J Update

The leading coalition looks like having paved the way for passing FY 2025 budget bill in the Diet, in which it does not have a simple majority at one of two Houses. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Komeito on February 20 th   reached a basic agreement with Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Ishin-no Kai) on “free education,” which Ishin upholds as its main political agenda. Ishin is supposed to vote for the budget bill in the Diet. The LDP, Komeito and Ishin wrapped up a draft to remove the threshold set at 9.1 million yen of annual income to receive 118 thousand yen of support for high school tuition. To the students going to private high school, which generally is more expensive than public high school, the government pays additional 457 thousand yen at most, regardless the amount of annual income.   The cost for those changes is estimated to be 55 billion yen. The leading coalition is going to include that cost in FY 2025 budget bill and it will be approved by the House o...

It was found that a controversial campaign in the gubernatorial election of Hyogo last November was supported by some Hyogo assembly members affiliated with Japan Innovation Party, or Nippon Ishin-no Kai. Those members with Ishin  admitted  that they had handed out document or video footage to an internet extremist, Takashi Tachibana. The leaked information was about the activities of another committee members who were critical on the scandal of incumbent governor. One of those members accused by Tachibana reportedly killed himself in January. The governor of Hyogo, Motohiko Saito, was accused of his power harassment on his staff and Hyogo Prefectural Assembly established an investigation committee. Saito chose the way to resign and run again for the election to supplement his seat by himself. The election was held in November 2024, and Saito won. Tachibana ran for the same election with a strange campaign in which he did not seek his winning but firmly recommended the voters ...

Wakayama District Court sentenced ten years in prison to a defendant, Ryuji Kimura, who hurled an explosive device to then Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during an election campaign in the city of Wakayama in April 2023. Although Kimura argued that he did not have intention to kill Kishida, the court recognized the significance of interfering election which consists an important basis of democracy. Kimura has not decided whether he would appeal to the upper court.   Kimura, 24 years old at the time, threw a pipe bomb to Kishida when the prime minister was making a speech to support a candidate of the Liberal Democratic Party in a by-election of Wakayama 1st district of the House of Representatives in a building of a fishery port in the city. While Kishida managed to escape from the explosion, the bomb caused injury of an audience and a policeman guarding Kishida.   The court realized that the bomb was a handmade device which would scatter around with its fragments with expl...

Shigeru Ishiba Cabinet made a cabinet decision on   the 7 th  Strategic Energy Plan   on February 18 th . The plan dropped a phrase of demanding Japan to “ reduce its dependence on nuclear power as much as possible ” for the first time since Japan experienced unprecedentedly severe accident in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011. The plan also stressed the necessity of enhancing renewable power as the main power resource in Japan. However, there is a concern for business sectors to introduce renewable energies in terms of cost performance.   The plan set the share of energy resources in FY 2040. It is expected that between 40 and 50 percent for renewable energy, 30 to 40 percent for thermal power and 20 percent for nuclear energy will be the share fifteen years later. As of FY 2023, thermal power occupies 68.6 percent for all the power resource, followed by 22.9 percent for the renewables and 8.5 percent for the nuclear.   It is remarkable that the 7 t...

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, unintendedly tested autonomy of Japanese foreign policy. Recognizing unilaterality of Trump’s   executive order   of sanctioning International Criminal Court (ICC), Shigeru Ishiba administration chose the way not to join an international statement accusing Trump’s decision. Ishiba received a question in the Diet why Japan did not participate in the international effort. The executive order issued on February 6 th  denounced the ICC as engaged in “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting America and Israel, raising ICC’s issuance in last November of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its former Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, for their crimes against humanity.   “The ICC has no jurisdiction over the United States or Israel, as neither country is party to the Rome Statute or a member of the ICC,” says the order. Although the order demands to freeze property of ICC officials, it is...

Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare, Takamaro Fukuoka, announced that his ministry would abandon raising the upper limit for out-of-pocket payment in high-cost medical care for the patients needing a long period of care. Although the ministry decided to raise the threshold last December, it rethinks its policy, receiving protests from the patients with such a serious disease as cancer. In midst of discussion over revision of FY 2025 budget, the medical payment appeared to be one of the political issues among parties. The government of Japan introduced high-cost medical care benefit in 1973, which exempts the patient who received expensive medical treatment from paying for full cost. In a  case  of a person with 11.6 million yen or more annual income had 1 million yen of medical treatment in a month, the person does not have to pay more than 254.18 thousand yen. If a person’s income were too low to pay for income tax, the one is not required to pay more than 35.4 thousand yen...

Expecting moderate support from the biggest opposition party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) began policy talk with the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ) on February 14 th . As a management of minority government in the House of Representatives, the LDP included the CDPJ to the respective frameworks of policy talk, adding to the Democratic Party for the People (DPP) and Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Ishin-no Kai) to secure a majority votes for FY 2025 budget bill. CDPJ requested revision of the budget bill, which would cause 3.8 trillion yen of change in spendings. For the leading party, passing annual budget bill sometimes has a fatal importance. In 1989, Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, who had been accused of involvement in the Recruit Scandal, stepped down in exchange for the annual budget. Last minority government in the House of Representatives thirty-one years ago collapsed when Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata resigned with a deadlock of FY 1994 budget.   Righ...

Seven major parties in the Diet agreed on taking measures to regulate activities in electoral campaigns through social networking services (SNS). Not ignoring explicitly inappropriate campaign in some elections, the parties embarked on excluding some internet influencers who interfere other campaign of innocent candidates. They decided that freedom of expression could be restricted in some cases.   SNS is having great influence on national and local elections. In the gubernatorial election in Tokyo last July, 56 candidates ran for only one seat. Some of them obviously did not have any intention to be elected and governing the Tokyo metropolitan government. In the election for governor of Hyogo prefecture last November, false information and defamation about candidates spread through SNS.   It is supposed that some influencers focus on earning views for their postings about election campaign, which brings certain profit for them. Such “attention economy” is alleged to be distor...

Ministry of Environment published the schedule for final disposal of nuclear waste accumulated in the intermediate facility built in the place close to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Although national government has promised to remove all the waste from the facility to somewhere out of Fukushima prefecture, it has not reached any conclusion of where the final disposal facility will be built. In the severe accident caused by losing electricity after being soaked in tsunami in 2011, the reactors in Fukushima plant exploded and emitted a large amount of radioactive materials into the air. Those were  estimated  as 500 peta-becquerel of noble gas, 500 peta-becquerel of iodine 131, 10 peta-becquerel of cesium 134 and 10 peta-becquerel of cesium 137. “Peta” stands for one thousand trillion.   Those radioactive materials mainly fell down on Fukushima area. Given necessity of removing contaminated earth surface, the government of Japan decided that the soil s...

The Liberal Democratic Party started intensive discussion on dual-surname option for married couples, which has long been a taboo in this conservative party. Receiving growing skepticism on current single name system, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba demanded his party to draw a certain conclusion on the issue. It is possible that the Diet is going to discuss the issue for new legislation of selective separate surname system.   Before the Meiji era, surname was only given to the samurais. The common people were not allowed using surname. After permission for the common people to use surname, Meiji government  introduced  separate surname system in 1876. It changed the policy to single surname in 1898 supposedly to solidify unity of each house. It is commonly recognized that a wife would become a member of husband’s family with marriage.   Ever since, single surname system has been maintained in Japan.  Article 750 of the Civil Code  determines that “a husband ...

Ministry for Internal Affairs and Communications released a report on the moves of Japanese population in 2024, based on the basic resident registration system. Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture was the greatest embracer of the people moving in among 47 prefectures. It is likely that the trend of decentralization, caused by avoidance of connecting each other in the time of COVID-19, has been finished. According to  the Population Transfer Report  released in January, 2.52 million people moved beyond prefectural borders within Japan in 2024. Japan also accepted 735 thousand people from foreign countries in the same year, as 371 thousand left Japan. While the people going out of Japan exceeded the number of those coming in at the time of 2021, the influx of foreign people is increasing every year in post-COVID period.   Tokyo, the third geographically smallest prefecture in Japan, accepted 461 thousand people from other prefectures in Japan and 143 thousand from foreign countri...

