Takako, an elderly widow and first in the queue, is fuming with rage. She has followed the news, is panicking about her future and nobody can tell her anything about her pension.

As the morning advances, more and more retired people pour into the cramped office of the Social Insurance Agency (SIA) in Machida, on the western outskirts of Tokyo, furiously demanding answers. But the beleaguered civil servants behind desks who are collectively responsible for what is perhaps Japan’s biggest administrative meltdown since the Second World War have none.

Up and down the country this foul-tempered, predominantly grey-haired scene is being repeated in SIA offices, spelling potentially fatal political trouble for Japan’s unpopular Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. Through what appears to be a combination of decades of sloppy bookkeeping and grand-scale bureaucratic incompetence, the details of 50 million Japanese pension files have gone missing. The upshot is that on the eve of the mass retirement of the baby-boomers – Japan’s largest-ever generation – the coffers are full but about 20 million people cannot legally be linked with the money that they have toiled their whole lives to receive.

In what is widely considered to be a watershed moment for Japan, the scandal has shaken the public’s cherished belief in the competence of its bureaucracy. The unravelling of that confidence, government insiders believe, could lead to an era of exceptional instability for Japanese society.

It was only ten years ago that Japan gave people a single fixed national insurance number to carry through their lives and linked all their pensions to it. Previously, any changes of name, company, job type or even location might have led to a new, differently indexed, pension file being opened.

With records missing, details wrongly entered into the system and several incompatible systems to combine, those employed before 1997 now face a hugely complicated bureaucratic paper chase to claim what is rightfully theirs.

Despite having its origins long before he took power, Mr Abe is in line to take the blame. Support for the Prime Minister has fallen to 28 per cent, the lowest level since he took charge last September, according to one poll.

The scandal is also viewed by some political analysts as the long awaited “last straw” for the nearly unbroken five-decade rule of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The Health Minister who introduced the new pensions system, but neglected to bring the old one up to date, was the former Prime Minister who crowned Mr Abe as his successor, Junichiro Koizumi.

Upper House elections this month were expected to act as a referendum on Mr Abe’s shaky guidance of Japan’s national agenda. With campaigning not yet under way, the pensions scandal already dominates.

“The LDP is absolutely responsible for this pension problem and the voters will show their distrust. This is the accumulated result of its sloppy regime for the past 20 years,” Minoru Morita, a political analyst, said. “There is no doubt that the scandal will be a primary focus for the coming election.”

Mr Abe, who normally focuses on issues such as constitutional reform, has been forced to divert his attention to deflecting the impact of the scandal. He is expected to address public concerns in a television broadcast this week.

At an extended session of parliament over the weekend, Mr Abe succeeded in pushing through a Bill that would extend the statute of limitations on pension claims until the current chaos is brought under control. A law was also passed that disbanded the SIA and transferred its duties to a string of private sector entities.

21%

— 26.5 million of Japan’s inhabitants are aged 65 or over

Source: CIA World Factbook

Explore Asia News

• China News

Times Recommends

• Putin set to bait US with nuclear aid for Tehran
• North Korea ‘uses doubles to hide death of Kim’
• Academics label Charlie Wilson too 'gung-ho'