The 164th regular Diet session -- the last Diet session for Mr. Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister -- has ended without fanfare. The session was tasked with making an overall review of his reforms, achieved or unachieved, since he took the reins of power in April 2001. But lawmakers have failed to fulfill that duty despite a prevailing sentiment among the people that Mr. Koizumi's reform policies have not necessarily enhanced the quality of their lives. Such a feeling is epitomized by the expression kakusa shakai (society of gaps), which refers to a widening gap between the haves and have-nots.
With the goal of delegating as much work as possible from the government sector to the private sector, the nation's highway corporations were privatized. But the privatization lacks a mechanism to restrain wasteful highway construction. Mr. Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party won big in the general elections last year by selling the privatization of postal services as a centerpiece of the nation's reform. But full privatization of the services will take 10 years. With resistance persisting, it is uncertain what fruit the process will bear.
The downside of deregulation is in the fore these days. The falsification of earthquake resistance data for condominium and hotel designs surfaced in November 2005, shaking confidence in the safety of such buildings. A series of railway accidents have occurred, including the West Japan Railway accident of April 25, 2005, in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, in which 106 passengers and the motorman were killed. Although Mr. Koizumi's reforms and deregulations were not directly responsible for those events and scandals, the public have come to have second thoughts about deregulation amid the continuing sloganizing of reform in which rhetoric tended to take precedence over substance.