Word: postally
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...Japan seems more resilient, too, under the leadership of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. He has been pushing to cut the nation's red tape and deregulate the economy. One of his biggest reforms involved privatizing the heavily state-funded postal service, a highly controversial issue that prompted him to call a snap election last year. December figures released last week suggested that some of the reforms are helping to restore confidence: exports rose by 17.5%, more than expected, while imports surged by 27%, reflecting healthy domestic demand and higher oil prices. Overall, the Japanese economy grew by an estimated...
...Gates commitment acts as a catalyst. They needed the drug companies to come on board, and the major health agencies, the churches, the universities and a whole generation of politicians who were raised to believe that foreign aid was about as politically sexy as postal reform. And that is where Bono's campaign comes in. He goes to churches and talks of Christ and the lepers, citing exactly how many passages of Scripture ("2,103") deal with taking care of the poor; he sits in a corporate boardroom and talks about the role of aid in reviving the U.S. brand...
...Seeking revenge like so many warlords of Japanese myth and history, Koizumi reserved particular wrath for the 37 lawmakers from his own Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) who had opposed the postal-system bill. He ordered LDP headquarters to withdraw support from those rebels running in the election and personally dispatched a coterie of handpicked, telegenic lieutenants?many of them women, and collectively nicknamed "the assassins" by the media?to take on the rebels. The Japanese media may have derisively coined such stunts Koizumi gekijo (Koizumi theater), but the electorate, usually apathetic, was enthralled. By casting the whole election...
...vote substantially altered the party composition. Only 17 of the postal rebels (forced to run as either independents or as part of a new party) managed to return to office. Eighty-three of the LDP winners, meanwhile, are first-time Diet members, now routinely referred to in the Japanese press as "Koizumi's Kids." While it would be an overstatement to say the LDP is now Koizumi's machine, its famously fractious factions have been dealt a mortal blow, and it is more aligned behind a single, strong leader than ever before. "We destroyed the old LDP," said a beaming...
...what happened next, however, that explains why Koizumi is such a fascinating, contradictory figure?and why he is TIME's Asian Newsmaker for 2005. Sure, postal reform was quickly passed into law. And Koizumi quickly announced plans to turn the country's eight remaining state-owned public lenders into a single entity, reduce the bureaucracy's control over government funds, and cut back on subsidies to local governments. But it wasn't his reforms?bold in conception though they may be?that captured the imagination. It was his visit, on Oct. 17, to the tree-shrouded Shinto shrine just across...