In Summer of the Bureaucrats, a 1975 novel that summed up the power and prestige of Japanese officialdom during the years of rapid economic growth, the hero tells his younger colleagues: “We work for the nation. We don’t work for the minister.”
Elite bureaucrats told companies where to invest, parcelled out projects to the regions and devised manifestos for the ruling Liberal Democratic party. Of the so-called “iron triangle” — business, bureaucracy and the LDP — it was the technocrats who ran the show.
But in the past few months the Japanese civil service, renowned for its cunning and efficiency, has suffered repeated humiliation. Officials have become embroiled in allegations of sexual harassment, falsified documents in a clumsy effort to protect Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, told obvious lies to parliament and misplaced military records from the Iraq war.