Editing Junichiro Koizumi (section)

===Domestic policy===
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Within Japan, Koizumi pushed for new ways to revitalise the moribund economy, aiming to act against bad debts with commercial banks, privatize the postal savings system, and reorganize the factional structure of the LDP. He spoke of the need for a period of painful restructuring in order to improve the future.  To design policy initiatives in 2001 he used the new Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (Keizai Zaisei Seisaku Tanto Daijin) or CEFP.  It issued an annual planning document, [[Honebuto no hōshin|"Basic Policies for Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform"]].  It planned a major reorganization of the central government, and shaped economic policy in cooperation with key cabinet members. To meet the challenge of economic stagnation CEFP took an integrated approach, a worldwide economic view, and, promoted greater transparency; its philosophy was neoliberal.<ref>Hiroshi Kaihara,  "Japan’s political economy and Koizumi’s structural reform: A rise and fall of neoclassical economic reform in Japan." ''East Asia'' 25.4 (2008): 389–405.</ref>

In the fall of 2002, Koizumi appointed Keio University economist and frequent television commentator [[Heizō Takenaka]] as Minister of State for Financial Services and head of the [[Financial Services Agency|Financial Services Agency (FSA)]] to fix the country's banking crisis. Bad debts of banks were dramatically cut with the NPL ratio of major banks approaching half the level of 2001. The Japanese economy has been through a slow but steady recovery, and the stock market has dramatically rebounded. The GDP growth for 2004 was one of the highest among [[G7]] nations, according to the [[International Monetary Fund]] and [[Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development]]. Takenaka was appointed as a Postal Reform Minister in 2004 for the privatization of [[Japan Post]], operator of the country's Postal Savings system.<ref name="Kaihara 2008">Kaihara,  "Japan’s political economy and Koizumi’s structural reform" (2008): 389–405.</ref>

Koizumi moved the LDP away from its traditional rural agrarian base toward a more urban, [[neoliberal]] core, as Japan's population grew in major cities and declined in less populated areas, although under current purely geographical districting, rural votes in Japan are still many times more powerful than urban ones. In addition to the privatization of Japan Post (which many rural residents fear will reduce their access to basic services such as banking), Koizumi also slowed down the LDP's heavy subsidies for infrastructure and industrial development in rural areas. These tensions made Koizumi a controversial but popular figure within his own party and among the Japanese electorate.<ref name="Kaihara 2008"/> Considering both his neoliberal policies and his appeal to populist ideas, Koizumi's political ideology has been characterized "as a populist version of neoliberalism (or as a variant of the populist right) rather than neoliberal populism."<ref>{{cite journal |author=Petter Y. Lindgren |title=Explaining important public contests in Japan: Rhetorical strategies, causality, and populism |journal=Contemporary Japan |date=2023 |volume=37 |pages=110–136 |doi=10.1080/18692729.2023.2247278 |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2023.2247278}}</ref>