The book provides an overview of the Postal Savings System and the Fiscal Investment and Loan Program. These institutions are a major feature of Japanese finance, not extensively discussed outside of Japan. Together, they represent a wide-ranging system of government financial intermediation that is increasingly incompatible with Japan's early efforts to develop a modern financial system and help reverse the economic and financial decline that started in the early 1990s. The book is a mixture of policy, institutional, and quantitative analysis.