Japanese Pre-war Government Official System

The pre-war Japanese system of government bureaucrats is quite an un-intuitive system that resembles nothing from the western world.

All government employees are subdivided into a multitude of levels. Keep in mind while the military actually used the same system of different levels, they usually kept to referring to their respective military rank rather than their government official rank.

To begin with, government officials are seperated into roughly 4 seperate levels. The Koutoukan, the high ranking officials; the Hanninkan, the junior officials; Ko-in, Hired personnel; and the Younin, the servants.

All of those above are government employees, but their salary and jobs vastly varied from one another. And among Koutoukans, other than the highest rank Shinninkan, they are subdivided into 9 different levels that have different monthly salary, with the top two level counted as Chokuninkan, and the rest Souninkan.

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• Shinninkan 

This is the highest of the high ranking officials, they are the top 3 level of the high ranking officials, and their position may only be appointed by the Emperor himself. Some examples of this position are as follows. For the military, army division commanders, navy fleet commanders. For the civilian government, prime ministers, state secretary, first justice of the supreme court, attorney general.

Among the weirdness of the government official system, there is also a system for lower rank officials that have long year of services to receive "Shinnin Kan Treatment". Some examples include imperial college chancellors, police superintendent general. This rule extends to all the following ranks, and serves as a sort of award to long term veterans that didn't get promoted or plateau'd.

• Chokuninkan

Chokuninkan consists of the first two levels of Koutoukan, they are positions appointed by the government directly. The candidates are submitted by the prime minister and submitted to the Emperor for approval. The Emperor usually rubber stamps these appointment unless something was really out of place.

Some examples of Chokuninkan are, deputy of the ministry of the imperial palace, prefecture governors and deputy governors,  police superintendent general.

• Souninkan

Souninkan consist of the remaining 7 levels of Koutoukan, they are appointed directly by the prime minister using power vested in him by the Emperor. (In theory, in actuality the deputy does most of the appointment).

Those that made it into this catagory are usually promoted from a junior official, a Hanninkan. Or if your official examination was particularly high ranked, you might get appointed to one of these positions. (Nothing too priestige though, if you didn't have a family history in the government)

They are usually the supervisors in each ministry, and government organizations. 

• Hanninkan

Hanninkan are the lowest rank of the government officials, they are usually hired through passing the official government examination for various organization. Police patrolmen, government accountant, and navy dockyard engineers are all Hanninkan. They consist the largest amount of government officials.

They are subdivided into 10 separate levels and all have different levels of salary.

• Ko-in

Ko-in are the hired personnel of the government. Usually that means they aren't actual government officials, just specialized skills. Examples include, drivers, guards, nurses, document translators. For military hired personnel, sometimes they are sent out on deployments alongside the actual military as support roles.

• Younin

Younin are the lowest of the lowest of the government personnel. They translates to "servants" literally. Some examples of them are, boot shiners, cooks, copier, receptionists, laundry. Basically the most basic functions of the government. While working under the military they may also be deployed, and are usually as coolies, builders.

There are also two more levels beneath them, but I am going to simplify them here and just give a short description as they are not relevant to the topic at hand. Shotaku, temporary hires of the government, these CAN be high level officials, just temporary. Kouin, non-specialized labor, manual laborers hired by the government, most commonly work as factory labor.

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That's about it, there are also intricacies about ones actual rank but the "treatment rank". And military personnel actually fit into this system as I earlier said, but rarely refer to themselves into any of the category. But they still follow the appointment system for the high ranking officials. Generals are Shinninkan so they must be appointed directly by the Emperor.

Government officials across different agencies all use the same ranking system,  each of them having different way of hiring, and appointments. However, due to the universal system they can assign pay in a fairly straightforward way. Much similar to the modern US Federal GS pay levels. But since Japan was a centralized government, individual prefectures also follow it and simplifies it a lot.

And since we are a military focused blog. We have to mention the civilian government workers in the military. Government officials working under the Army and the Navy follow the exact same rule, but have their own unique uniforms and regulations to follow. The army due to having most of their inner bureaucracy filled in by actual army members, have relatively few post for their civilian hires. The navy in contrast have a lot of civilian hires that do much more specialized jobs. The navy's base security, criminal investigation are all done by their civilian hires, unlike the army which had their military police to do those jobs.

For the Army, most do wear a distinct other type of uniform, especially on the field during deployments. They are separate from regular army uniform, and have a star patch with different coloring signifying their ranks on their shoulder. Before the uniform was designed and order they wore regular suits with the shoulder patch.

For the navy, while a distinct set of uniforms was designed, for the actual officials their uniform was incredibly similar to the actual navy officers. The only difference was their rank, and their cap badge having a wave chevron across the anchor instead. This led to a lot of confusion, and a lot of the navy civilian personnel instead opted to wear suits with a civilian employee pin badge on their lapel. Each different rank of official corresponded to different lapel pins. However, while on deployments they can not wear the pins. And instead are required to wear their utterly confusing uniforms. (The reason for the design of the uniform was for uniformity during formation) Discounting the base guards of course, they have their own unique uniforms. For our purposes the main changes to the navy civilian official uniforms were in showa 6, and showa 17. With the 17 regulation changing to a open collar 4 button jacket, with double chest pocket and 2 bottom pockets, much like a Kokumin wear.

Pins from the regulations

The civilian officials in the military, as in Hanninkan and above, consist of a really small population of the military. Only ending at 3% of the total population of the military. With the vast majority of those being Hanninkan.

And onwards, while I did mention that the Hanninkan are mostly those that past an agency official examination. In the military civilian employee world that is not often the case, as there really was no official examination for either branch. Of course, I am discounting the cases where the officials are hired based on their specialized skillsets. Most officials rose through the ranks as an Kouin or Ko-in, written as 雇員, 工員. The military branches are surprisingly merit based, as far as the civilian employees are concerned. And the ranks are quite fluid, as long as you got the skills to prove them. Both branches also set up specialized schools to further train, and promote those that show potential. 

In a way the working as a civilian employee for the military may be one of the best careers one could make in pre-war Japan. Simply due to the fluid nature of the ranks and tendencies to quickly promote those that show merit. Working as a hired personnel and factory labor can then be seen as some sort of on the job training for the employees, with the later schools set up to further train you ahead.

While in the military culture, these civilian workers are considered to be below that of a soldier. There is a saying in the army that the ranking of the military goes like this, Officers > Military Horse > Military Dogs > Enlisted men > Civilian Employees. But the merit based culture, the quick promotion, and free training might just be good enough to offset that.

References:
Ministry of Internal Affairs, Government Official Hiring Rules and Regulation - Taisho 2nd Imperial Order 261, 1914
Ministry of Navy, Order 252 of Showa 14, 1934 
Ministry of Internal Affairs, Military and Civilian Government Official Level Order - Meiji 43 Imperial Order 267, 1910
Ministry of Navy, Yearly Report of Showa 17, 1937
Ujike Yasuhiro, On the hiring and the appointment of government officials, JSDF Historical Division, 2006