The President of the United States Donald Trump signed proclamations imposing 25 percent of tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum. Although the officials of Japanese government expect US president not to apply additional tariffs on products from Japan, Trump unequivocally told the reporters in the Oval Office that the 25-percent tariffs are “without exceptions or exemptions.” Right after Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba came back from “successful” meeting with Trump in Washington DC, it is likely that Japanese business will face concern in world trade.     In his first term as the president, Trump imposed 25-percent tariffs on steel and 10-percent on aluminum. While he has not declared that the flat 25-percent tariffs would be applied to all countries, it looks predictable that the tariffs will work as bargaining chips against the exporters of those materials to protect US workers. It is likely that the tariffs targets China, which is known as excessive production of steel. ...

The government of Japan is going to increase defense budget to the level of 2 percent of gross domestic product, with a goal of accumulating 43 trillion yen between FY 2023 and FY 2027. However, it is questionable whether the government can spend all the budget. In the discussion of the Diet, an opposition lawmaker revealed that some of the fund for Ministry of Defense has been left behind mostly unused. The government has been accumulating “defense equipment transfer smoothening fund” every year. It appropriated 80 billion yen for the fund in FY 2023 and FY 2024. But the government has decided only 1.6 billion yen of spending from the fund. Nevertheless, the government requested an additional 40 billion yen for FY 2025. A doubt about necessity of the fund was raised in the Diet discussion.   A lawmaker with Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ), Takao Fujioka,  asked  why the spending of the fund was so delayed in the Committee for Budget in the House of Repres...

It is likely that Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba finished his first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump with no major failure. He could achieve not only U.S. commitment to security in Asia-Pacific region, but also a hope for maintaining Nippon Steel’s deal with US Steel. More importantly for him in domestic politics, the opposition parties positively evaluated Ishiba’s diplomatic achievement. However, Ishiba returns home with a bunch of homework.   The  statement  delivered by two leaders underscored U.S. commitment to security of Japan and the region. They reaffirmed that Article 5 of U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, which entails U.S. responsibility for defense of Japan, would be applied to Senkaku Islands.   It also confirmed continuity of regional multilateral security frameworks through QUAD (with Australia and India) or trilateral cooperation including Republic of Korea or Philippines, which were established or enhanced under the leader...

Shigeru Ishiba Cabinet made a decision for introducing active cyber defense in the government of Japan and submitted related bills to the Diet on February 7 th . While the law will enable the government to sneak into private networks for protecting important information, it has been concerned that the government would violate privacy of the people. The leaders of Ishiba Cabinet stress their effort not to breach basic human rights and business activities of private companies.   Vulnerability of communication system in Japan has been pointed out for a long time. It was  reported  that Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) had been stolen its critical information on exploration plan of the Mars in 2023 and 2024. Chinese hacker group, MirrorFace, is suspected to be involved in the cases. National Police Agency revealed earlier this year that it confirmed 210 cases of cyberattack on Japanese public offices and companies since 2019.   Active cyber defense is a concept ...

Two major carmakers in Japan seem to have failed in organizing a dream team. Nissan Motor Co.   notified   Honda Motor Co. that it would break off their negotiation for merger, which was initiated in last December. Concerning insufficiency in restructuring plan of Nissan, Honda offered an idea of holding Nissan as a subsidiary. Nissan, however, refused it. It is possible that Nissan will change its partner from Honda to a Taiwanese technology group, Hon Hai. Nissan and Honda announced in December, 2024, that they would embark on the negotiation for their merger. Honda was ranked at the seventh position in the ranking of carmakers of the world, based on the sales, while Nissan followed Honda at the eighth. Mitsubishi Motors was supposed to join the talk, though it was dismissed later. It was expected that their merger would make the third largest car manufacturing group in the world.   However, their negotiation did not go smooth. The biggest obstruction was a difference b...