J Update

The Fumio Kishida Cabinet made a decision to fix   Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform (Honebuto) 2024   on June 21. The annual plan on handling of economy and fiscal policy this year insisted on completely getting rid of deflation, making little difference from previous years. There still remains a skepticism on whether Kishida can be successful in achieving both growth and fiscal soundness. Honebuto 2024 was made by Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, which members included six ministers of Kishida Cabinet including Kishida himself, Governor of Bank of Japan and four business leaders. Based on request of the prime minister, the council members discuss economic and fiscal policy and submit their opinion on those issues every year.   The council basically supported the policies taken by Kishida Cabinet. “Economy of our country is facing one opportunity in a thousand to completely get rid of deflation and achieve growth-oriented economy,” said the ...

It was recently revealed that a soldier of United States Force in Okinawa had been arrested and indicted with charge of alleged sexual assault and kidnapping for obscene purpose on a girl younger than 16 years old. The police and the public prosecutors office have not reported those incidents to the prefectural government of Okinawa. Strong anger against US Force and the government of Japan spread out across Okinawa. According to the indictment, a Marine Corporal in the age of 25 on December 24, 2023, seduced a girl at a park in the central region of the Okinawa Island, brought her to his room with car and made sexual assault without consent, knowing that she was under the age of 16. Sexual intercourse or obscene conduct on a child under 16 consists of a crime. The corporal and the girl did not know each other before they met at the park.   A person who was close to the girl reported the crime to the police and the police identified the corporal with the video recorded by security ...

Former Chairman of Kadokawa publishing corporation, Tsuguhiko Kadokawa,   filed a lawsuit   to Tokyo District Court on June 27. He demanded 220 million yen of compensation to the state of Japan. Kadokawa argues that he was treated in an inhumane manner during he was detained as a suspect and it would violate the Constitution of Japan which prohibits slavish custody. Kadokawa, meanwhile, requested United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the “hostage justice” of Japan. Kadokawa was arrested by the Special Investigation Division of Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office in September 2022 with suspicion of bribing with an officer of the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. He was indicted next month with charge of bribing 69 million yen for achieving sponsorship in the Olympic and detained in Tokyo Detention Center for 226 days until his fourth request for bail was approved in April 2023.   Kadokawa insisted that his lawsuit on the hostage justi...

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida abruptly announced financial support for utilites of each family, because of weather forecast expecting extremely hot summer this year. The staffs of Japanese government and the lawmakers with the Liberal Democratic Party were surprised with Kishida’s unilateral announcement. Generally, the fuel price have not significantly increased in these months. The policy seems to be not for defending households, but for maintaining his own administration. Suffering from extremely low popularity, Kishida administration is losing control.   In his press conference on June 21, the day after a non-confidence resolution against Kishida was rejected in the House of Representatives, Kishida revealed his idea that he would deliver economic stimulus policies in two steps.   One was to resume allowance for stabilizing price of electricity and gas for three months from August. Support for gasoline price, in addition, would be maintained until the yearend. Another was d...

In the Tokyo gubernatorial election, officially called on June 20 and will be voted on July 7, strange phenomena appear in the campaigns of unusually too many candidates. On the boards for campaign posters installed along the streets in Tokyo, a lot of the same posters are posted on the blocks allocated to each candidate. A party that raised a number of candidates seemed to have sold anyone who donated to the party the space for advertising. It is an aspect of deteriorated democracy in Japan. In every local and national election, each local election commission prepares public poster boards in the streets to let the voters know who have run for the election. Voters select one candidate to vote for, looking into the information on the posters such as name or face.   Candidate #1 attaches a poster at block #1 on the board. Candidate #2 does that at block #2. Tokyo Election Commission prepared those blocks for 48 candidates on one board. Those boards were built at 14 thousand places in...

Fundamental frustration on the leadership of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida keeps on erupting from the Liberal Democratic Party. Young lawmakers announce their attitude against reelection of Kishida in the LDP presidential election this fall. Some elder leaders talk about post-Kishida administration. It looks like the beginning of a movement of pulling Kishida down from the premiership.   Dealing with the slush fund scandal paralleled with the Lockheed Scandal or the Recruit scandal, Kishida led dissolution of factions in the LDP and punished 39 lawmakers affiliated with Abe and Nikai faction. But he did not punish himself as the leader of his faction. The LDP lawmakers have heard severe criticisms over their control of political funds from the voters in their precincts.   Those LDP lawmakers have been inactive in accusing of Kishida’s lack of leadership in appealing to the voters, because a careless protest against the prime minister might trigger a snap election, which could s...

