TOKYO, July 1, 2021—AkiTakada City in the western profecture of Hiroshima, an idyllic and rapidly aging farming municipality that was the domicil of one of famous samurai warlords centuries ago, publicly recruited candidates for a deputy mayor in early 2021. The reaction was swift and overwhelming, drawing as many as 4,115 applicants and far more than the city office had anticipated – and reflecting the Japanese people’s aspirations to enter bureaucracy that offers stability and security to public servants.
The city has barely 29,000 residents and 376 officials employed by the city office (2016 data). Like most other Japanese municipalities, it suffers a rapid population aging and decrease. Mayor Shinji Ishimaru, the 38-year-old former MUFJ bank analyst, won his seat in the July 2020 mayoral election.
Unshackled by tradition, Ishimaru in January 2021 publicly recruited a deputy mayor, one of two deputy mayor posts which was vacated, assigning EN Japan, a private recruiting agency, to accept applications, according to city announcements and media reports. The incumbent deputy mayor was sent from the prefecture office.
The post, according to EN Japan website, offers a humble 12,138,000 yen (approximately $110,000) a year and the is a 4-year, renewable job. It probably comes with a lot of perks, so the winner don’t have to di into the sum for living.
In March, the cityy assembly voted down the new deputy mayor candidate, a 34-year-old woman, Natsuki Shinobori, working for a nonprofit called RCF of Tokyo. Hints of nepotism lurk in Ishimaru’s pick of the woman. Putting that aside, the fact that as many as 4,100 people’s applications ultimately were accepted for consideration confirms the centuries-old Japanese people’s views about the public sector, a.k.a. bureaucracy (though the city’s deputy mayor post is a mix of political appointee and so-called non-career officer).
The old dictum ‘Revere Okami (god, Edo-period Tokugawa shogun),’ is evoked as a distorted authority image for those applicants who probably want to flank Okami to impose heavy-handed policies on taxpayers.
At a June 28 assembly, Ishimaru’s motion for the appointment was voted down for the third time. Whether he plans to refresh his recruitment or re-submit a motion for Shinobori was not clear at this time, but one thing is clear, according to a city official: public interest for the deputy mayor post remains hot, though may not want to join Japanese government ministries and toil 80 hours a week to draft documents for politicians.
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