The new Japanese government has lost no time in cutting the nation's all-powerful bureaucracy down to size, announcing curbs on civil servants on the same day that Yukio Hatoyama was voted in as prime minister.
Bureaucrats were banned from holding news conferences and the tradition of twice-weekly meetings of administrative vice-ministers had been abolished, the ruling party said.
The Democratic Party of Japan made the reining in of the bureaucrats one of the main components of its manifesto in the run-up to the August 30 election, with many in the public clearly sympathetic with the policy. But few civil servants expected such major actions to be taken so swiftly.
'We forbid civil servants to hold news conferences,' new Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said on Wednesday evening, shortly after the cabinet had agreed on the new policy at its first official meeting.
There have been rumblings in Kasumigaseki, the district of ministry buildings, about how the administration's policies will damage the bureaucrats' abilities to do their jobs and limit public access to information, but the government scotched that claim.
'This is not censorship,' Hirano said. About 100 elected politicians elected will take over press conferences at ministries and agencies.
