The education ministry took disciplinary action Friday against seven senior bureaucrats over their involvement in illegally negotiating to secure their colleague a post-retirement university job.

According to a report issued by the Cabinet Office¡¯s re-employment oversight committee, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology was also involved in 37 cases of a practice known as amakudari (literally ¡°descent from heaven¡°) in which retired bureaucrats are given lucrative jobs at entities in the business sectors they once oversaw.

Given the education ministry¡¯s systemic amakudari practice, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the same day the government will investigate all ministries to see whether similar practices had been carried out elsewhere.