Abstract
Drastic decentralization reform has been put into practice recently throughout the whole governmental system in Japan. This is regarded as the third wave of reforms following those after the Meiji Restoration and World War II. This decentralization movement began from the establishment of the Decentralization Promotion Act of 1995. In accordance with this statute the Committee for the Promotion of Decentralization was set up to deliberate decentralization plans, which the Cabinet should prepare, and to give specific policy advice for those plans. The Committee submitted five recommendations to the Prime Minister from 1996 to 1998. Based on these recommendations, the Cabinet put together a comprehensive plan for decentralization in May 1998. A package bill concerning the Arrangement of Related Laws for the Promotion of Decentralization is now under deliberation as of June during the regular session of the Diet in 1999. This paper is intended as an investigation of the features of the decentralization reform and its effects on the educational administration system from the view point of intergovernmental relations (central-local relationship). The most influential and widespread change in this reform is that the system of "agency-assigned functions" (kikan-inin-jimu) was abolished. When a local government exercises functions that are "agency-assigned" by the central government, the local chief executive becomes an agent of the central government subject to the supervision of the competent minister. In its First Recommendation Report (1996), the Committee for the Promotion of Decentralization described the system of agency-assigned functions as "the core of centralized administrative system in our country" and recommended the total abolition of this system. The recommendation met with stiff resistance from almost all ministries. However, the Committee eventually succeeded in abolishing it. The number of agency-assigned functions has reached 561 items that are listed in the Appendix of the Local Autonomy Act. All of these items are being reorganized and divided according to the new classification of administrative affairs. There are 34 items that the Boards of Education have to carry out as "agency-assigned functions," as listed in Appendix 3 (24 items assigned to each Prefecture's Board of Education) and Appendix 4(10 items assigned to the Board of Education of each city, town, and village). Almost 60 per cent of these functions are to be changed into "autonomous affairs" (jichi-jimu). It means that local authorities have a great possibility of autonomy on the occasion of decision-making. These trends are very significant in promoting the trend of decentralization, yet at the same time, it is believed that the fundamental characteristics of the Japanese educational administration system in the post-World War II era will never change. As pointed out in an earlier paper (1995), the educational administration system can be recognized as a particular type (decentralization-interfusion) judging from intergovernmental relations. Some progress may indeed be made in this movement of (decentralization), but the predominant characteristic of (interfusion) will likely continue after the reform.
