As a long term Japan resident (as a company director) I read with
interest Charles Richardson’s article titled “Japan shows the way of
privatisation.” The official vote tallies are not out yet, however
Japanese language media has been continuing to report figures similar
to the earlier reports which were translated and published in the NYT.

The post office system here has essentially been an almost limitless
slush fund for corruption and special interest politics. Taking the
post office system (which is also arguably the world’s largest bank –
with skeletons in the closet and governance problems Stephen Mayne
would drool at) out of the reach of the public sector and its political
handlers is the quickest way to decapitate Koizumi’s opponents within
the LDP. It has been the rebel elements inside the LDP that have
presented the main effective opposition to reform (not the main
opposition party), and as Ms Koike Yuriko (the extremely talented
Arabic speaking Environment Minister and “lipstick ninja”) has
eloquently put it, you have to change the LDP before you can change
Japan.

It will be interesting to see how the purge ends up playing.
However, to extrapolate the support for privatising the post office,
into support for all privatisations per se, and to then compare it with
the Telstra situation is an easy mistake to make. I’ve lived almost my
entire adult life here and can report that there is almost no support
for example for privatising Japan’s (relatively) excellent National
Health Insurance scheme.

“Is it Japan that’s got things topsy-turvy, or is it us?”

It is just a different country, different issues & concerns.