The real cause of criticism of bureaucrats is the malfunctioning of the Japanese government. That is to say, throughout most of the postwar period, when the performance of bureaucrats was considered excellent by people both inside and outside Japan, most people thought that although there are many problems with them, they should be forgiven because they work very well. Today, however, many people feel frustrated, and consider it unreasonable for bureaucrats who cannot make effective policies to be well treated. Although bureaucrats are struggling to create coherent and intelligent policies, they are perplexed about why every policy they hammer out doesn't work out quite as they had planned. They do not yet know how to deal with the scope of the changes they face.
Further confusion arises when bureaucrats are blamed for the present situation.
That is to say, it is unreasonable to demand solutions from bureaucrats who are strictly bound by the current system and who cannot move freely when systemic malfunction occurs. The parliamentary system of government is a system whereby the legislative and executive branches are united through the majority party. Therefore, depending on several variables, this system can create a very strong power center, the strength of which might be likened to the Thatcher cabinet in Britain. But pre-war traditions survived, and many officials still act as if the executive branch is independent of the legislative branch. Thus, the concepts that government ministers are really just the spokesmen of bureaucrats, who make the real decisions at the highest levels regarding matters of state, and that the cabinet is an organization whose primary function is to rubber-stamp whatever the bureaucrats tell them to, are still alive.