April 27, 2012, Japan’s House of Councillors passed a bill that would merge the country’s two postal service providers into one privatized corporation.

There is already a 2005 law that requires the Japanese government to give up all financial control of their postal system by September 2017.

This new bill, a resolution to the 2005 law, drops the deadline date, but also allows the new privatized single postal service to begin operations without government approval.

There is opposition to the privatization of Japan’s postal service.  When the 2005 law was passed it was done by dissolving Japan’s House of Representatives, most of whom were opposed to privatization.  In other words it was passed by unfairly eliminating the governmental opposition.

To try and counter the 2005 law, a new law was passed that froze any further sale of government held Japan Post stock.  However, this new law overrides that and the current government says they will use the money to pay for post March 11, 2011, disaster reconstruction (which indicates the government is broke).

Note: Japan is part of the Trilateral Commission (Europe, North America, Japan/Asia)