I have been trying to track down some missing mail somewhere in the Japan Post domestic system for about 3 weeks.  A couple of mailers have contacted me with a very unusual problem.  Fifty percent drop in responses from mailings in Japan for the last 3 months.  And these are not “experiments”, but mailings to house lists using proven offer packages.

My contacts in the international department of Japan Post have been wonderfully responsive, even going to the inbound sort center to look around, and suggesting various things that might have gone wrong.   Recently, we think we might have been getting close to the answer.  The question arose as to whether indicia and return address were from different countries – definitely not something you should do if mailing to Japan, according to one expert.

Unfortunately,  our postal friends now have been diverted by a Japan Post “own-goal”, or at least management incompetence of a phenomenal scale.  Our colleague emailed to us apologizing about not finding the missing mail, yet, but he had been diverted “with all hands” to try to correct the disaster Japan Post’s so-called management has brought on themselves in their merger of their parcels business with that of Nippon Express Ltd.

According to an editorial in the respected Asahi newspaper, “Last week’s integration of delivery operations under Japan Post and Nippon Express Co., Ltd., viewed as the first step in rebuilding the group’s mainstay business arm, got off to a rocky start.

The slip-up was mainly due to management methods that are sorely lacking in consideration for either customers or Japan Post’s own employees. One can assume that current moves to reverse the privatization process of the company has something to do with the latest trouble as well as with the stubbornly entrenched bureaucratic mind-set.

Or the Japan Post management team, anxious to expand financial services, might have neglected the mail and delivery arms that comprise the enterprise’s mainstay business.

….

The response of Japan Post’s management team to this predicament is dumbfounding. The delays were downplayed. Likewise, it appeared to be in no rush to bring in reinforcements.”  http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201007070411.html.

The self-destruction of a usually respected institution is a terrible thing to have to behold, but the Japanese parcel mailer is having to watch this unfold now, and the letter people are being diverted also, to help clean up the mess. As the reader can see from the above,  the newspaper chronicles the incredible managerial incompetence implicated in the combining of the operations of Japan Post and Nippon Express Company.   It appears that management had no clue to the complexities of this combination, which is occurring at the  height of the Summer gift-giving season, think Christmas-type levels of packages and cards, and the elections for the upper house of Parliament, which brings, as in any democracy, increased letter and parcel mail.  the backlog is so severe that my contact and his international mail colleagues have been seconded to the sort centers, for several nights in a row, to help with the mess.

To a certain extent, this is also part of the fault of the new ruling party.  After intense study and debate and planning over several years, the last government launched a plan with a timetable to liberalize the post and break it into its constituent parts.  Time frames to accomplish this were very long, and seemed quite far away.  The new recently elected government announced that this plan would not be carried out and Japan Post in its entirely would remain a government bureaucracy, with minor exceptions.

If you keep government bureaucrats running a postal system and now a new, larger parcel system (which isn’t running, yet), you get government bureaucratic efficiency.   But, Japan will continue to have its captive savers as the backbone of the government spending.  Japan’s publicly held national debt equals 200% of its GDP. The US’s is 90%, the highest since World War II.   And, unfortunately, our political players don’t have the courage, or concern, to liberalize our postal service, either.