Japan will turn down a U.S. request to reform its publicly run "kampo" life insurance services, Japanese government officials said Thursday.
The government will state in its 2004 Japan-U.S. deregulation report that the playing field for competition with private-sector insurers has become more level since Japan Post took over the kampo services from the government in April 2003, the officials said.
It will say that the state-backed corporation has no plans to launch new insurance products and that its new product, introduced in January, has not attracted many consumers.