Japan's Science Council Politicized

Transformation of Japan’s National Academy through Governmental Oversight

By Takuya Nishimura, APP Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun.

The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun.
You can find his blog, J Update here.
June 16, 2025. Special to Asia Policy Point

On June 11, Japan’s Diet enacted a law to convert the Science Council of Japan (SCJ) from an independent consultative body to a special public corporation with stronger governmental oversight. The new law enables the Japanese government to participate in the selection of the council’s new members.

The Council historically has represented Japan’s scientific community. The new law takes effect in October 2026. The changes to the Council’s membership are controversial: some scholars are adamantly opposed, dubbing the law the “SCJ Control Act.”

The SCJ was established in 1949 as a special organization of the government of Japan to provide a scientific perspective on government actions. “Based on a belief that science constructs the basis of cultural state, SCJ is hereby established with consensus of scientists, upholding mission of peaceful reconstruction of our country, contributing welfare of human society, and supporting academic progress connected with world academy,” as the current SCJ Act states.

The Japan Academy (Nippon Gakushi-in) is another government-authorized academic organization. The Meiji government established Gakushi-in in 1879 to reward scientists who had made outstanding scientific breakthroughs. While the members of Gakushi-in have life-time membership, SCJ is limited to 210 members, who are frequently replaced.

One unusual decision of a prime minister in 2020 prompted proposals to reform the SCJ. Then Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga rejected six scientists as new members of the SCJ. The SCJ Act provides that the prime minister appoints the members of the SCJ based on recommendations from the council. Former prime ministers had previously approved all members recommended by the council as a matter of course. The six scientists rejected in 2020 were known to be critical of some government policies, and they are not the members of the SCJ up until now.

In March 2025, the government of Japan submitted the bill for the new law to replace current SCJ Act. Reflecting the view of the leading parties, mainly conservative ones, that a government organization contribute to the government, the bill stripped from the SCJ its status as a special organization in the Cabinet Office, which makes independent decisions and receives sufficient financial support.

The new law includes provisions to establish new sections in the council. They include a Member Candidate Selection Committee, a Selection Advisory Committee, and a Management Advisory Committee. The law requires the SCJ to abide by various conditions in selection of new members. In addition, the law sets up an SCJ Evaluation Committee in the Cabinet Office. This committee will evaluate SCJ’s annual self-assessment report on its activities, as well as reviewing the mid-term plans of the council.

The SCJ argued that the law should maintain the SCJ as a national academy in its statement in April. The statement proposed five elements necessary for the SCJ to be a true national academy: status as an academic representative of the state, public qualification, a stable financial base in the form of funding in the government’s budget, independence from government regulation of its activities, and autonomy and independence in selecting members.

Six former presidents of the SCJ issued a statement in May that the SCJ Act would not include those five elements and urged that the bill be abandoned.. They recommended maintenance of a cooptation system in the selection of new members, arguing that the new law would erode the SCJ’s academic independence with the government’s intervention in the management of the council.

The government never explained, even in the Diet discussion, why former prime minister Suga rejected the six scientists as new members in 2020. It merely repeated that the new law would guarantee higher independence and autonomy. Although the leading coalition, the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, did not have a majority in the Lower House, the Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Ishin-no Kai) joined them in passing the bill in the Lower House on May 13 and the Upper House on June 11.

At a press conference after the bill passed the Diet, one of the six former presidents who opposed the bill, Juichi Yamagiwa, the former President of Kyoto University, labeled the new law the “SCJ Disorganization Law.” “The reason for Suga’s rejection has not made clear and the law entails stricter control on academism,” said Yamagiwa.

The Suga administration was a loyal successor to the Shinzo Abe administration. Abe worked aggressively for constitutional amendment, but in the face of criticism by liberal scholars, his efforts failed. It is likely that the conservative lawmakers and the loyalist bureaucrats close to Abe were frustrated with the academic community in Japan.

Knowing that Suga’s rejection of the six scientists was an arbitrary decision against liberal scholars, they might have thought that they could control the SCJ by reviving the law. They did not choose a course of correcting Suga’s decision. Today’s Japanese government, not unlike the Trump administration in the U.S., appears not to appreciate scholarly advice from experienced scientists on national policies.

