Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [60]
The ministries meet any efforts to restrict amakudari with vigorous resistance. «It's because we are assured of a second career that we are willing to work for years at salaries below those in the private sector,» says an official at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries. The result is an incestuous system where businesses hire and pay ex-bureaucrats, and in exchange receive favors from government ministries.
While amakudari in private industry have garnered most media attention, there is another, even more influential type-amakudari who run the vast web of semi-government agencies through which subsidy money trickles downward. The largest and most powerful of these are the tokushu hojin, «special government corporations,» almost half of whose directors are amakudari. After these directors retire from tokushu hojin, they descend another rung, becoming directors of a second group of agencies, koeki hojin, or «public corporations.» These agencies function with hardly any public scrutiny, and they are protected by ministry colleagues who look forward to enjoying amakudari benefits when their own time comes.
Consider the Japan Automobile Federation (JAF). Theoretically, JAF exists to provide road service for Japan's drivers. However, JAF spends only 10 percent of its annual ¥48 billion budget on road service, paying much of the rest to amakudari officials from the Transport and Police ministries who draw double incomes from JAF and its shell subsidiaries. Where the lion's share of JAF's money goes nobody knows for sure, and this is typical of the secret jugglings and cooked books of the tokushu hojin.
Tokushu hojin are the very keystone of Japan's bureaucratic state, and they represent yet another economic addiction. Although there has been much talk of reducing or abolishing their largely anachronistic activities, they and their subsidiaries employ 580,000 people; if you count the families and dependents, they support more than 2 million people. The government can no more afford to suddenly cut back on tokushu hojin than it can afford to reduce the construction budget, since such a large percentage of the workforce depends on income from these agencies.
Other soft landing sites for amakudari bureaucrats with golden parachutes are government advisory councils and kyokai, «industry associations.» Groups such as the Electronics Communications Terminal Equipment Testing Association and the Radio Testing Association administer standards and recommend new policies. This helps to explain why Japan's industry is so slow to update technical standards, for as one journalist has observed, «When you seek to abolish certain regulations, a stone wall is immediately erected. Abolishing regulations translates into destroying these cushy post-bureaucratic careers.»
Politicians exert influence through their relations with bureaucrats, and the press call the latter zoku giin, «tribal Diet members,» according to which ministry tribe they belong to. Former prime minister Hashimoto, whose prime area of influence lay in the Ministry of Health and Welfare, derived bis power from being a member of that ministry's tribe. Industry pays vast sums to tribal members who can secure contracts for them through their associated ministries. Construction Ministry tribalists sit at the top of the heap, as was illustrated in a major scandal of the 1990s in which it was found that Diet kingmaker Kanemaru Shin had made more than $50 million.
«Power,» said Mao Zedong, «springs from the mouth of a gun.» In Japan, even greater power springs from the issuing of rule and permits. Rules exist in every area and in