at large.
But by the middle of the
Tokugawa period
The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional ''daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characterize ...
(1600-1867), the
samurai
were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...
class functions had evolved from military to clerical and administrative functions.
Following the
Meiji Restoration
The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...
(1868), the new elite, which came from the lower ranks of the samurai, established a Western-style civil service.
Occupied Japan
Although the
United States occupation dismantled both the military and
zaibatsu
is a Japanese language, Japanese term referring to industrial and financial vertical integration, vertically integrated business conglomerate (company), conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed control over signi ...
establishments, it did little, outside of abolishing the prewar
Home Ministry
An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs.
Lists of current ministries of internal affairs
Named "ministry"
* Ministr ...
, to challenge the power of the bureaucracy.
There was considerable continuity —in institutions, operating style, and personnel — between the civil service before and after the occupation, partly because General
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American military leader who served as General of the Army for the United States, as well as a field marshal to the Philippine Army. He had served with distinction in World War I, was C ...
's staff ruled indirectly and depended largely on the cooperation of civil servants.
A process of mutual co-optation occurred.
Also, United States policy planners never regarded the civil service with the same opprobrium as the military or economic elites.
The civil service's role in Japan's militarism was generally downplayed.
Many of the occupation figures themselves were products of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
's
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
and had strong faith in the merits of civil service professionalism.
Finally, the perceived threat of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
in the late 1940s created a community of interests for the occupiers and for conservative, social order-conscious administrators.
1970s and 1980s
In a 1975 article, political scientist
Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Ashby Johnson (August 6, 1931 – November 20, 2010) was an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics, and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consult ...
quotes a retired vice minister of the
Ministry of International Trade and Industry
The was a ministry of the Government of Japan from 1949 to 2001. The MITI was one of the most powerful government agencies in Japan and, at the height of its influence, effectively ran much of Japanese industrial policy, funding research and di ...
(MITI) who said that the
Diet
Diet may refer to:
Food
* Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group
* Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake
** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...
was merely "an extension of the bureaucracy".
The official claimed that "the bureaucracy drafts all the laws.... All the legislature does is to use its powers of investigation, which for about half the year keeps most of the senior officials cooped up in the Diet."
In the years since this official made his proud boast, however, it became apparent that there were limits to the bureaucrats' power.
The most important was the
Liberal Democratic Party of Japan
The , frequently abbreviated to LDP or , is a conservativeThe Liberal Democratic Party is widely described as conservative:
*
*
*
*
* political party in Japan.
The LDP has been in power almost continuously since its foundation in 1955—a per ...
's growing role in policy formation.
Political scientist
B.C. Koh suggested that in many cases members of the LDP policy-oriented tribes (
zoku
is a Sino-Japanese term meaning tribe, clan, or family. As a suffix it has been used extensively within Japan to define subcultural phenomena, though many zoku do not acquire the suffix (e.g. cosplay).
A ''zoku'' may be labeled with a Japane ...
) had greater expertise in their fields than elite bureaucrats.
Before the latter drafted legislation, they had to consult and follow the initiatives of the party's
Policy Research Council.
Many analysts consider the role of the bureaucracy in drafting legislation to be no greater than that of its counterparts in
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, and other countries.
Also, the decision of many retired bureaucrats to run as LDP candidates for the Diet might not reflect, as had been previously assumed, the power of the officials but rather the impatience of ambitious men who wanted to locate themselves, politically, "where the action is."
An intense rivalry among the ministries came into play whenever major policy decisions were formulated.
Elite civil servants were recruited by and spent their entire careers in a single ministry.
As a result, they developed a strong sectional solidarity and zealously defended their turf. Non-bureaucratic actors—the politicians and interest groups—could use this rivalry to their own advantage.
1990s and beyond
1990s
The
Ministry of Finance A ministry of finance is a part of the government in most countries that is responsible for matters related to the finance.
Lists of current ministries of finance
Named "Ministry"
* Ministry of Finance (Afghanistan)
* Ministry of Finance and Ec ...
is generally considered the most powerful and prestigious of the ministries.
