The Diet has begun debating postal services reform, the most important issue of its current regular session. The question at stake is how best to privatize the mammoth system that provides savings, insurance and mail services. It is a question that will deeply affect financial markets in Japan as well as the government's administrative and fiscal reform program. Yet Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's privatization agenda remains fuzzy.

During a plenary debate in the Lower House, Mr. Katsuya Okada, president of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, pointed out that the general public does not truly understand why postal services need to be privatized. In a nationwide poll of local-government heads earlier this month, more than 60 percent of the respondents complained about the lack of specifics.

Mr. Koizumi's privatization plan, which he explained in his policy speech at the outset of the Diet session, is based on the guidelines approved by the Cabinet last September. It calls for dividing the postal system into four operating units: Three would handle mail, savings and insurance services, and one would run the post offices that provide these services over the counter. All four would be placed under the control of a holding company wholly owned by the government, beginning in April 2007.