So Junichiro Koizumi, Japan’s prime minister, has lost the vote on his grand scheme to privatise the country’s post office with its vast savings pool and will go to the polls. For now, the village-pump communitarian face of Japanese conservatism has won out over anti-bureaucratic, privatising radicalism. The global finance industry is going to will have to will have to wait a bit little longer before it gets getting to get its hands on that $3,000bn (€2,428bn, £1,680bn) of Japanese savings.

But the snap election next month is likely to focus as much on the dire state of Japan’s relations with China and Korea as on privatisation. Here at issue is the other face of Japanese conservatism: the reluctance to feel guilty about the war. The key symbol of that reluctance has been Mr Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo to pay respects to Japan’s war dead. There is speculation Rumour has it that he might open his election campaign by making with such a visit on the 60th anniversary of the war’s end next Monday. The Opinion polls show a bare majority thinking think it “wiser” not to go. Mr Koizumi may probably think bravado and talking tough to the insufferable Chinese will ould win more votes than wisdom.