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Dogs and DemonsThe scene changes with each episode, but the villain is invariably a corrupt samurai machi bugyo, or town administrator, whom we see seated in his spacious mansion before an alcove decorated with rare and expensive art, counting gold from ill-gotten gains. His victims have no recourse against him. Only at the climax of each episode does Lord Mito's attendant raise high his paulownia-flower crest and reveal his true identity, whereupon the administrator falls to the ground in obeisance and is carried off for punishment. The difference between Edo and modern Japan is that today we have no Lord Mito. The public suffers from chronically expensive goods and services, while bureaucrats and politicians prosper to a degree that verges on the fantastic, nowhere more than in construction, where amakudari reap post-retirement fortunes. With more than 500,000 construction firms in Japan, no ex-official will ever find himself out of a job. Their personal future income at stake, Construction Ministry bureaucrats support and encourage bid-rigging, which is endemic in Japan's construction industry, inflating the cost of public construction by 30 to 50 percent. (According to some estimates, inflated bids provide 16 to 33 percent of the industry's profits, which is between $50 and $100 billion every year.) Just as leftist writers in the 1930s were so in love with the «dictatorship of the proletariat» that they were unwilling to admit the brutal reality of Stalinism, so mainstream Western commentators have kept up a long love affair with Japan's bureaucracy ...» |
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