ABSTRACT
Although attempts to reform the Japanese securities exchange pre-date the Koizumi government and, as noted in Chapter 3, first occurred at the exchange’s inception in the late nineteenth century, former Prime Minister Koizumi and his administration had a passion for structural reform that has surpassed that of any Japanese politician in recent history, and this provided much-needed impetus to make the economy and the TSE globally competitive. Dr Takenaka Heizo, whom Prime Minister Koizumi chose to be Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy (see Chapter 1), notes in his book1 the many ways the two worked together effectively to pave the way for essential economic reform: through eliminating unnecessary large-scale projects that only served the purpose of gaining rural votes; privatizing public corporations; reducing the issuance of national bonds; separating the vast private savings accounts from the Post Office to inject more of the savings into consumption to benefit the wider economy; and freeing the economy from the stranglehold of unwieldy, bureaucratic government, which had caused economic stagnation.
