Something extraordinary is happening in the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo, which has been the most prestigious school in Japan for more than a century.
The university requires applicants for undergraduate courses to pass entrance exams in one of six divisions -- Humanities and Social Sciences I, II and III and Natural Sciences I, II and III. Successful applicants first attend the university's College of Arts and Sciences for two years and then choose specific faculties and divisions to advance into. Those who have passed the Humanities and Social Sciences I test are usually expected to move on to the Faculty of Law. Additionally, the faculty accepts a limited number of people who passed the other divisions' entrance tests. However, this quota is so limited that only students with the highest scores and the like in each division may be accepted.
By "something extraordinary," I mean that in recent years the Faculty of Law's special quota for accepting students from other divisions has not been filled. Moreover, the number of students passing the Humanities and Social Sciences I test but declining to advance to the Faculty of Law has been on the increase. In other words, the faculty's overall admission quota has not been filled for five years in a row. This indicates a steep fall in the popularity of the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo.
The phenomenon may be a natural occurrence. In 2004, Japan introduced the school of law system, which has subsequently turned out to be a debacle. The aim of the system was to enable about 70 percent of law school graduates to pass the national bar exam, but because too many universities set up law schools simultaneously, the percentage of hopefuls who pass the bar exam has since been extremely low.
As a result, many universities have closed their law schools in recent years. Even at the University of Tokyo's School of Law, the number of students passing the bar exam and the quality of education are far below its initial expectations.
Civil service in crisis
A much more serious issue that can be related to the decline of the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo is that the country's civil service system, especially that for high-ranking public servants or government officials, has been in crisis. First and foremost, high-ranking public servants are compelled to work extremely hard -- for many years they routinely work overnight, sleeping at the relevant ministries or agencies.
Nonetheless, their salaries are low -- much lower than executives at leading business corporations. For instance, the salary for the vice administrative minister of a ministry -- the highest post in the civil service system -- is about one-tenth of what a large company pays its chief executive officer, and comparable only to what a section manager at a thriving private-sector firm receives.
Nowadays, high-ranking government officials are forbidden, for a certain period of time after retiring from the civil service, from relying on the practice of "amakudari" or "descent from heaven" to easily land post-retirement jobs. They usually have no choice but to give up post-retirement jobs permanently at the age of about 70. Their old-age pension benefits are far smaller than those given to former senior executives of leading companies.
There is one exceptional case in which high-ranking officials are treated well. The lump-sum retirement allowances they receive are relatively high, but this allowance is effectively equivalent to a deferred salary payment. The civil service system uses a formula that makes the retirement allowance commensurate with the length of service. The longer you work as a civil servant, the higher your retirement allowance will be.
It is hardly a wholesome situation if this formula lets officials who are less committed to their duties seek to receive higher retirement allowances by staying employed by the government as long as possible. As a solution to this problem, I propose that officials' salaries be raised, while lowering the retirement allowance and increasing pension benefits.
For comparison, I refer to the related situations in some foreign countries. Singapore probably pays the highest civil service salary in the world, with an annual income equal to much more than 100 million yen for an official serving in a vice-ministerial or equivalent post. Diplomats of certain European countries, such as Britain, France and Germany, are all competent, and their compensation packages are generally better than those for their Japanese counterparts.
The reason for this is straightforward -- a country is prone to suffer disadvantages on a national level if it fails to adequately remunerate qualified people in the civil and diplomatic services for their dedicated work. Only the United States doesn't think so.
Disadvantageous situation
Why does Kasumigaseki -- the heart of the Japanese government -- have a history of attracting up-and-coming university graduates despite these disadvantageous circumstances in the country's civil service? They've chosen to administer state affairs out of a sense of mission and privilege. However, it is difficult in today's circumstances to expect young people to harbor such feelings.
The country's fiscal woes are partly responsible for the less positive circumstances. Japan's fiscal situation is the worst in the world in terms of ratios of total public debt to gross domestic product, forcing the government to reduce expenditures for new projects as much as possible. It is common for senior officials to feel privileged when they contribute to the development of the country by earmarking new budgetary appropriations for new projects. Now, there are almost no such opportunities.
Another less positive element in Kasumigaseki of late is the rapidly growing involvement of politicians in various aspects of the policy-making process. In a break with the past, ministry and agency officials find it increasingly hard to get their policy proposals accepted by politicians, even though they know their proposals will serve the national interest. They used to be actively responsible for administering state affairs by cooperating with -- and occasionally confronting -- politicians. However, now that the Cabinet Bureau of Personnel Affairs has gained the power to manage the high-level personnel affairs of each ministry and agency, the number of officials able to say "no" to politicians has shrunk.
There used to be a healthy degree of tense relations between politicians and government officials, a Kasumigaseki feature that is now gone. Against this background, officials have no choice but to either become simply obedient to politicians or quit. This will inevitably weaken the overall qualifications and morale of the civil service.
There was a time when the world's trust in Japan meant that it trusted the country's government officials. Even today, foreign developing countries continue to send many officials to Japan to learn about its civil service system. Japanese officials have been praised internationally for working hard and being honest despite receiving relatively low salaries. So foreign officials want to know the secrets behind being decent public servants.
