On Oct. 1, two divisions of the Nihon Yusei Group, in English known as Japan Post Holdings, or JP, will consolidate. If you were never aware that four separate companies make up the post office service — Yubin Kyoku, Nihon Yubin Jigyo, Yucho Ginko and Kampo Seimei — then you shouldn't feel embarrassed. The vast majority of Japanese don't know about it either, so the merger of the two postal-related services, Yubin Kyoku, which manages the post office system, and Nihon Yubin Jigyo, which manages mail delivery, into one entity called Nihon Yubin may hardly qualify as news to most people.

In fact, most people will wonder what actually distinguishes these two entities. Aren't the business of managing post offices and the business of delivering mail part and parcel of the same general enterprise? Apparently not, though you'd have to actually work in either of those companies to understand why. Perhaps the best way to explain this conundrum is to look at one of the new services that will be offered after the consolidation takes place, something called tsucho azukari.

With this service, a person who has a savings account at Yucho Ginko (Japan Post Bank) can entrust (azukari) his or her passbook (tsucho) to a regular delivery person, who brings it to the bank so that an employee can carry out a desired transaction on the person's behalf. Logic would say this sounds like a cooperative service between Nihon Yubin Jigyo, the delivery arm of JP, and Yucho Ginko, the banking arm of JP, but all Yucho Ginko are located in JP post offices, which means it's really a cooperative service betweeh Nihon Yubin and Yubin Kyoku.