It's quite difficult to exaggerate the influence of Japan's postal system on the nation. The latest example: Monday, a national election was called after parliament failed to privatize Japan Post, which is the world's largest financial institution.
Yes, ever since Japan emerged from the days of the samurai, its post offices have served as a secure savings bank for Japanese. Today, Japan Post controls nearly $3 trillion, or a quarter of all personal assets in Japan. Its money fueled a postwar recovery in a sort of financial socialism, backing the Toyotas and Toshibas to conquer foreign markets. Japan Post was the base for Japan Inc.
Unfortunately, it was also a giant piggy bank for the often-wasteful pork-barrel projects of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), helping keep the party in power for decades. And the 280,000 postal employees and their families also have been the LDP's big vote-getters.
But for the world's second-largest economy, heavily in debt and caught in a decade-long stagnation, this great misallocation of financial assets has to be fixed. Privatization would also reduce the number of government workers by a third.
The LDP knows this must happen some day, but in a vote on Monday, its old guard couldn't shake off its old ways of power and patronage. To his credit, the dashing reformist prime minister, Junoichi Koizumi, dissolved the lower house and is taking the issue directly to the people in a Sept. 11 election. His bold action will split the LDP, and possibly force both him and it out of power. But that's a price he's willing to pay to wean Japan from its destructive money politics and planned economy. Many other necessary government reforms rely on privatizing Japan Post.
Mr. Koizumi's courage to reshape his country is rare for a Japanese politician. Voters should support him.
People commonly refer to a good and docile person as "one who can live without laws." According to a western proverb, "good lawyers make bad neighbors." Thus it seems that the ordinary person does not view "law" as only a good thing.
Society, however, must carry on community life, and therefore needs standards and rules; in fact, laws have become indispensable in solving the disputes and quarrels that arise among different social constituents.
For this reason we have created various forms of laws to sustain the social base. Since we live in a "law-abiding society," we look to the law for final judgment in cases of arguments and conflicts. The solution of a dispute by law is thus a more positive attempt to settle a problem when compromise, arbitration or agreement has not produced results.
There is one more proverb to mention as a possible influence, the common European proverb "A good lawyer, an evil neighbour," which has been traced back to Randle Cotgrave's A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongue of 1611 (Cotgrave 1970, sub Avocat; see also Smith 1935, 12; Stevenson 1948, 1370; Apperson 1969, 353; Whiting 1977, 255; Mieder et al. 1992, 365). The early American minister and writer Cotton Mather stated in 1710: "There has been an old Complaint, That a Good Lawyer seldom is a good Neighbour," and Benjamin Franklin cited it in June 1737 in his Poor Richard's Almanack as "A good Lawyer, a bad Neighbour" (Brooks 1979, 50; see also Barbour 1974, 116; Whiting 1977, 355). The meaning of this proverb is that lawyers make bad neighbours because they might use their legal knowledge against a trusting neighbour. It exists also in a slightly expanded variant, "A good lawyer makes a bad neighbour" (Pickering 1997, 156).
