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

Gerald L. Curtis :: One of the features of the Japanese bureaucratic system that is quite unusual compared to other countries, where there are also strong bureaucracies, as for example in France and elsewhere in Europe, is that Japanese elite bureaucrats, particularly in the economic ministries, tend to leave their ministries at a relatively young age, in their early fifties, and "parachute" down into major positions either in business or in financial institutions, or in a range of government organizations that are somewhat independent, but dependent on the government for funding and closely linked to the government in carrying out some of its functions.

This is a system that in Japanese is called amakudari. And amakudari means "descent from heaven." So that when a bureaucrat retires at the age of 52 or 53, if he’s a member of the Ministry of Finance, he will descend from heaven. So interestingly, heaven is considered to be the bureaucracy, and he descends from heaven into a position as the president of some regional bank or as the head of some financial think-tank that’s funded by the Ministry of Finance.

And the practice in Japan, to the present day, is that when a new vice-minister, administrative vice-minister — that is the most senior position in the Japanese bureaucracy other than that of the minister himself — when a new vice-minister is appointed from among the bureaucrats in that ministry, every other bureaucrat in that ministry who entered the ministry in the same year or before the newly appointed vice-minister has to resign, so that nobody works for the vice-minister who is an equal or senior to that person in terms of seniority in the ministry.

This is a kind of feudal custom that has been maintained into present-day Japanese life, and it’s why people retire at the young age, at the relatively young age they do, and why there’s such a need for this amakudari, that is, for positions for people to descend into.