Bureaucracy and the Internet

It’s official. I can’t get Internet at home. It’s not that I lack the money for this otherwise expensive luxury. Nor do I lack enthusiasm, manners and almost infinite amounts of patience in dealing with unhelpful vendors. I have a day job, the required age, good command of the language, even what some would call a wistful kind of charm. What I lack, however, is credibility – or, better said, written proof that my credibility is credible enough.

Apart from my alien registration card, valid within 3 months of the signing of the contract, I must produce a bill or receipt of any public service (such as electricity or gas) stating my address and postcode. I need proof of a permanent address. I do not, however, live by myself, and therefore such bills are not addressed to my person. The service in question is for mobile connection, usable (and payable) anywhere in Japan, but proof in the form of a bill for a private service –a mobile phone, for example- will not do. Exceptions are impossible. Someone tells me I could go to the city hall and obtain a legal transcript of my address, but this situation is already proving to be too time-consuming.

The labyrinthine bureaucracy of Japan is famous for its dead ends, its dreary tentacles oftentimes extending beyond public services. Everything must be approved, stamped and signed in triplicate by someone else. Especially infamous are the visa renewal procedures for foreigners, demanding no less than twelve different documents, several visits to the immigration office, numerous phone calls and perhaps the odd trip to the other side of town in order to comply with the latest whim of the bureaucrat in turn. There is no limit to the amount of paperwork needed to do anything in Japan, and the sheer volume of it can be dumbfounding at times.

Japan does not stand alone in this regard, of course. Chilean bureaucrats can be just as bad, perhaps surlier and certainly ruder. The image of the unflinching bureacurat behind his desk armed with a stamp seal and a grizzly frown is common across the world, perhaps more so in countries with authoritarian backrounds. Bureaucracy is, after all, the natural outcome of a system that shirks personal responsibility in favour of general order. Ordnung muss sein. Rules and regulations, ironically conceived to avoid the direct misuse of authority, become a neverending web of nonsense stipulations and small lettering, unable to work beyond its borders and the assumptions it sets for the public. The lack of precedent equals actual impossibility, and logic never enters the question when tautology reigns supreme.

Yet bureaucracy is in principle a dehumanising system, so we cannot expect it to act like a human being. Weber once rightfully described bureaucracy as an Iron Cage, alienating the individual in order to standardise the masses, who are trapped within six walls of constrained reason: reasonable because it follows logical paths, and constrained because these ultimately lead to either roundabouts or barb-wire fences.

Coupled with its modern ideals of collectivism, Japan has for decades been fertile ground for bureaucracy to thrive. The culture of dependence (amae), as described by Doi, creates a perfect environment to elude responsibility, absorbed by an ethereal bureaucratic superstructure created specifically for this purpose. Any complaint or observation can be diverted to it, thus freeing the individual from any moral or personal obligations. It’s a glorified version of the age-old “I’m just doing my job” pretext.

As I sit in an internet café, pondering whether I want this internet service bad enough to justify sitting for hours in the gloomy lobby of city hall, images of a simpler life pass by. The café around the corner might be more expensive in the long run, but it only requires a simple monetary transaction and possibly some flirting with the cute girl across the counter. Suddenly, being deprived of a service doesn’t look so bad after all.