Kasumigaseki is the political center of Japan, but is now known as the "Black (Corporate) Kasumigaseki"
Chinese Herald News The Japanese Government Personnel Bureau has recently paid more and more attention to the working environment of national civil servants, as long working hours have become the norm. The number of candidates for national civil service is decreasing, while the number of resignations is increasing. The Japanese government is worried about the difficulty of securing high-quality human resources on administrative sites. The unhealthy practice of excessive overtime is exhausting the work site of civil servants.
"Securing excellent human resources for public administration is a national challenge. The situation is quite serious." Hiroko Kawamoto, Director General of the National Personnel Bureau, stressed this point at an expert exchange meeting in Sendai on June 28 and acknowledged the need to urgently reform working methods, including correcting long working hours.
Kawamoto pointed out that one of the first tasks is that many people are forced to work overtime late at night to respond to parliamentary affairs. According to a survey of 44 state administrative agencies, including county-level departments and agencies, conducted by the National Personnel Bureau between November 2022 and January 2023, members of the ruling and opposition parties are required to notify the government in advance of the issues to be raised in Congress, and the work includes collecting these questions in advance, but staff have to work long hours overtime because members of all parties submit late.
Kasumigaseki, where Japanese government departments are concentrated, has been dubbed the "Black Kasumigaseki" by civil servants, resulting in fewer applicants and more resignations.
In spring 2023, the number of applicants for the National Civil Service Vocational Qualification Examination was the second lowest ever at 14,372, while the ratio of applicants to applicants was the lowest ever, at 7.1 times, i.e. one in seven people was admitted. According to the data of those admitted to the civil service, the proportion of graduates of the University of Tokyo, Japan's famous national university, fell from 23% in fiscal 2014 to 10% in fiscal 23. It can also be understood that after everyone was admitted to a prestigious university, 23% of people went to the civil service position in the central government department Xiaguan, but now only 10% of people think so.
The number of people who resigned less than 10 years after becoming civil servants increased, with 76 central government civil servants resigning in 2013 and 109 in 2020.
Koji Matsui, former chief cabinet secretary and professor at Keio University, pointed out that in order to change the trend of civil servants leaving, it is necessary to change the current situation in which bureaucrats are exhausted by long hours of dealing with the Diet. He then suggested creating discussion forums for middle-aged and young bureaucrats to involve them in the policymaking process so they could feel a sense of accomplishment and revitalize the organization by moving midway.
On June 21, the Diet of Japan concluded its Standing Session, where the problem of bureaucrats being overburdened by the Diet was also discussed.
At a May 23 House Cabinet Committee, Hideya Sugio, a member of the Senate of the Constitutional Democratic Party, asked, "Did you start meeting at 4 a.m.?" Economy Promotion Minister Goto acknowledged that they sometimes start meetings at 4 a.m. Sugio criticized the practice as "contrary to the reform of work style" and urged improvement.
According to a survey conducted by the Cabinet Personnel Bureau between November and December last year, the average time for bureaucrats to start preparing final answers to parliamentary questions if there are no weekends or holidays in between is 19:54 the day before. The average time they took to complete all their answers was 2:56 a.m. that day.
This "unhealthy trend" of overtime work by civil servants such as the Kamagaseki bureaucracy has become a hidden danger of insecure numbers of civil servants.
On the one hand, there is the problem of inefficiency caused by long-term bureaucracy, and on the other hand, because the salaries of civil servants in the Japanese government are subject to national supervision, it is common for civil servants to work harder than in private companies, which also leads to the flow of excellent human resources to foreign companies and other private companies.