Eamonn Fingleton

The West often ascribes mystery and chaos to political and economic power in Japan. Yet Japanese power is actually a carefully structured hierarchy, and the capstone is neither big business nor the Ministry of International Trade and Industry but the little-understood and low-profile Ministry of Finance. The MOF controls Japan's equivalents of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Internal Revenue Service, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It is the prime mover behind Japan's savings rate, distribution of overseas aid, and regulation of monopolies. However obscure, it may well be the most powerful bureaucracy in the world.