The Japan Post and Postal Services Agency reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004
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Japan Post and Postal Services Agency

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Japan Post (日本郵政公社) is a dominant postal and package delivery company in Japan. It was once Postal Services Agency (郵政省; yuuseisho), a division of the Japanese government.

The company was born on April 2, 2003 as public corporation from the Postal Services Agency, which was part of the current Prime Minister Jyunichiro Koizumi's reform plans. As of 2003, the president of the company is Masaharu Ikuta, formerly chairman of Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd. It has 280,504 employees and runs 24,700 post offices throughtout Japan.

The privalization of the company, particularly its postal services division is a decade-long political matter in Japan. Quite a number of people, including Jyunichiro Koizumi, back the plan while there are strong political oppositions within both of largest partities, LDP and DPJ to it.

See also: package delivery, Japanese addressing system.