When the new transport minister began talking about solutions to the long-running and lingering problem of debts left over by the former Japanese National Railways, one word kept coming up: "taxes."
Takao Fujii's first Cabinet post comes as 28.1 trillion yen in debt towers above most of the country's urgent problems. "We are at a critical moment," Fujii said. "We must come up with a fundamental solution to the problem. We must not end up with a superficial and partial remedy."
JNR was privatized and separated into seven group companies in 1987, by which time it was 37.1 trillion yen in debt. While 11.6 trillion yen of the debt was taken over by the JR group companies, the remaining 25.5 trillion yen -- assumed by the government and thus, ultimately, by citizens -- has continued growing because of high interest payments to the government's Fiscal Investment and Loan Program, a major lender to the former JNR.