The shortest answer is that what halted postal privatization in August was not grassroots opposition to it but a faction fight -- between the Koizumi-led neoliberal faction and the old guard of Doken Kokka ("The size of California, Japan uses as much concrete each year as the United States. Some 6 million Japanese work in construction, 12 times higher as a percentage of the work force than in the United States, said Jeff Kingston, a historian at Temple University Japan who's studied links between politicians and construction firms" [Tim Johnson, "In Japan, Postal Service Debate Sparks Rival Visions of Nation's Future," Knight Ridder Newspapers, <http:// www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/world/12573888.htm>, 6 Sep 05]) -- inside the Liberal Democratic Party, therefore it was merely a temporary respite.
Minshuto (the Democratic Party), the main "opposition" party, is more neoliberal than the LDP old guard, so it represented no alternative to the Koizumi faction: "The Liberal Democratic Party and Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) are focusing on different election issues, but their respective manifestoes show they are at least in agreement on downsizing government. 'Small government' is how the LDP puts it, while Minshuto's version is 'efficient government'" ("Small government: Parties Should Debate the Future Shape of Society," <http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200509100142.html>, 10 Sep 05).
With the LDP old guard, the Last Keynesians of the Free World, defeated, a full-blown neoliberalism may finally arrive in Japan.
> But look at Japan's "crisis" of the 1990s - it wasn't much fun, but
> it wasn't the 1930s either.
>
> Doug
What prevented Japan's crisis from becoming a reprise of the 1930s? The LDP old guard's concrete Keynesian policy (pun intended) and huge postal savings that have been the source of low-interest government debt without which public works projects that mitigated deflation's impacts could not have been financed.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org> * Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud- ahmadinejads-face.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/chvez- congratulates-ahmadinejad.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/ 2005/06/iranian-working-class-rejects.html>