An Inoffensive Rearmament by Frank Kowalski

Author:Frank Kowalski [Kowalski, Frank; Eldridge, Robert D]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612513737
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

CHAPTER NINE

LEADERS FASHION ARMIES

Gradually NPR Headquarters (the civilian echelon) and the General Group (the uniformed headquarters) began to fill up with senior government officials. As I reviewed the background and experiences of these new members of the Japanese defense establishment, I noted that all but one of the top appointees were graduates of the Law Department of Tōkyō Imperial University, now the University of Tōkyō. The lone exception was Mitoru Eguchi, who became deputy director general of the NPR and as such was the number two civilian official. Eguchi was a graduate of the Kyōto Imperial University, now Kyōto University. As so many others have observed, the men of Tōkyō University and to a lesser degree those of Kyōto University govern Japan.

I also noted as I had previously observed in military government, that Japanese executives all enjoyed what appeared to be carefully planned diversified assignments and career experiences. I was told that upon graduation from university, selected young individuals were initially assigned and subsequently moved from one government assignment to another with a view of developing them for high-level positions in the national and local governments. Before the occupation, when all the key officials in the national prefectural and city governments were directly appointed by the Imperial administration in Tōkyō, it was understandable how selected officials could be shifted in the direction of the central government from one prefecture to another, from the prefectures into Tōkyō, or from Imperial Bureaus to prefectural assignments. What amazed me when I served in military government, after we introduced election of governors and other local officials, was to find the chief of the Labor Bureau of Shimane Prefecture, for example, suddenly appear as a chief of the Economic Bureau in Kyōto Prefecture. These shifts I found were being made all over Japan. The governors may have been elected by the people of the prefectures after 1947, but I suspect that their labor commissioners and other officials were being assigned to them by someone somewhere in a central agency controlling such matters in Tōkyō. I do not mean to be critical of the system; it has much to be recommended, and I only mention this situation to illustrate that democracy has many facets. We, of course, view local autonomy as a system in which the people of that area elect and control the officials who govern them. There are other views. Accordingly, if we hope to police the world, as some desire, it is important that we realize that often what seems alien and unworkable to us serves others most adequately in their environment and society.

State Minister Takeo Ōhashi, who came from an illustrious Japanese family and who was serving as the attorney general of Japan, was assigned, in addition to his legal duties, responsibility for the National Police Reserve in the cabinet and became the spokesman for the government on defense matters. Initially, State Minister Ōhashi supervised NPR activities in a detached manner from his office in the cabinet, but gradually his visits to NPR Headquarters became more frequent and his influence increasingly more apparent.

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