Bureaucrats ready to do battle

Japan's bureaucrats are resisting economic reform, and are under pressure with the Hosokawa administration's twin aims of deregulation and decentralization of power. This is illustrated by the reaction to the dismissal of Masahisa Naito, who ran the Industrial Policy Bureau at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. The previous Liberal Democratic Party preserved the bureaucratic system, but pressure for reform from the new govt could lead to real changes. This will mean reform on both political and economic fronts, and will not be easy for the weak coalition in power in 1994.