Its top officials are regarded as the cream of the elite. Although it was relatively unsuccessful in the 1970s when the deficit rose, the ministry was very successful in the 1980s in constraining government spending and raising taxes, including a twelve-year battle to get a
consumption tax
A consumption tax is a tax levied on consumption spending on goods and services. The tax base of such a tax is the money spent on Consumption (economics), consumption. Consumption taxes are usually indirect, such as a sales tax or a value-added ta ...
passed.
The huge national debt in the early 1990s, however, may be evidence that this budget-minded body had been unsuccessful in the previous decade in curbing demands for popular policies such as health insurance, rice price supports, and the unprofitable nationwide network of the privatized
Japan Railways Group.
Ministry of International Trade and Industry
The was a ministry of the Government of Japan from 1949 to 2001. The MITI was one of the most powerful government agencies in Japan and, at the height of its influence, effectively ran much of Japanese industrial policy, funding research and di ...
(MITI) frequently encountered obstacles in its early postoccupation plans to reconsolidate the economy. It has not always been successful in imposing its will on private interests, politicians, or other ministries.
According to law professor
John Owen Haley, writing in the late 1980s, MITI's practice of
gyōsei shidō, or administrative guidance, often described as evidence of the bureaucracy's hidden power, was in fact a second-best alternative to "express statutory authority that would have legitimated its exercise of authority."
Administrative reform policies in the 1980s imposed ceilings on civil service staff and spending that probably contributed to a deterioration of morale and working conditions.
Still another factor limiting bureaucratic power was the emergence of an affluent society.
In the early postwar period, the scarcity of capital made it possible for the Ministry of Finance and MITI to exert considerable influence over the economy through control of the banking system (see
Monetary and fiscal policy). To a decreasing extent, this scarcity remained until the 1980s because most major companies had high debt-equity ratios and depended on the banks for infusions of capital. Their huge profits and increasing reliance on securities markets in the late 1980s, however, meant that the Ministry of Finance had less influence. The wealth, technical sophistication, and new confidence of the companies also made it difficult for MITI to exercise administrative guidance. The ministry could not restrain aggressive and often politically controversial purchases by Japanese corporate investors in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, such as
Mitsubishi Estate
is one of the largest real-estate developers in Japan and is involved in property management and architecture research and design.
As of 2018, Mitsubishi Estate has the most valuable portfolio in the Japanese real estate industry, with a total ...
's October 1989 purchase of
Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commerce, commercial buildings covering between 48th Street (Manhattan), 48th Street and 51st Street (Manhattan), 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 14 original Art Deco ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, which, along with the
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
Corporation's acquisition of
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...
several weeks earlier, heated up trade friction between the two countries.
The whole issue of trade friction and foreign pressure tended to politicize the bureaucracy and promote unprecedented divisiveness in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
During the
Structural Impediments Initiative talks held by Japan and the United States in early 1990, basic changes in Japan's economy were discussed: reforms of the distribution and pricing systems, improvement of the infrastructure, and elimination of official procedures that limited foreign participation in the economy. Although foreign pressure of this sort is resented by many Japanese as an intrusion on national sovereignty, it also provides an opportunity for certain ministries to make gains at the expense of others.
There is hardly a bureaucratic jurisdiction in the economic sphere that is not in some sense affected.
Internationally minded political and bureaucratic elites have found their market-opening reforms, designed to placate United States demands, repeatedly sabotaged by other interests, especially
agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
.
Such reactions intensified United States pressure, which in turn created a sense of crisis and a siege mentality within Japan.
The "internationalization" of Japan's society in other ways also divided the bureaucratic elite. MITI, the
Ministry of Labor
The Ministry of Labour ('' UK''), or Labor ('' US''), also known as the Department of Labour, or Labor, is a government department responsible for setting labour standards, labour dispute mechanisms, employment, workforce participation, training, a ...
, and the
Ministry of Justice A Ministry of Justice is a common type of government department that serves as a justice ministry.
