In a small rural valley where I spend weekends, peace has been destroyed for almost a year by the roar of several large machines trying furiously to convert a few hectares of swamp and abandoned farmland into usable rice paddies. The project is heavily subsidized by the government.

Meanwhile a few hundred meters away, at the entrance to the same valley, the same government pays the same farmers large sums under its "gentan," or rice-reduction program, to convert their usable rice paddies into swamp and abandoned farmland. As an example of waste and probable corruption, it is as bad as anything the government targets.

Will getting rid of waste such as this rescue the economy, as Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his reformist supporters seem to think? Every economy has large areas of public or private spending that provide little economic or social return -- monuments, festivals, entertainment and many forms of welfare, not to mention rural subsidies. Japan spends 5 trillion yen yen each year on its military -- far more than the government currently is trying to save -- for minimal return.