Rebenson gets a green card

It's official! I am now a legal resident of Minami-ku (South Ward), Hiroshima.


In other news, my worst fears about Koizumi's privatization plans have begun to materialize. Of course, it was no surprise that the LDP-Komeito coalition will now pass his postal privatization bill.What should garner contempt--though not be unexpected--from those who believed his rhetorical campaign promise of "atarashi Nihon"--"a new Japan"--is how far he will take this landslide mandate. Even the right-leaning Asahi Shimbun is critical of his nascent call to preemptively deregulate the Japan Post for private operators. Roughly four out of five of Japan's 25,000 post offices are small branches called "tokutei." As the business of the tokutei will now be the business of private corporations, expect to see mergers, consolidations (read: lay-offs), and in effect, a widespread loss of access for consumers outside of city centers. While a number of mountain and rural tokutei are staunch LDP supporters, it is pure myth that Koizumi will reward tokutei as a whole; in fact, only 20 percent of tokutei are located in these areas. Expect the worst.

And the privatization campaign will not stop there. In today's New York Times, Tokyo University political scientist Ikuo Kabashima warns of impending pension privatization, and others have elsewhere described deteriorating relations with South Korea. The latter matter--that of foreign relations, namely with South Korea, North Korea. and China--was completely evaded in pre-election rhetoric, despite consistently degenerating talks. A South Korean protester ignites a Japanese flag, left.