Book Review: "The Home Ministry: The Giant Agency That Ruled Modern Japan" - Realizing the vast scope of the Home Ministry's duties and the strength of its influence since long ago

Hello. Since it is already the latter half of May, we need to get on with cleaning our rooms and doing laundry before the rainy season begins.

The book I will be reviewing this time is "The Home Ministry: The Giant Agency That Ruled Modern Japan" (Kodansha Gendai Shinsho).

I have the impression that research into Japan's various ministries and agencies has progressed recently, and there are now quite a lot of related books. In particular, what has been attracting attention in Japan is the Ministry of Finance (formerly the Ministry of Finance).

It is considered the ministry with the most power. And, this Home Ministry was a ministry that existed before the war, and if you look at it from a different perspective, it is considered a ministry that had more power than the Ministry of Finance.

A book about that Home Ministry was recently published, and since the content was interesting, I would like to review it.

(1) The vast scope of duties and power held by the Home Ministry

The reason the Home Ministry held power before the war lies in the vast scope of its duties.

The Home Ministry was a large ministry that handled duties that would be handled by other ministries today, such as police functions, civil engineering functions, and welfare functions.

For that reason, it is said that the most excellent people who passed the Higher Civil Service Examination worked at the Home Ministry among the ministries before the end of the war. That was also mentioned in this book.

(2) The Ministry of Finance (formerly the Ministry of Finance), which handles the budget, is influential in every era

The above book is about the Home Ministry, but it conveyed that since the Home Ministry also ultimately operated based on the budget, the influence of the Ministry of Finance was still there.

The reason why government office budgets are in the news every year is because the positioning of the budget in the companies we work for and the budget for running the country are different.

Since the budget is compiled from taxes, the budget of government offices is positioned as a promise to the citizens. (Although there are some people who use it for things that make no sense...)

The current Ministry of Finance seems to have a tough job, but the Ministry of Finance back then was undoubtedly just as difficult.

In any era, places involving money are tough (´；ω；`)

3. The Home Ministry had too wide a scope of jurisdiction.

It is said that the influence of a government office is determined by the breadth of the administrative scope it handles.

As I explained in 1, it came across that because the Home Ministry handled areas that would originally be covered by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the difficulty and sheer volume of the work eventually led to institutional fatigue.

In any era, work tends to increase, but it rarely decreases...

That is why I want people to be given credit for being able to reduce work.

Something like this, I suppose. It is quite thick, so it is a rewarding read.

From an outsider's perspective, it is interesting, but this book conveys that it would be tough to actually work there.