Photo/Illutration Yasuo Suzuki, the senior executive vice president of Japan Post Holdings Co. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

The phrase “chiiki debut,” or to debut in the community, starts troubling many Japanese, especially corporate employees, when they reach their mid-50s.

It means getting involved in your local community for the first time after retirement through your hobbies or other post-retirement activities.

One of the most common tips the media has to offer those facing the start of their social lives after retirement is, “never brag about your past business status.”

Boasting about how you once worked as a senior executive at a big company, for instance, will only turn off other members of the community.

If that is so, Yasuo Suzuki, a former administrative vice minister at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, would be a highly annoying neighbor.

After retiring from the ministry, Suzuki became senior executive vice president of Japan Post Holdings Co. But he still likes to remind others of his past status as the ministry's top bureaucrat.

When the Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) reported on the Japan Post group’s dubious insurance policy sales practices, Suzuki sent a letter of protest to the public broadcaster in which he bothered to refer to his past involvement in supervising the broadcast industry.

Unlike a braggart in a local community, Suzuki is apparently not a person whose words can easily be dismissed or disregarded.

After his protest, NHK decided not to broadcast a follow-up report on the topic.

Suzuki’s name recently resurfaced in a new information leak scandal involving one of his successors. It has been reported that the incumbent administrative vice minister kept briefing Suzuki on the discussions within the government over possible disciplinary actions against the Japan Post group over the insurance policy sales irregularities.

Did Suzuki try to obtain such information early so that he could lobby officials in charge behind the scenes for lighter punishment?

For now, how and why Suzuki began to be briefed on the process by his now-dismissed successor can only be imagined.

But this is either a textbook case of a cozy relationship between government and business or these two people didn't even recognize that a line between government and business exists.

The plan to privatize the former state-run provider of mail delivery, postal savings and postal insurance services was aimed at improving the quality and efficiency of the services by adopting better private-sector approaches.

But the series of scandals that have struck the group seem to show that it has only incorporated the structural faults in both the public and private sectors into a thick, poisonous cocktail of problems.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 22

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.