Japan The shape of the future

Junichiro Koizumi is anxious to privatise the Post Office. So anxious that the Japanese prime pinister called an election for September 11 after his privatisation bill was narrowly rejected by the upper house of the legislature. To him, the struggle over the post is no less than a fight for the future of Japan. He is right. Koizumi views the Post Office as a bastion of everything that is obsolete in Japan – big government bureaucracy, excessive rural political influence and a political culture ...