Jap Mod Exam Prep

• The Management Committee influences the legislative process in the Japanese House of Parliament by determining the schedule for when bills are debated and voted on.
• The Prime Minister assumes control over the Administrative functions of the government when the Japanese Parliament is not in session.
• In regard to policy formulation, Prime Minister Koizumi influences the role by consolidating it, making it more responsible for policy formulation.
• The Fiscal Investment Loan Program (FILP) constitutes of funds deposited by the public into the postal savings system and pension schemes, and surplus from welfare insurance accounts.
• The theme for Prime Minister Kishi's rearmament policy was minimum defense capabilities.
• Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) - A political party in Japan that advocates for liberal democracy and free-market capitalism.
• Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was not keen on addressing the environmental pollution problem in Minamata, Nigata and Yokkaichi in the 1960s and 1970s because of pro-economics stance over environmental damages.
• Industry and Economic interests affected the implementation of environmental laws such as the 1967 Air Pollution Control.
• Knowledge-based industrial policy is the shifting of focus to high technology industries.
• The role of the government in the knowledge-based industrial period is to facilitate knowledge dissemination across private firms.
• A shift from munitions production to coal, steel, fertilizer, and electricity generation was the basis for the Industrial Policy advocated by the SCAP administration.
• The argument behind the Industrial development of Japan is that the government had an intervening impact on development.
• Foreign Investment Laws in Japan require permission from Ministry of Finance and Foreign Investment For All.
• Knowledge-based industrial policy of Japan is constituted by movement away from capital-intensive to technology-intensive industries.
• The 2000 Decentralization Omnibus Law increased local autonomy by developing more administrative and fiscal powers.
• The role of the House of Management is to deal with the order of Business in plenary sessions and control who speaks.
• Passing of the budget in January is the aspect of budgetary process that is subject to the political process.

  In the case of dispute the lower house, the House of Representatives, has the final say.
• The premise of the National Defense Program Outline (NDPO) introduced in 1967 was deployment for small scale conventional attacks;

  According to Article 9 ratified under the Peace Clause it was permissible to deploy SDF under the condition that it was strictly for defense purposes.
• The rise of China and military provocation by North Korea influenced Japan to increase its military spending.
• The purpose of establishing the National Security Council (NSC) in 2014 was to establish the office of the Prime Minister as a control tower and a proactive contribution to peace.
• Two committees are concerned with internal business; the Disciplinary Committee and the Committee on House Management.
• The Budget Committee, not so much for the control it exerts over the process of budget formation but rather because it is the forum within which members of the house can directly question cabinet minsters, even the Prime Minister, on any aspect of policy supported by government funding.
• The FILP was a second budget controlled by the Ministry of Finance which funded both industrial policy and local infrastructure projects.
• Funds generated from FILP are made available to the government to spend through, for example, the Government Housing Loan Corporation or the Development Bank of Japan,
• Formulation of the FILP budget


  1. Starts in August

  2. Complete by end of December

  3. Receives cabinet approval

  4. Submitted to Diet in January for formal approval
• Target fields of the FILP budget

  • Enhancing industrial competitiveness
  • Creating innovation
  • Supporting the overseas expansion of mid-ranking companies and SMEs
• Continuing investments of the FILP budget

  • Infrastructure
  • Revitalization of the regions
• Programmes funded by the FILP budget

  • Student loans (through JASSO)
  • Welfare loans
  • Funds for housing projects
  • Development projects overseas (through JICA)
• The FILP budget may take on a special project in a particular year
• The FILP programme provided the financial basis for the development of industrial policy. It was kept under the control of the bureaucrats and only needed Diet approval from the 1970s, although even then politicians did not exert much control over how its funds were used.
• Koizumi insisted on cutting the FILP by half and on privatising the JDB and Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), hindering their ability to play a role in industrial policy.
• Japan's acceptance as a developed state was signaled by its membership of the OECD in 1964, as the first non-white member.
• By the 1990s industrial policy had clearly transformed into the ‘knowledge-based’ type in which government functioned mainly to facilitate knowledge dissemination across private firms where innovative ideas and practices were thought to originate.
• Creating rather than emulating or buying in technology was emphasised, partly in acknowledgement of the fact that Japan had now ‘caught up’ and was itself at the industrial and technological frontier, and partly in recognition of the fact that Japan had an obligation to contribute to the development of scientific knowledge ‘as an international public good’.
• In August 1970 the Headquarters for Countermeasures for Environmental Pollution was formed of cabinet ministers chaired by PM Satō Eisaku, and served by bureaucrats on full-time secondment from MITI, MHW and Transport.
• Rapid economic growth benefited most people, but it also generated urban problems and environmental pollution.
• The 2000 Decentralisation Omnibus Law promised a fundamental change in the relationship between central government and local governments: from a ‘superior/subordinate relationship of dependency’ to a ‘relationship based on equality and cooperation’.
• NDPO extended the definition of its tasks to include international peace cooperation and responding to various emergencies such as large scale disasters.
• Abe re-created the CEFP as the principal forum within which budget and fiscal policies are made.
• Abe proposed the creation of a National Security Council (NSC) that would give the PM direct control over security policy and the ability to coordinate the activities of the MFA and MoD.