In Japan, the politically astute are watching the bureaucrats. These men – for they are overwhelmingly male – have for generations pulled the strings of the elected politicians, giving them just enough slack to make them think they are running the country, while really the men in grey call the shots. Down the years, the state's functionaries have also collectively evolved the political sixth sense to make their actions in the run-up to the general election worth a dozen public opinion polls.
Long before Taro Aso, the prime minister, named August 30 as the date of the long-awaited and arguably long-overdue election, the bureaucrats had begun to make their quiet moves. Senior paper-pushers with close ties to members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party were gently eased aside and replaced by fresh faces that would be less offensive to the incoming administration of the Left-of-centre Democratic Party of Japan, which has vowed to curb their powers as soon as it is elected. To lose the public may be regarded as a misfortune, but for the LDP to lose the bureaucracy looks little short of disastrous.
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