Tag: Japan

The post office, with its bright red mailboxes and bike-riding mailmen, does not generally conjure up images of political scheming.

But in Japan the Postal Services Agency has recently caused concern with revelations about the lengths that some of the 18,800 post office chiefs throughout the country are prepared to go to in order to protect their vested interests.

Late last month, Tsuyoshi Mishima, a postal supervisor in Kinki, western Japan, was arrested on charges of violating Japan’s election laws.

The Kyodo News Service has reported that “a [Japanese] posts ministry study panel on Friday issued a draft proposal for a new public corporation slated to take over state-run postal services in 2003 in which it called on the new entity to adopt a performance-based salary system. The panel of the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications also proposes that the new corporation, which will still be affiliated with the government, adopt a system of outside directors. The new corporation will be in charge of mail, postal savings and insurance operations. Employees of the new corporation will also be considered public workers, but their salaries should be determined by job performance and not simply by the government pay structure.”

In his
swearing-in speech as postal minister in 1997, Junichiro Koizumi shocked the
assembled top bureaucrats of the ministry he was about to lead. “The three key postal services must be privatized,” Koizumi declared. “We
cannot be ruled by inefficiencies.” It was effectively a declaration of war
from within, for privatization would mean that the bulk of those he was
addressing would be made redundant, and one of Japan’s oldest ministries would
be crushed.