But, as long as the inferior remuneration for Japanese officials and the loss of independent-mindedness that insulates them from political control remain unheeded, it will be difficult to maintain the high-quality Japanese bureaucracy.
Insufficient effort
The University of Tokyo's Faculty of Law is also to blame for the current situation.
Sufficient efforts are not being made to appeal to would-be applicants, because the faculty has for decades been able to attract the best and brightest students from all over Japan without the faculty making any particular effort. From a teacher's point of view, teaching is most effective when students are in their first year of university. It is the responsibility of university teachers to stimulate first-year students' brains, which are still full of knowledge gained through entrance exam preparations, educate them about what genuine learning is, and create a clear state of intellectual awakening among them.
There is an old saying that one should strike while the iron is hot. At Harvard University, leading Japanologist Edwin O. Reischauer and well-known Sinologist John K. Fairbank once provided fresh undergraduates with introductory lectures on the history of East Asian civilization that became known as Harvard students' "port of entry" into Japan and China. The Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo has done almost nothing corresponding to Harvard's high-profile effort.
The Faculty of Law should also question whether it is offering a lively learning opportunity for students to examine real-world issues. Let's look at the faculty's study of the Constitution, for example. It should first be noted that the Constitution is the basic law of our land and the framework from which the country's entire government is built.
However, the study of constitutional law at the University of Tokyo -- and at almost every other university in Japan -- concentrates almost exclusively on analyzing the current Constitution of Japan. There are almost no discussions on what should be done to better manage state affairs, or how Japan is able to cope with the world's ongoing major changes.
In the days of the Meiji Constitution, which was in effect from 1889 to 1946, law faculty Prof. Shinkichi Uesugi asserted that Emperor Meiji's prerogative was the core principle of the Meiji Constitution and that, as such, the imperial prerogative should be literally implemented. In contrast, fellow faculty Prof. Tatsukichi Minobe advocated flexible constitutional interpretation, tailored to specific real situations.
In 1935, rightists fiercely attacked Minobe's theories. This denial of flexible constitutional interpretation was the first in a series of major events that led to the bankruptcy of politics in Japan in the years prior to World War II.
Of course, many Faculty of Law professors have attained outstanding academic achievements by responding to realities. Among them are Atsushi Yamaguchi, a professor emeritus specializing in criminal law, who has served as a Supreme Court justice since February 2017; and Prof. Yuji Iwasawa, who was recently elected to be a judge of the International Court of Justice. Those appointments can be described as society's tribute to their achievements.
A widespread issue
The Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo has almost no foreign-language courses, only one foreign professor, almost no teachers with real-world experience and only four female teachers. It has a very small number of foreign students. These factors are mainly to blame for the continuous fall of the University of Tokyo's place in the world university rankings.
The Faculty of Law has a particularly large number of drawbacks that adversely affect the university's international standing.
I repeat that the issues I just highlighted are not limited to the University of Tokyo. Other universities are in a similar situation, too. This truly is a serious issue.
In contrast, the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Public Policy has relatively fewer restrictions on the way it is run. The graduate school, jointly inaugurated by the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Economics in 2004, has many teachers with real-world experience, flexibly organizes divisions and offers many courses in foreign languages.
Unfortunately, there can be no easy solutions to the aforementioned issues.
To redress the situation, Japan's fiscal condition should be improved first through a tax hike, and politicians should pay more respect to the independence of ministry and agency officials from political influence, and their expertise in government.
Regarding universities, I recommend that the number of professors be considerably reduced and that many of the vacancies be filled by visiting professors or part-time teachers. At the Faculty of Law, there were a total of 49 professors and associate professors as of 1970. The comparable number now stands at 81.
The faculty had a first-year enrollment of about 630 undergraduate students in 1970 but the number has since dropped to 401, reflecting the declining population of children in the country.
I remember that when I was at the faculty, I invited two high-ranking Japanese Foreign Ministry officials to teach as visiting professors about "global issues and Japan" and "the U.N. Security Council and solution of conflicts." Their courses were quite popular. As remuneration for visiting professors and part-time teachers is low, each university will be able to employ nearly 10 visiting professors with resources equivalent to the salary for one full-time professor. With this kind of approach, universities will be able to cope with the changing environment surrounding them.
Also, each faculty's mainstay divisions should be solidly staffed by professional researchers. These divisions should adopt a longer tenure system, lasting about 10 years, say, for professors and associate professors, so they will have a better chance of making important academic achievements. Professors who fail to have any scholarly achievements despite better conditions will inevitably be weeded out.
The government has kept deploying national resources to the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo as the country's key center to produce outstanding research and talented human resources for a long time since the Meiji era. Tradition is not made in one go. I earnestly hope the Faculty of Law of the University of Tokyo will overcome the current crisis and keep its legacy from being lost.
Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun
Kitaoka is a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, specializing in Japanese political and diplomatic history. He is also president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency, a post he assumed in October 2015 after serving as president of the International University of Japan. He was Japan's ambassador to the United Nations from 2004-06 and deputy chairman of the Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security in 2013-14.
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