By Lucas van Grinsven DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Japanese businessmen, academics and politicians cast aside their traditional reserve on Friday and called for an oriental version of the Boston Tea Party to end the bureaucratic elite's grip on power in Tokyo. The call, by a group of Japanese at the World Economic Forum, an annual high-profile gathering of the world's powerful, reflected their frustration at a decade of economic stagnation. The group has just published a paper called "Blueprint for Japan", aimed at laying bare some of the underlying causes of the country's problems such as high debt and lack of competition. The group said the radical changes needed would only be possible if the Japanese population, still affluent and content despite a decade of economic stagnation, really found out how their taxes were wasted and government corruption flourished. "We need some kind of a revolution," said Jiro Tamura, a law professor at Keio University. "For the Boston Tea Party to happen, which it will, people will have to understand the tax system and corruption," said Joichi Ito, chief executive of venture capitalist firm Neoteny, referring to the dispute over tea taxes which triggered the U.S. fight for independence from Britain. To change the bureaucratic machine from the top is an almost impossible task and not a very appealing one, said Nobuyuki Idei the chief executive of Sony Corp <6758.T>, the world's largest electronics maker. "No Japanese businessman running a company wants to be the candidate for the top political position in this country. It is an impossible system we have," Idei said. "If Japan were a company, it would be bankrupt," he added. Motohisa Furukawa, an Member of Parliament and policy maker for the opposition Democratic Party, said the government should be decentralised and power should be taken away from the bureaucratic elite who effectively manage the country. "We lack transparency and accountability and this has contributed to the chain of discontent," he said. "One of the core issues is that Japan is not a democracy. It has really a single body of power. It doesn't have multiple points of authority, diversity and critical debate," Ito said. Tamura said Japan was not a law-governed state but a bureaucrat-governed state. The absence of a strong legal system, with only 20,000 lawyers for the entire country of 125 million people, meant that public authorities ruled on disputes they were involved in, he said. All speakers said the risk-averse Japanese educational system continued to power this development. It was left to Carlos Ghosn, not a Japanese but a Frenchman, to point to what could be achieved. Ghosn has breathed new life into car maker Nissan <7201.T> after he took over the helm in 1999. Under his tenure, the company has cut debt, raised profit margins and market share and seen its share price multiply. "Nissan is a perfect example that change is possible in Japan," he said. "And it was done by 99 percent of the old employees." Ghosn acknowledged he had had an advantage in that there already was a sense of urgency when he took over, as everyone agreed at the time that Nissan was in a dire state. MP Furukawa said this sense of urgency for economic or state reforms was not yet clear among the Japanese population. "People are reluctant to change. It's still just too comfortable for us," he said.