The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and General Secretary of Workers’ Party of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kim Jong Un, signed the Comprehensive Strategic Cooperation Treaty in Pyongyang on June 19. The treaty mandates each country to provide with assistance to another, when one of them is put in a state of war by an armed invasion. The Japanese government expressed its concern on that military cooperation. The Soviet Union led by Nikita Khrushchev concluded a treaty of mutual assistance with North Korea topped by Kim Il-sung, a grandfather of Kim Jong Un, in 1961. Although the treaty was maintained for several decades, it was abolished after the Soviet Union was collapsed in 1991. Putin, right after taking seat of the President of Russia, tried to rebuild the relationship with North Korea by having a new treaty without military cooperation in 2000.   The partnership treaty last week was the renewal of the previous one in 2000. In accordance with Article 51 of t...

Okinawa commemorated the 79 th   anniversary of the end of major battle in the World War II in 1945. Okinawa lost about 200 thousand lives, a quarter of whole population at the time, in the Battle of Okinawa, which was the only ground battle fought in Japan at the World War II. In the ceremony held at the Okinawa Peace Memorial Park, the people in Okinawa prayed for permanent peace of the world. The Battle of Okinawa started in March, 1945, when the United States Force landed on the main island of Okinawa. In the ground battle and air raid, not only military personnel of Japan’s Imperial Army but a large number of citizens in Okinawa lost their lives.  Okinawa was laid under administration of US until it was returned to Japan in 1972.   The government of Japan holds commemoration ceremony on June 23 every year, the day which is remembered as one of the epoch-making days in the World War II, paralleled with the atomic bombing in Hiroshima on August 6, in Nagasaki on A...

The revised Local Autonomy Act, which gives the national government a power to instruct a local government in emergency, passed the Diet with approve of the leading parties on June 19. While the opposition parties protested the law, arguing that it would change the relationship between the national government and the local government, Fumio Kishida administration dismissed those questions without presenting any example of what kind of case the instruction would become necessary. The Local Government System Research Council, one of the advisory bodies for Prime Minister,  recommended expanding instructing power of the national government last December. The council concluded that the difficulty of communication between the national government and the local governments when COVID-19 was prevalent had been caused by insufficiency of legal system, and suggested necessity for new law to give the national government a power of instruction.   Article 252, Section 26-8-4 of the revised...

The House of Representatives rejected   the non-confidence resolution   against the Cabinet led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on June 20. The resolution submitted by the Constitutional Democratic Party accused of the slush fund scandal as unprecedented case over political fund and of Kishida’s lack of leadership to investigate the overall structure of the false management. Although all the opposition parties, including Japan Innovation Party which voted yes to the LDP’s bill of revising Political Funds Control Act (PFCA), the resolution was dismissed by the majority of LDP and Komeito. Non-confidence resolution is a power vested only on the Lower House based on Article 69 of  the Constitution of Japan . If the House passes a non-confidence resolution, or rejects a confidence resolution, the Cabinet will resign en masse, unless the House is dissolved within ten days.   There are only four cabinets under current constitution that received non-confidence resolution pa...

The House of Councillors approved the revised Political Funds Control Act, supported by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito. Having been approved in the House of Representatives earlier this month, the bill passed the Diet and the law will be enacted from January 2026. The opposition parties sharply opposed the new law, denouncing the bill as full of loopholes. The LDP submitted the bill in May after it faced broad public skepticisms on the slush fund scandal. After the submission, the LDP further revised the bill, accepting request from Kometo, to lower the threshold of disclosing information of purchaser of fundraising party tickets from ¥100,000 to ¥50,000. However, the revied bill has no annual limit for how many parties a lawmaker can have.   The LDP also added a clause that the disclosure of receipts on the spending of “policy activity fund,” the money from a party to its leaders without disclosing how it was used, should be made open ten years later. The clause w...

