Do school cliques dominate Japanese bureaucracies? Evidence from Supreme Court appointments.

• Author: Ramseyer, J. Mark
• Position: Symposium: Decision Making on the Japanese Supreme Court

INTRODUCTION

Among American scholars, elite Japanese universities have a bad name. Forget how well the schools do or do not teach. Forget what research they do or do not produce. According to many American observers, they foster among their graduates a relentless exclusivity. Those graduates then form cliques, encourage their employers to hire even more graduates from their alma mater, and manipulate career tournaments to preserve favored posts for themselves.

To test this school-clique hypothesis, we need employee-level information on output: how much each employee produces. The elite university graduates did pass entrance examinations that others failed, after all. They might be smarter than their rivals. They might work harder. Before we can attribute any career success to cliques, we need to know the quantity and quality of the work that they do on the job. For most corporate and government positions, we have no such information.

Within the courts, arguably we do have that employee-level work product: we know the opinions a judge publishes. To test the school-clique hypothesis, I thus ask whether the judges from the elite universities enjoy more successful careers than their output would warrant. The quantity and quality of their opinions held constant, are they more likely to be named to the Supreme Court?

They are not. I find only weak evidence of any favoritism toward Kyoto University graduates, and no evidence of favoritism toward the graduates of the preeminent University of Tokyo. Elite university graduates do not dominate Supreme Court appointments because of their school backgrounds. They dominate because they produce.

In Part I, I summarize the American literature on Japanese school cliques. In Part II, I outline the structure of the Japanese courts; in Parts III.A and III.B, I summarize my data; and in Parts III.C and III.D, I report my results. In Part IV, I conclude by discussing some possible limitations, and in Part V, I discuss alternative measures of career success.

1. JAPANESE SCHOOL CLIQUES IN THE ACADEMIC IMAGINATION

   A. The Possibility (1)

   Whether in the American scholarly literature or in the Japanese newspapers, "school cliques" (known as "gakubatsu") dominated traditional Japan. They dominated firms. They dominated the government. And at least until some recent politically driven experiments, no clique dominated any place as thoroughly as the graduates of the University of Tokyo dominated the bureaucracy.

   Elite Japanese universities select their students almost exclusively (the exceptions involve departments like physical education or the fine arts) through a blindly graded examination. Each school writes and administers its own. Some universities now cooperate on the first stage of an entrance examination. Even they, however, write their own distinctive--and determinative--second stage. Most universities write exams that test material mastered. A few (e.g., the University of Tokyo) write exams that test raw cognitive power.

   Exam difficulty correlates with school prestige. The harder students find it to pass an exam, the higher everyone unofficially ranks the school. And the higher the rank, the more strongly employers compete to hire its graduates. Traditionally, the national University of Tokyo enjoyed preeminent status in nearly all academic departments. The national Kyoto University ranked second. A few national universities and private Tokyo-area schools filled the next tier.

   According to American scholars (and commentators in the Japanese popular media), in the world beyond the university, the graduates of the elite schools look out for their own. They talk with each other. They mentor. They help. They lobby their employers to hire still more graduates. And they manipulate internal processes to promote fellow graduates over those from rival schools.

   These school cliques, declares the late Berkeley and UC San Diego political scientist chalmers Johnson, constitute "without question the single most important influence within the Japanese state bureaucracy. The cliques of university classmates are inseparable from bureaucratic life ...." (2) Among the schools, none allegedly "does cliques" more effectively than the University of Tokyo. Explains Johnson, "[i]n place of the term gakubatsu, some Japanese analysts prefer Todaibatsu (cliques of Tokyo University classmates) because of the predominance of Tokyo University graduates in the bureaucracy and in the upper echelons of the banking and industrial worlds." (3)

   To observers like Johnson, the cliques rig not just initial hiring decisions but later career moves, too. "Todai classmates in and out of government keep in touch with each other," he writes. (4) Tribal through and through, they are nothing if not corrupt. "once in the bureaucracy," declares Johnson, "the Todai group in an entering class in a ministry works together to ensure that its members prosper and that others are frozen out of choice positions." (5)