Monday Asia Policy Events, June 16, 2025

ASSESSING IRANIAN, U.S., AND GULF REACTIONS AND OPTIONS FOLLOWING ISRAEL’S UNPRECEDENTED ATTACK ON IRAN. 6/16, 9:00-10:30am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Arab Gulf States Institute (AGSI). Speakers: Ali Alfoneh, Senior Fellow, AGSI; Kristin Smith Diwan, Senior Resident Scholar, AGSI; Robin Mills, Non-Resident Fellow, AGSI. 

A CLOSER LOOK: RECENT SHIFTS IN THE U.S. SANCTIONS LANDSCAPE. 6/16, 11:00am-Noon (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Washington Foreign Law Society. Speakers: David Tannenbaum, Director, Blackstone Compliance Services; Manny Levitt, Associate, Holland & Knight; Moderator: Andrew McAllister, Partner, Holland & Knight. 

KOREA-JAPAN RELATIONS: WHAT TO EXPECT? 6/16, 9:30-10:15am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Christopher B. Johnstone, Partner & Chair of the Defense & National Security Practice, The Asia Group; Yuki Tatsumi, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the East Asia Program and Director of the Japan Program, Stimson Center; Victor Cha, President, Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea Chair, CSIS; Mark Lippert, Senior Adviser (Non-resident), Korea Chair, CSIS. 

A REDRAWN MIDDLE EAST? 6/16, 10:00am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsors: Foreign Policy LIVE. Speakers: Vali Nasr, Professor, Johns Hopkins University; Ravi Agrawal, Editor in Chief, Foreign Policy. 

THE VIEW FROM INDONESIA. 6/16, 11:00am (EDT), VIRTUAL Sponsor: Foreign Policy LIVE. Speaker: Dino Patti Djalal, Former vice minister for foreign affairs, Indonesia. 

BOOK TALK: THE GREAT TRADE HACK: HOW TRUMP’S TRADE WAR FAILS AND THE WORLD MOVES ON. 6/16, 11:00-11:45am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Peterson Institute (PIIE). Speaker: author Richard Baldwin, Nonresident Senior Fellow, PIIE, Professor, International Economics, IMD Business School, Founder, Editor-in-Chief, VoxEU.  PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/4mHk5JT

BOOK TALK: CHILD WELFARE AND PROBLEMS OF WELL-BEING IN JAPAN. 6/16, 6:30pm (JST) 5:30am (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS) at Temple University, Japan Campus; Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS). Speaker: Kathryn Goldfarb, Associate Professor, University of Colorado Boulder.  PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3ZmKT8s

INAUGURAL LAURENCE H. SILBERMAN LECTURE ON LAW AND NATIONAL SECURITY WITH ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR. 6/16, 4:00-5:15pm (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: American Enterprise Institute. Speaker: William Barr, former US Attorney General; Moderator: Adam J. White, Laurence H. Silberman Chair, Constitutional Governance, American Enterprise Institute. 

RUSSIA'S INFORMATION CONFRONTATION DOCTRINE IN PRACTICE – INTENT, EVOLUTION AND IMPLICATIONS. 6/16, 9:30-11:00am (BST), 4:30–6:00am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Speaker: Julia Voo, Senior Fellow for Cyber Power and Future Conflict, IISS. 

Foreign Influence and Academic Integrity - the Comfort Women

 

Foreign Influence and Academic Integrity By Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Emeritus Professor in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, and a past President of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, April 22, 2021, Australian Institute of International Affairs.

The risks of improper foreign influence on academic research have become a topic of growing concern in many parts of the world over the past year or so. Much of this concern has focused on efforts by China to restrict the freedom of expression of academics and students abroad as well as at home, or to obtain access to research findings. Anxiety about the role of China is very well-founded, but this issue clearly goes further than any one country. Many national governments or overseas interest groups seek in one way or another to exert their influence on research being carried out beyond the boundaries of their own nation.

Professor Morris-Suzuki uses as an example the Government of Japan's activities to influence the discussion and academic work on the Comfort Women--sex slaves to Imperial Japan's military and colonial administrators. Most of these women and girls were forced into this service. The government currently contends that no official Japanese participated in coercing anyone. This is contrary to fact.

