The education ministry took disciplinary action Friday against seven senior bureaucrats over their involvement in illegally negotiating to secure their colleague a post-retirement university job.
According to a report issued by the Cabinet Office's re-employment oversight committee, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology was also involved in 37 cases of a practice known as amakudari (literally "descent from heaven") in which retired bureaucrats are given lucrative jobs at entities in the business sectors they once oversaw.
Given the education ministry's systemic amakudari practice, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the same day the government will investigate all ministries to see whether similar practices had been carried out elsewhere.