With the Diet's enactment of the postal privatization bills earlier this month, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi now has a new punching bag he can use to maintain his political momentum: the bloated bureaucracy.
In recent weeks, he has launched a number of new initiatives to bring about small government, most notably a plan to slash payrolls at both the central and local governments.
On Oct. 6, Koizumi and Seishiro Eto, head of the Liberal Democratic Party's administrative reform office, agreed to reduce the number of central and local government officials by 20 percent over a 10-year period.