Ringisei—Traditional Values or Organizational Imperatives in the Japanese Upper Civil Service: 1868–1945

Abstract

Perhaps the most widely and persistently reported characteristic of Japanese organizational development in the period 1868–1945 is the pattern of behavior known as ringisei. The literature defines ringisei as a system, emerging first in the 1870's and becoming endemic after 1900, characteristic of both public and private bureaucracies in Japan. In this system of decision-making, policy was and, apparently, still is drafted at lower departmental levels by “specialists” and circulated by document or formal approval, indicated by the affixing of a seal, to successively higher levels of the administrative hierarchy. The policy thus circulated was said to become official when the document reached the minister or senior executive official and he affixed the final seal to the document. It is this pattern that is usually viewed as being synonymous with decision-making from below. This assumption appears to stem from the often repeated belief that once drafted in response to a request from superiors the document (ringisho) met only approval or stalling but never rejection on its journey through ever-higher levels of the administrative hierarchy. Analysts have consistently seen the ringisei system as a major, if not the key, factor in the civil bureaucracy's inability to innovate and as the means by which officials were able to avoid individual responsibility for decisions. The system is also often viewed as the means by which, in the pre-World War II period subordinates were able to impose policies on their superiors without being held accountable.