With the economy in the doldrums in Japan, people here are buckling down as they wait for the recession to sort itself out. The Japanese have a magical phrase that allows them to endure all manner of adversity, which is sho ga nai meaning “it can’t be helped,” and that sentiment is being expressed more than a little right now. Yet there’s one group that never seems to notice economic hard times: the komuin (KOH-MOO-een), a class of national and regional government employees that are the last bastion of absolute job security in Japanese society. Komuin are modeled after the civil service traditions of Western nations, and a wide range of professions are part of the system, including police, fire fighters, and teachers at public schools and universities; before their respective industries were privatized, all employees of the JR train line, the Japanese post office and even Japan Tobacco were government employees. While I have memories from my college days of the hard choices the State of California had to take to make its budget stretch in rough times, including cutting a wide range of budgets, I can’t say that I’ve seen any case when public employees here faced serious job or budget cuts in similar situations. These days criticism is being focused on eight so-called “independent government corporations” like JETRO, an agency that promotes trade between Japan and other countries, which were found to be giving their employees hefty “food allowances” of up to $90 a month amounting to $14.5 million since 2003. Considering how wasteful these agencies are under the best of conditions, I can certainly understand the ire of Japanese taxpayers when they heard of this special treatment lavished on beauracrats that no one else is entitled to.
