Partnering with Japan Post on mailbox-drop services — and the litigation that followed (2023)

Between the cause and its performance

At the starting point of this partnership was a cause that mattered to the whole delivery industry. Faced with the structural constraint of a driver shortage, the largest parcel carrier and the postal operator — long at odds over the regulation of correspondence — joining hands can be seen as a response to the demands of the times that went beyond the industry’s habit of fighting over freight on price. Cutting off part of a competitive field, the mailbox-drop services, and entrusting it to the other side’s strength carried a meaning beyond mere outsourcing: it was a turn away from doing everything in-house.

What followed, however, shows that even a partnership raised on a cause can find that, at the stage of performance, the earnings circumstances of each individual company take priority. The deterioration in Yamato’s own results made full transfer difficult and pushed the relationship with Japan Post as far as litigation. Two companies that had supposedly climbed over a history of institutional conflict over correspondence regulation now held a conflict on another plane — the performance of a contract. In this configuration one can sense the tension between the ideals of industry realignment and the business circumstances of a single firm. As of this writing the course of the litigation cannot be foreseen, and the future of the partnership remains inside the dispute.