The new Japanese government has set out to stamp its mark on the country with gusto, targeting the all-powerful bureaucracy for its first broadside.
Yukio Hatoyama's new Japanese government has set out to stamp its mark on the country, targeting its powerful bureaucrats Photo: AP
Japan's pen-pushers are just one area of the previous administration's most cherished pillars, but have been targeted within days of the government taking office.
On Wednesday, the same day as Yukio Hatoyama was confirmed as prime minister by parliament, his government announced that Tokyo's mandarins are forbidden to hold news conferences and that the tradition of twice-weekly meetings of administrative vice ministers has been abolished.
The Democratic Party of Japan had made the reining-in of bureaucrats one of the main components of its manifesto in the run-up to the Aug 30 election. But few civil servants can have expected such drastic actions to be taken so swiftly.
Mr Hatoyama's new ministers have ialso targeted dam construction projects, motorway tolls, the health insurance system and secret deals with the United States that permitted nuclear weapons to be brought into the country.
The DPJ has drawn up a blueprint for a National Strategy Bureau that will come directly under the prime minister's office, serving as the central hub for reform of the powerful ministries and altering the way in which budgets are allocated and spent.
The first task of the new bureau will be to claw back some of the 207 trillion yen (£1.39 trillion) allocated for the fiscal 2010 budget.
One way of doing that, the party believes, is by cutting civil servants' pay and thinning their numbers. The target that has been set is a reduction of £673 billion in personnel expenses, but by reducing wages and numbers of bureaucrats.
Katsuya Okada, the new foreign minister, has got into the rhythm of the new administration by ordering a full investigation into secret military arrangements with the US that previous governments have strenuously denied.
Those denials have been undermined by declassified documents in the US and former Japanese diplomats blowing the whistle on arrangements that included Japan permitting US warships and aircraft carrying nuclear weapons to enter Japanese ports or pass through its airspace without informing the government here.
On Friday US officials conceded they could not "dictate" to the Japanese after talks over the new government's objections to a planned new US military base.
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