Ministry

The Ministry is Peter Hartcher's fascinating look into Japan's most powerful, but least known institution, the Ministry of Finance. It's an institution that's firmly embedded in Japan's cultural fabric and can trace its origins back 1200 years. It's been compared to the IRS, the SEC, the Federal Reserve, and U.S. Treasury all rolled into one. And it's largely responsible for the economic mess that Japan finds itself in today. Hartcher's account is the story of a ministry who arranges marriages for its key personnel, a place where employees rarely go home, and where staff members routinely die of exhaustion caused by overwork. Hartcher shows that even though the Ministry's nationalistic policies have helped to create phenomenally low unemployment, its resistance to open markets and increasing incompetence is a dangerous liability, not only to its own economy, but the global economy as well. Anyone who's interested in how Japan really works will find this an indispensable read.