Smash hit

The importance of privatisation has less to do with stamps and letter boxes than with Japan’s postal savings, the vast pot of 355 trillion yen (£1,800 billion) deposited in low-interest accounts by Japan’s cautious and conscientious families. As a vast reserve of money under government control, it has served as a "pork barrel piggy bank": a fund for the inefficient and wasteful public works projects such as dams, bridges and airports that enrich local construction companies while depleting tax revenues and harming the environment.

The problem for Mr Koizumi is that this money has for decades been the lifeblood of the party he leads. LDP members won supporters and secured their seats by lobbying for money from central government to be spent on construction projects in their constituencies. Mr Koizumi’s reform plans are an attack on an entire system of political patronage. "It was not just the opposition but members of the ruling parties who were opposed," he said. "In a democracy, it’s no wonder that people doubted its feasibility."

But in the end, the matter of the postal reform was less important than the manner in which it was pursued: aggressively, confrontationally, by a man with a knack of presenting himself as both Prime Minister and underdog.

"There are people who oppose me, leaders of the ruling party who call me a dictator, ‘Hitler’," he says. "It is rather a complicated picture. Partly (I won because of) appreciation of my track record over the past four years and public support for the reforms I’ve advanced. I think these are all intertwined."

The postal Bills are being debated in the newly re-elected Lower House this month; in the Upper House, most of the MPs who threw it out are expected to capitulate this time.

Mr Koizumi’s electoral success is balanced by what looks increasingly like a damaging failure of foreign policy: the unnerving tension between Japan and its powerful neighbour, China. Chinese suspicion of Japan goes back to the invasion of the 1930s. Ten years ago, on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, things improved a little when the Japanese Prime Minister offered an apology for Japan’s wartime conduct.

This has been reaffirmed, with varying degrees of emphasis, by subsequent Japanese leaders, including Mr Koizumi. The problem is that he has revived the custom, abandoned by Japanese prime ministers in the 1980s, of paying an annual visit to Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine. There the spirits of the war dead are enshrined as Shinto deities, along with those of 14 Class A war criminals. The reaction from South Korea, and above all China, has been ferocious. In April mobs of demonstrators stoned the Japanese consulate in Beijing.

In June seven former prime ministers pleaded with Mr Koizumi to reconsider; recently, he has been less explicit about his determination to make a pilgrimage this year. But yesterday he gave the impression that he would visit Yasukuni before the year’s end.

"I believe Chinese leaders are aware of my intentions," he said. "China is opposing my visits to Yasukuni Shrine for political reasons. In addition, I’d assume that China doesn’t welcome a growth in Japan’s political influence. They are opposed, for example, to Japan becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council because they want to check Japan’s influence."

He passionately denies a commonly expressed suspicion: that under his leadership, Japan is undergoing a resurgence of nationalism. "What you see is not nationalism," he says. "I believe that Japanese people have deeply reflected over the past. They have remorse about the Second World War, and the strong conviction that they must never again wage war."

Perhaps the biggest mystery surrounding Mr Koizumi concerns his future. LDP rules require that he step down as party leader, and therefore as Prime Minister, in a year — a time limit with which he appears quite happy. "I’ll do my level best and in September next year I shall retire," he says. "I believe I can fulfil what I need to do."

But Mr Koizumi’s personal popularity is so much higher than his party’s that many LDP MPs know that without his leadership they will lose their seats. He does not rule out the possibility of standing again, but sounds as if he is looking forward to retirement.

"As Prime Minister I enjoy music, but it’s CDs in bed," he says. "When I quit I’ll go to concerts and movie theatres instead of films on DVD."

After Oda’s defeat and suicide, it took two more warlords before peace came to Japan. It may be that, like his hero, he will come with hindsight to look more like a transitional figure than the revolutionary he appears. Perhaps the best he can hope for is that, unlike Oda’s, his career ends peacefully and on his own terms.

HARDLINE CHIEFS

ODA NOBUNAGA
(1534-1582)
Historical legacy Reunified Japan in late 16th century
Greatest massacre The warrior monks of Mt Hiei, near Kyoto, 1571
Hobbies The tea ceremony
Career end Hara kiri after military defeat in 1582

JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI
(1942-?)
Historical legacy Reformer in early 21st-century Japan
Greatest massacre Rebels against Postal Privatisation Bill, 2005
Hobbies Listening to Elvis
Career end Due to step down September 2006

KOIZUMI'S WORDS

‘Leaders of the ruling party call me a dictator, Hitler. It is complicated’

‘I am reading about the harsh life of a samurai warlord. Every day they faced death. There are a lot of lessons to be learnt’

‘China doesn’t welcome a growth in Japan’s political influence’

‘Japanese people have very deeply reflected on the past. They have remorse about the Second World War and more than any other people have the strong conviction that they must never again wage war’

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