The Civil Service and Public Employment

In Japan, ethos of small government was a consistent principle from the 1960s, while people’s expectations of administration and bureaucracy have been traditionally high. The coexistence of these two conflicting objectives has been barely maintained, with the rapid increase in administrative demands, by excessive amounts of overwork of regular employees who are faithful to their own ministry and the surge in the number of non-regular employees under inferior working conditions. The civil service reform in the 2000s, aiming at eliminating wastes caused by the pursuit of ministry-specific interests, introduced the Prime Minister’s control of executive personnel, but this resulted in further exhaustion and demoralization of employees. The fragility of administration system in times of crisis, which relies on the commitment of civil servants in charge, has been also exposed. As the civil service has come to be obviously avoided by young competent people, discussion of “staffing according to workload” and attempts to improve working conditions of non-regular employees have been started as late as recent years.