MOF's Elite Administrators

Japan's elite bureaucrats have five defining characteristics. First, their recruitment is open and competitive, but those appointed are drawn predominantly from among the graduates of Tokyo University's Law Faculty. Second, those recruited are generalists who dominate the elite bureaucracy in headquarters ministries. Third, bureau and ministry interests are stronger than national, centralizing tendencies; most bureaucrats serve the whole of their official life in the same ministry or agency. Fourth, behavioural norms of seniority, and rotation of posts, provide for the strictly regulated progression of class-cohorts with broadly based experience, mainly within ministries, up to the level of deputy director of division. Fifth, officials passed over for promotion at more senior levels in headquarters ministries resign; most, together with some other retirees, seek (with the assistance of their ministry) ‘second careers’ elsewhere in the public and private sectors, and in the Diet. This chapter looks at the recruitment, socialization, career progression, and retirement of the Ministry of Finance's elite administrators, within the context of those five broad characteristics.