ABSTRACT
Privatization in Japan is used with different meanings. In the reports of the Provisional Commission on Administrative Reform, the so-called Rincho reports, privatization is treated as the process of transfer of public enterprises into private companies, but it also means the partial introduction of private ownership, and/or private management to public enterprise and the increasing of its autonomy (Tamamura 1986:1). According to Kato, privatization can take three forms: the relaxation or abolition of government restrictions imposed on the market, the contracting-out of government undertakings to private companies, and the transfer of whole government enterprises to the private sector. He insists that privatization in Japan basically falls into the third category (Kato, 1987a:6). So we can distinguish two attitudes towards privatization; from the micro point of view privatization is concerned with the enterprise level, and from the macro point of view privatization refers to changes in the whole economy.