Two main expected candidates for Tokyo gubernatorial election in July simultaneously announced their campaign platforms on June 18. Incumbent Governor, Yuriko Koike, appealed continuation of her policies in these 8 years as the governor, as Renho, former member of the House of Councillors with Constitutional Democratic Party, upheld “seven promises” to change the government. However, they showed only a few differences between them.   They had their press conferences for announcing their policies in different places at the same time. While Koike had a web conference, accepting only five questions through internet conference system, Renho had a real conference in a room with journalists, spending two times longer than Koike to take questions.   Koike called her policies for her third term “Tokyo Great Reform 3.0.” She categorized her policies into three: safe city, diversity and smart city. She raised proactive measures for possible disaster as the policies for safe city. They i...

The opposition parties against Governor Denny Tamaki achieved   a sweeping victory   in the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly election voted on June 16 th . While Tamaki opposed building new military base in Henoko, Nago City, the voters rather chose improvement of relationship with the national government. The regime of All Okinawa, which was established ten years ago by former Governor Takeshi Onaga, ten years ago, faces the greatest challenge. The structure of Okinawa Prefectural Assembly (48 seats) is far different from that of the national Diet. The Constitutional Democratic Party, Japan Communist Party and Social Democratic Party consist the leading party to support Tamaki. The Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito are categorized as the oppositions with Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Innovation Party).   As the result of election, the leading parties reduced four seats from 24 to 20, as the opposition power increased four from 24 to 28. Although Tamaki denied the view that t...

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida joined a plenary meeting of Summit on Peace in Ukraine held in Switzerland, after attending the Group of Seven summit in Italy. While the main purpose of the summit was to draw a peaceful resolution in the war in Ukraine, Kishida insisted on reminding of the unstable security situation in Asia-Pacific region and Japan’s contribution in non-military support for Ukraine, having fallen short of mending the rift between the western nations and authoritarian regimes. “The leaders of G7 and Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, reconfirmed four principles of the United Nations Charter, including respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, in G7 Hiroshima Summit last year, which I chaired,” said Kishida in his  statement  at the peace summit. “It is my pleasure that the representatives from over one hundred countries and international organizations have gathered here for peace in Ukraine, based on the discussion of Hiroshima.”   Kishida ho...

The Group of Seven (G7) leaders agreed in the annual summit meeting in Italy on providing $50 billion of loans for Ukraine, using interest of frozen Russian assets. Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, offered bilateral support for Ukraine in the meeting with Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky. Kishida also tried to lead the discussion over security in Indo-Pacific region, insisting that Russian invasion in Ukraine and China’s advance in Asia has a common ground. G7 countries have frozen some $300 billion worth of Russian assets since the invasion in 2022. G7 leaders  agreed  on setting up $50 billion loan for the Ukrainians and use $3 billion of interest of the frozen assets to pay off annual interest of the loan. The loan will be used for military equipment, governmental finance, humanitarian support or reconstruction.   While the United States and the United Kingdom have been willing to freeze Russian assets, the European Union and Japan were skeptical about th...

The Bank of Japan   decided   at its Monetary Policy Meeting on June 14 th   to reduce its purchase of Japanese government bonds (JGB) “to ensure that long-term interest rates would be formed more freely in financial markets.” The actual measures will actually be taken after next meeting in late July, after collecting views from market participants. While the policy change was aimed at deterring excessive depreciation of Japanese yen, the market responded to the decision with selling further depreciation. The BOJ started quantitative easing in 2001 and began purchasing JGB to supply large amount of money after it embarked on ultra-easy monetary policy in 2013. Although the BOJ’s share of issued JGB was 13 percent (¥94 trillion) in 2013, it has swollen as much as about 50 percent (¥585 trillion) at the end of 2023. The bank now purchases ¥6 trillion of JGB every month, even though it finished the ultra-easy monetary policy in March.   The decision of reducing JGB purc...

Leaving less than two weeks until the end of current session of the Diet,   it became unlikely   for the parties to submit a draft proposals of constitutional amendment in this session, which meant initiative of the amendment in this session impossible.   Although Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, has declared that he would achieve the amendment within his term as the president of the Liberal Democratic Party ending this September, it is mostly impossible for him to implement one of his main policies. Kishida’s weakness in promoting policies may make his presidential reelection in this fall further difficult.   The Commissions on the Constitution in both Houses have been discussing the amendment in this session. The LDP focuses on the adding an emergency clause, in which the election of the House of Representatives can be postponed in an emergency brought by natural disaster or pandemic. Constitutional Democratic Party does not realize that amendment necessary, because ...