Sun, Jul 07, 2002 page10

• Japan may reshape post office

  A JAPANESE INSTITUTION The rural postal system has served for 130 years not only as a mail-delivery service, but as a bank and a provider of the nation's insurance

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  Take-omi Fujii knew he would be back one day. After years on the mainland, he returned home to this island town near Okinawa in 1996 to take over the family business: running a post office.

  Most of his concerns are local. Besides running his business, Fujii, 39, a father of three, coaches a softball team, volunteers on the police patrol and is involved with the PTA. But now his attention, and that of the 28,000 other residents of the forgotten island of Tokuno-shima, is on the capital, Tokyo.

  

  A post office on Tokuno-shima, southern Japan, has signs advertising savings and insurance plans as well as package delivery. The institution acts as a government-guaranteed bank where few private banks operate.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  There, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is trying to privatize and split the country's 130-year-old postal system into three. In toying with an agency as old as modern Japan -- and one at the heart of the governing Liberal Democratic Party's power -- Koizumi is taking on an almost Herculean task.

  In addition to delivering mail, the Postal Services Agency doubles as the world's largest bank, controlling ?250 trillion (US$2 trillion) in savings. It also operates a national insurance plan.

  Those programs, in turn, serve essentially as a huge slush fund, paying for the pork-barrel projects and patronage that have propped up the Liberal Democratic Party for decades.

  Koizumi has pushed for the breakup since 1996, when he was the minister in charge of the postal system; it forms the centerpiece of his reform campaign as prime minister. Despite strong protests within his party, lawmakers are likely to pass a set of bills to turn the postal agency into a corporation and to allow private couriers to compete with it. A vote on the legislation is expected by the middle of July.

  Koizumi has threatened to call early elections if his bills are rejected, saying, "We cannot turn back on reforms."

  The next step would be for Koizumi to try to wrest control of the savings and insurance plans from the party doyens. He seems to be hoping to sap the lifeblood of his rivals within the party.

  Even though the postal agency uses no taxpayer money and supports itself, he hopes the action will be seen as a sign of his intention to reduce the wasteful spending that has Japan shouldering a huge deficit.

  Though much is at risk, Koizumi needs a victory to revive his reform campaign, which has been sidetracked and watered down by party conservatives.

  But victory could do him in politically in rural Japan, where most of his party's voters live. The post office is simply the most important institution in outposts like Tokuno-shima.

  Acting as a government-guaran-teed bank where few private banks operate, the post office is also a surrogate social service agency. Many postmen are personal bankers to the elderly, picking up passbooks and returning them with cash.

  Half of Tokuno-shima's 108 full-time postal workers volunteer for a program in which older residents fly yellow flags to signal them that all is well. Postmen also call for ambulances, report potholes and traffic accidents and have rudimentary firefighting skills.

  Privatized

  Koizumi's plan envisions a postal agency next year becoming a public corporation, just as Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, Japan Tobacco and the former Japan National Railways did in the 1980's, before the government sold shares in those former monopolies.

  Many small-town residents hold postmasters in higher regard than politicians, though. The admiration dates back to 1870, when Japan set up its modern postal system by importing the British model, right down to the fire-engine-red mailboxes.

  To ensure credibility, the government recruited prominent local families as postmasters and let them run their branches like franchises, with jobs passed on to sons and nephews.

  Demographics, though, are working against tradition. As the country's birthrate falls and young Japanese flock to the cities, fewer than 20 percent of postmasters pass their jobs on to their children.

  On this island, which has 14 post offices, 180 residents reached adulthood this year. All but three left. Fujii doubts that his sons will replace him.

  Privatizing postal agencies, has proven difficult in many of the countries that have tried it. On Tokuno-shima, which has little industry and a declining, aging population with almost one-third of residents over 65, people fret that introducing competition will further isolate them.

  At a recent town hall meeting, many who took part noted that the post office now delivers packages to the mainland in a day, while private couriers take four.

  Nobuyoshi Morita, a retiree, summed up the residents' fears: "If the postal system is privatized and becomes a for-profit company, people in the big cities would decide where and who would get what, while our regional service would get worse and the price would rise."
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Napoli’s title hopes shaken by late Genoa equalizer

  • 2

    Kane tastes first title as Bayern bid farewell to Mueller

  • 3

    Barcelona crowned champions

  • 4

    Taiwanese duos triumph in Taipei Open badminton

  • 5

    Entertainers questioned amid military service furor