Lists of current ministries of justice
Named "Ministry"
* Ministry of Justice (Abkhazia)
* Ministry of Justice (Afghanistan)
* Ministry of Just ...
had divergent views on how to respond to the influx of unskilled, usually South Asian and Southeast Asian, laborers into the labor-starved Japanese economy. An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 of them worked illegally for small Japanese firms in the late 1980s.
Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture revision of guidelines on the writing of history textbooks, ostensibly a domestic matter, aroused the indignation of Japan's Asian neighbors because the changes tended to soften accounts of wartime atrocities (see
Japanese history textbook controversies
Japanese history textbook controversies involve controversial content in government-approved history textbooks used in the secondary education (junior high schools and high schools) of Japan. The controversies primarily concern the nationalist r ...
).
2000s and 2010s
Civil services in Japan underwent significant changes and reforms to work more efficiently in severe budget situation of the government. In 2001,
Central Government Reform was implemented to merge existing ministries, strengthen the operation of cabinet and achieve more efficient work. Criticism to civil services from media and the public has got stronger against some scandals, such as the practice of
amakudari
In politics, a revolving door is a situation in which personnel move between roles as legislators and regulators, on one hand, and members of the industries affected by the legislation and regulation, on the other, analogous to the movement of pe ...
to assure the advantages of high-rank officials after retirement, salary standard and many other factors.
In 2007,
Junichiro Koizumi
Junichiro Koizumi (; , ''Koizumi Jun'ichirō'' ; born 8 January 1942) is a former Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2001 to 2006. He retired from politics in 2009. He is ...
passed the
postal privatisation bills
was a Japanese statutory corporation that existed from 2003 to 2007, offering postal and package delivery services, banking services, and life insurance. It's the nation's largest employer, with over 400,000 employees, and runs 24,700 pos ...
(see
:ja:聖域なき構造改革). The major concern was Japan Post, with government backing, stymieing competition and giving politicians access to postal savings to fund pet projects.
Japan post was split into three companies in 2007, intending to be privatized by 2017.
Koizumi also reformed
Independent Administrative Institution
An Incorporated Administrative Agency (独立行政法人, ''Dokuritsu gyōsei hōjin'' or ''Dokugyo'' in abbreviation) is a type of legal corporation formulated by the Government of Japan under the Act on General Rules for Incorporated Administrat ...
staff as privatized officers, which reduced half of the civil service. Japan post employed 280,000 people, or one-third of civil servants.
However, as of 2020, the government still holds 57% of shares, and March 2028 was announced as the target date of privatization.
In the
2009 general election, the
Democratic Party of Japan
The was a centristThe Democratic Party of Japan was widely described as centrist:
*
*
*
*
*
*
* to centre-left liberal or social-liberal political party in Japan from 1998 to 2016.
The party's origins lie in the previous Democratic Part ...
(DPJ) came to power after many years of
Liberal Democratic Party of Japan
The , frequently abbreviated to LDP or , is a conservativeThe Liberal Democratic Party is widely described as conservative:
*
*
*
*
* political party in Japan.
The LDP has been in power almost continuously since its foundation in 1955—a per ...
(LDP) government. DPJ set up the policy of “leadership by politics”, criticized the initiative of bureaucracy in the era of LDP, and planned to reform civil service. However, the DPJ was defeated in the
2012 general election, and the LDP regained power.
In 2014, Prime Minister
Abe Shinzo again reduced bureaucratic autonomy by centralizing the appointment of all senior civil servants in the Cabinet Office.
See also
*
Law of Japan
The law of Japan refers to legal system in Japan, which is primarily based on legal codes and statutes, with precedents also playing an important role. Japan has a civil law legal system with six legal codes, which were greatly influenced by Ger ...
*
Government of Japan
The Government of Japan consists of legislative, executive and judiciary branches and is based on popular sovereignty. The Government runs under the framework established by the Constitution of Japan, adopted in 1947. It is a unitary state, c ...
References
*
Japan
{{Civil service
Government of Japan
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
Public administration