Kyodo News On the night of April 2, when then Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi suffered a stroke and fell into a coma, Teijiro Furukawa was one of the few people immediately informed, and he promptly busied himself arranging for a smooth transfer of power.

Furukawa is deputy chief Cabinet secretary, the top government official with no parliamentary seat.

While consulting with Chief Cabinet Secretary Mikio Aoki, an Upper House member known for his close ties with Obuchi, Furukawa quickly made arrangements for Aoki's late-night news conference and his appointment as provisional acting prime minister.

Aoki assumed the post of acting prime minister, it was said, in accordance with precedent -- he had always been appointed to that post whenever Obuchi was on foreign visits. Aoki also claimed Obuchi had asked him to take care of everything should he become incapacitated. Debate still rumbles over the veracity of that claim.

Aoki justified dismissing the Cabinet en masse by citing Furukawa's interpretation of the Constitution. "If the prime minister is unconscious and unable to understand questions and express his opinion," Furukawa was quoted as saying, "his Cabinet shall resign en masse." Article 70 of the Constitution says, in part, "when there is a vacancy in the post of prime minister, the Cabinet shall resign en masse."

Furukawa being so principally involved behind the scenes in such a political decision as replacing a prime minister reveals a system in which bureaucrats are indispensable to political management.

The nonparliamentary deputy chief Cabinet secretary stands at the apex of the bureaucracy and is a linchpin intermediary between politics and administration.

Bureaucrats in Japan pride themselves on running the country, even though they do not represent the people, unlike elected politicians. "We bureaucrats are the Emperor's (constant) servants. Prime ministers change every few years," said a former health and welfare vice minister speaking on condition of anonymity.

A Foreign Ministry official quipped: "We bureaucrats are thinking of foreign affairs 24 hours a day, while politicians are thinking of their elections 23 hours and 59 minutes a day."

However, the bureaucrats' pride, considered arrogance by some, has been tempered in recent years by a spate of bribery scandals as well as Japan's prolonged recession -- just as the bureaucracy was begrudgingly credited with managing Japan to affluence, it must now suffer the blame as the economy flounders.

According to the Management and Coordination Agency, the number of national public servants, including members of the Self-Defense Forces, stands at about 840,000, of whom some 20,000 are so-called career officials who passed the national public service examination category one.

Former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobuo Ishihara said: "Nowadays, young people who were brought up in good environments and finished university education with good records become elite bureaucrats. They tend to know little of the ways of the world and are insensitive to the general public."

Ishihara entered the Home Affairs Ministry in 1952 and climbed the bureaucratic ladder to the ministry's top post. He then served as deputy chief Cabinet secretary for five prime ministers (Noboru Takeshita, Toshiki Kaifu, Kiichi Miyazawa, Morihiro Hosokawa, and Tsutomu Hata) in a row.

A senior official of the Management and Coordination Agency's Personnel Bureau said relatively young career officials tend to be partial to technical knowledge and take a narrow view of things. Such officials appear to be immature in character and unable to manage their subordinates well, he said.

Ishihara said bureaucrats must think of new national targets for the 21st century. Japan has many problems to address, he added, such as its aging population.