Japan's Keidanren and Its New Leadership

that Keidanren's ability to exert influence on the policy-making process is effectively neutralized. A final barrier to consensus arises from differences among individuals within the leadership. Japanese businessmen do a remarkable job of obscuring their conflicts from public view, but most assuredly they do exist, and they, too, complicate Keidanren's ability to achieve consensus on controversial issues. In the future, even when Keidanren reaches its own consensus on issues, its work will be only half done. At one time it could act as an almost quasi-official body, so intimately involved were its officers with affairs of state-in no small part because so many of them had experience as former bureaucrats. But, in the competitive political environment that has emerged since the 1970s, Keidanren has become just one of many interest groups attempting to wield its influence (albeit one with exceptionally good access to political and bureaucratic elites). Moreover, Keidanren can no longer assume that it will be the natural beneficiary of government policy, as was the case when there was a widespread national consensus on economic growth as the highest priority. Today the Japanese political agenda contains a larger number of options, all of them being considered under financially straitened circumstances. These tendencies have diminished Keidanren's natural influence and have obliged it to work harder to achieve its aims, sometimes even in competition with other business

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