1. PM Kishida’s Approval Rating Hit the Lowest
Yomiuri’s monthly survey that was conducted this month revealed that the Kishida Cabinet’s approval rating declined by 1 point to 34%, which is the lowest ever since Kishida formed his first cabinet in October 2021.
The cabinet’s disapproval rating also declined by 1 point to 49%.
Other major findings are as follows:
How do you evaluate the overall performance of PM Kishida’s Cabinet for the past two years? 44% Positive 53% Negative
How do you evaluate the administrative decision to demand the Tokyo District Court to order
Unification Church to be dissolved? 84% Approve 8% Not approve
When do you think the Lower House dissolution to be made? 25% Within this year 33% Next year or later 31% No need to dissolve
2. Conservative Party Of Japan To Try To Bite A Share Of LDP
A Japanese well-known novel writer Mr. Naoki Hyakuta formed a political party by the name of Conservative Party of Japan on September 1.
According to its website, the party is to promote conservative and patriotic agenda including amending the Constitution to fully recognize the self defense force, strengthening defense, reducing taxes, reducing Diet members’ salary, objecting pro-LGBTQ policies and pro-immigration policies and strengthening regional diplomacy.
Hyakuta held a press conference on October 17 to officially announce the foundation of his party.
He explained that CPJ would collaborate with a Nagoya based local political party, Tax Reduction Japan, and in fact, Mr. Takashi Kawamura, Mayor of the city of Nagoya and the leader of Tax Reduction Japan would assume the co-leader position of CPJ.
CPJ will field candidates to the next general elections including the House of Representatives.
It seems that CPJ is zeroing in those who are part of pro-LDP electorates, yet unsatisfied with LDP’s recent liberal policies.
In order for CPJ to fully receive a political party status in terms of government financial support and tax breaks, it has to achieve a 2% or more of the total votes of the next general election.
3. G7 Hiroshima AI Process Concluded A Guideline for AI Products Development
Yomiuri reported that G7 Hiroshima AI Process held a conference this month and concluded a draft of an international guideline for AI products developers.
The guideline is expected to be officially agreed upon in the next G7 online summit meeting to be held in this fall.
According to Yomiuri, the guideline has 11 requirements for AI products developers to follow.
Some of them are as follows:
l Specify weak points from risk and security perspectives
l Appropriately protect privacy information and copy rights
l Electronic waterproofing and originator profile technology to recognize and identify the source of information
This G7 Hiroshima AI Process is now discussing about a guideline for AI based service providers and consumers as well.
4. Technical Trainees System To Be Significantly Modified
The present Technical Trainees System was created in 1997 as part of Overseas Development Aid to help developing countries’ growth from their human resources’ perspectives.
But in reality, the system is now recognized by agricultural industry, fishery industry, construction industry, service industries and SMEs as a precious source of human resources, mostly blue workers.
There are internal and external criticism about the issue of treating the trainees as literally trainees instead of workers without providing full legal rights of workers to that are guaranteed by the Constitution.
With this as a background, the Kishida administration set up a well-informed people’s roundtable to review the Technical Trainees System earlier.
The roundtable which submitted a final report on October 18.
The report submitted a final report to the administration recommending a new system should be introduced to provide a 3-year stay-permit for foreign young talents to work in Japan as worker with freedom of changing job once certain linguistic and one year or more work experience conditions are met.
5. Inbound Consumptions Exceeded Pre-pandemic Amount For The First Time
According to the statistics Japan Tourism Agency announced on October 18, foreign visitors spent 1,390 billion yen between July and September this year, which is 17.7% more than the same period of 2019.
It was the first time for a post-pandemic quarter consumption amount to exceed a corresponding period before the pandemic.
An average consumption amount per visitor also went up by 29.4% to 210,810 yen.
A French visitor spent most (357,775), followed by British (328,422) and the United States (291,537).