It's complex, ambitious, and fraught with difficulties. Chief among them now is the pace Koizumi has set. He didn't hatch the plan by which the public sector is to be brought under control, but he has drastically accelerated policies developed primarily during the premiership of Ryutaro Hashimoto in the late 1990s.
For the moment, at least, it's proving too fast for the markets as well as the prime minister's anti-reformist adversaries in the LDP. At the end of March, the Japan Highway Public Corp pulled the second portion of a bond issue worth ?150 billion because the future of the company is simply too unclear.
"Speeding things up seems to be upsetting the apple cart of the MOF's reforms," Church explains.
Can we nonetheless assume some measure of success as the decade unfolds? I think these reforms will loom large in history.
Japan will be a leveler playing field for private companies in everything from banking to road construction. In reshaping the public sector, Koizumi also is attacking the political grip of legislators who control its various fiefdoms. That's the political reform standing between the old Japan and the new.
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