Well, thanks to a Sharp Zaurus, I got my e-mail on the run and am going to reply remotely (an experiment, so here goes). The Zaurus has a full keyboard, but I'd need the hands I finger painted with in first grade to be a touch typist.
Takenaka is putting on a pro-market face getting the world ready for Japan's probably overly mild analysis of the banks due out this spring (perhaps its just been released but I'm not following the news right now).
On the other hand, the guys who rated Enron a BBB plus buy one month before it officially went bankrupt are absolutely trashing Japanese banks. Won't get fooled again! No, no, no.
No, actually, that is what they are paid to do. It's the annual game that foreign venture/vulture capital plays with Japanese economics in order to get their interests into Japan, Inc. (which was all of Japan but was certainly centered around the key keiretsu banks, with some exceptions).
I'd look for the Japanese relenting and letting some of the foreign venture banks and private equity groups get their wet dream: a savings rich Japanese bank that they can turn into an investment boutique for the rich Japanese and use the savings of the poor Japanese to leverage their investments all over Asia(like Carlyle Group, Blackstone--Cerberus and Ripplewood already have their banks ) . Perhaps some at MofF think it's their saviour. I have my doubts.
As for downsizing gov't, what's he going to downsize? Koizumi loves this talk because just about all bureaucrats hate him--they hated him whenever he actled like the recently fired Tanaka no matter what bureaucracy he was in charge of, and they hate him now.
They can sell off the postal mail, savings and insurance (the latter two would make the world's largest financial services company). But then they lose an important source of funds for the secondary budget.
Overall, the Japanese gov't is not very big, and its offloaded more and more of its mandates (and debt) to prefectural gov't (and of course, their civil servants get paid less). Here in Fukui the prefectural gov't sold out to nuclear power interests, which paid for us to have a nice clean prefectural university, complete with hideous post-modern architecture.
More and more the mood of people in the thousands of small and medium companies is that they want the national government to stop screwing up everything and concentrate on the macroeconomic conditions instead of saying things like 'it's going to take massive restructuring of companies'. They are trying to act like economic commissars and they are pushing an even more deflationary policy.
One positive development might be that as foreigners take over companies like Mitsubishi Auto, they can see that no amount of restructuring and selling off of divisions is going to turn around their Japan business in the current economic climate. When Ghosn at Nissan gets his first real evaluation (no more parts divisions to sell), and when the new Daimler guy at Mitsubishi realizes he has nothing to sell in the first place, perhaps they'll realize what US and EU trade and monetary blocs have actually done to Japan. Like made the entire economy deflationary and unprofitable. Deflation is great if you can export it.
Charles Jannuzi on a train, clickety-clack, clickety-clack, going down the track.