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RELATED TOPIC:
THE EMPEROR

RELATED TOPIC:
THE PRIME MINISTER

RELATED TOPIC:
THE JAPANESE DIET (PARLIAMENT)

RELATED TOPIC:
INTEREST GROUPS IN JAPANESE POLITICS

RELATED TOPIC:
ELECTION LAWS

RELATED TOPIC:
THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM

 
THE GOVERNMENT OF MODERN JAPAN:
THE JAPANESE BUREAUCRACY

The Social Prestige of the Bureaucratic Elite

Gerald L. Curtis :: Japan, like every other modern industrialized country, needs to have competent individuals working in the government, and these are the people that we call bureaucrats.

Now, one of the things that is characteristic of the Japanese political system, and that has been characteristic of Japanese politics going back for more than a hundred years, is that the bureaucracy in Japan is considered by Japanese to be a place where the country’s best and the brightest, or the elite goes.

So, unlike some other countries, where bureaucrats do not have a great deal of social prestige and becoming a civil servant is not considered to be necessarily the most successful career that one could aspire to, in Japan becoming a member of the Ministry of Finance or a member of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, becoming a bureaucrat in the elite track — that is that group of senior bureaucrats in the Japanese government — has traditionally been a very prestigious position.

In Japan, bureaucrats are drawn from those people who pass the most difficult exams, who are graduates of the best universities in the country.