   The late University of Washington legal scholar Dan Henderson echoes Johnson: the University of Tokyo graduates are successful, tribal, and successful because they are tribal. They "respect and promote each other's interests," he explains. (6) "[O]ne major irregularity evident in the high levels of the civil service is the favoritism (even clearer than in the hiring) shown for the Tokyo University (Todai) law graduates." (7) As evidence, he cites a study finding Tokyo graduates were "promoted faster (seven years on the average) and higher than law graduates from other universities." (8) As a consequence, "nearly 80 percent of the entire 'higher civil service' ... are Todai graduates." (9)

   Sociologist B.C. Koh confirms the fact that University of Tokyo graduates thrive. Within government bureaucracies, he writes, "the proportion of Todai graduates is correlated with position level. That is to say, the higher the position level, the greater the proportion of Todai graduates." (10) Or consider, he explains, the Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto as a group. "The two universities together account for seven in ten higher civil servants overall, and their share of the pot increases to 89 percent at the bureau-chief level and to 95 percent at the vice-ministerial level." (11)

   The courts constitute one such government bureaucracy, and many observers find similar cliques there. University of Tokyo cliques dominate the Ministry of Finance, and they allegedly dominate the courts. Among potential recruits, courts do seem to favor University of Tokyo graduates. In the private bar, fewer than 16% of all lawyers come from the University of Tokyo. (12) Of the 247 judges hired from 1959 to 1961, 23% were University of Tokyo graduates. (13)

   And once in the courts, Tokyo and Kyoto graduates rise quickly to favored posts. (15) They spend more time in Tokyo and less in the provinces. They spend more time in prestigious assignments and less in branch offices. They control more powerful administrative posts and climb the pay scale more quickly. Among the twenty lower-court judges educated after the war and promoted to the Supreme Court by 2002, twelve graduated from the University of Tokyo and six from Kyoto. (16) Washington University legal scholar David Law similarly notes (and the data confirm) that the prime candidates for the supreme Court do tend to have attended the Universities of Tokyo or Kyoto. In the course of his discussion, Law focuses on the "grooming" that potential supreme Court appointees undergo:

   At any given time, it will be possible to determine from [a given judge's] career to date whether he is a viable candidate for the Supreme Court. If he is in serious contention, he will have been groomed, or rewarded, with a series of assignments that place him firmly upon an elite career trajectory that would include many, if not most, of the following professional highlights. After compiling a distinguished academic career at the University of Tokyo (Todai) or Kyoto University (Kyodai), or possibly Chuo University, and achieving one of the top scores on the bar exam, he attends the LTRI and is then posted immediately or very soon thereafter to the Tokyo District Court. He will develop expertise in a particular area of law, be it civil, criminal, or administrative, and will at some point be tapped to serve as a law clerk, or chosakan, at the supreme Court. (17) Law then elaborates at length on the type of other assignments elite judges routinely receive. (18)

   B. The Puzzle

   But do University of Tokyo graduates really rig the system? Many University of Tokyo graduates do enjoy spectacularly successful careers. Yet many also bring a spectacular reservoir of talent. Given that talent, they would receive attractive job offers whether the hiring was rigged or not. They would succeed in internal promotion tournaments whether rigged or not. And in truth, observers have never shown that Tokyo graduates actually rig procedures to favor each other anyway. They show simply that they outperform their competitors. Journalists then find passed-over employees from other schools who announce that their University of Tokyo rivals manipulated the tournaments that they lost, and American scholars repeat the claims.

   The point is obvious, but perhaps worth stressing: University of Tokyo students passed the most selective university exam in the country. students do not pass it by accident. They pass it by combining extraordinarily high cognitive skills with a willingness to work relentlessly hard. They bring IQ and effort--and the two attributes are characteristics employers everywhere find valuable in the extreme.

   As a result, the University of Tokyo graduates might simply do well because they are smart and work hard. They might do well on the job market because school cliques control hiring--but they might also do well because employers like smart and hard-working recruits. They might do well in the internal promotion tournaments because their...