“WE WORK for the nation, not for the cabinet minister," crows Kazagoshi Shingo, the hero of “The Summer of Bureaucrats", a Japanese novel. Kazagoshi, an official at the ministry of trade and industry, refuses to rise from his seat to greet his minister, a politician only nominally above him in the hierarchy. Published in 1975, the book captured the power of Japanese mandarins during the post-war boom, when graduates from elite universities clamoured for jobs in marquee ministries. Top bureaucrats had status and power akin to top bankers. They made the machinery of the Japanese state whir.

       These days it is winter for Japan’s once-mighty civil service. Talented cadres are fleeing harsh work conditions in search of greater opportunities and more flexibility. The number of elite “career-track" civil servants who quit within their first ten years on the job has hit record highs in the past two years. Applications for civil-servant positions fell by 30% between 2012 and 2023. The share of graduates from the University of Tokyo, Japan’s top university, among those who passed the career-track exam declined from 32% in 2000 to less than 10% this year. Today’s best and brightest prefer jobs at startups.

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