Japan's government and its supporters have cultivated a network of history denialist groups that want to change the history narrative of aggressive industrialization and imperialism to one of innovative opportunity cut short by the victimization of the West. The war was forced upon Japan and war crimes were inventions of the Allies.

Morris-Suzuki focuses on the flawed Mark Ramseyer journal article that claims the Comfort Women were simply commercial prostitutes. She points out how this Harvard Law School professor ignored traditional scholarship and current documentation. It is alarming that he is promoted and defended by the Japanese government and well-known rightists as an example of the assault on free speech. As a result, she believes this is the "worst crisis of academic integrity" in her lifetime.

Japan's "weaponization of research" is a model followed by many. Scholars are not necessarily being paid to say something, but support is forthcoming to those who are already sympathetic. Money amplifies denier history, that she likens to Holocaust denial. What was once ignored backwater arguments are now promoted above rigorous scholarship and historical truth.

Morris-Suzuki was asked for specific examples of Japanese pressure. She could not cite any other than to say that implicit pressure is exerted by Japan. A good example of this, however, was the title and description of her presentation by the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Nowhere is there mention of Japan or Comfort Women or Ramseyer. AIIA protected itself by simply giving an anodyne title of foreign influence suggesting the talk is about China. 

Only those who attended the event would know, and they were few.

Information access is essential to a democracy

Why is federal government data disappearing?

By Joshua New,  policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute affiliated with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Op Ed Published 2/21/17 in The Hill

The White House recently deleted all of the data on its open data portal, which served as a public clearinghouse for data on everything from federal budgets to climate change initiatives.

This is a red flag, since for eight years, the Obama White House championed the practice of making government data freely available to the public in order to promote transparency and accountability, to serve as a resource for researchers, and to allow innovators to create new tools and services that spur economic activity and solve social problems.

While the Trump administration has not yet signaled that it will oppose open data across the federal government, its silence on the issue suggests that open data may not receive the same level of priority it has in the past. In sharp contrast, President Obama declared a "new era of openness" on his first full day in office and directed federal agencies to be more transparent.

Rather than wait for the Trump administration to change course, Congress should move quickly to adopt the bipartisan OPEN Data Act and permanently codify an open data policy for the U.S. government.

Unlike Data.gov, the federal government's primary open data portal, the White House open data portal was by no means the most crucial repository of data, primarily consisting of machine-readable versions of White House reports, policy initiatives and budgets. Moreover, most of this data should still be available through an archived version of the portal, though a handful of datasets do seem to still be missing, particularly budgeting data for fiscal year 2012.

It is possible that this is merely a case of poor communication: The new administration may be in the process of updating its website and forgot to alert users of the scheduled downtime.

Unfortunately, this latest action comes on the heels of an earlier decision in February by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to shield government data from public scrutiny by removing data collected by the agency's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

The data consisted of inspection reports, enforcement actions, regulatory correspondence and other information related to APHIS' investigations of animal welfare issues, ranging from puppy mills to abuse of animals in research labs, and the USDA decided it should not be publicly available due to ill-conceived concerns about the privacy of animal abusers.

Not only does this action prevent the public from accessing valuable data about animal abuse, but it prevents pet stores in seven states from complying with state laws requiring them to only deal with breeders with clean inspection reports. Stores in these states could previously use APHIS's database to easily identify breeders without histories of violations, but now that database is no longer available to the public.

Instead of simply censoring personally identifiable information when privacy concerns arise, the USDA decided that members of the public should have to file a Freedom of Information Act request to access any of this data — a process that can take months.

The private sector will be unable to rely on government data if federal agencies can make arbitrary and capricious decisions about when to publish datasets. As Obama recognized in one of his executive orders, "The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve."

For example, some sources are reporting that the administration plans to wipe data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) related to climate change. Reacting to Trump's long history of dismissing climate science and reported plans to reduce the EPA's ability to study climate issues, a large number of civil society groups, civic hackers and concerned scientists have taken to archiving federal climate and environmental data to make it available through a non-government website, fearing that the administration will delete or alter it.

There is no definitive evidence that the Trump administration intends to roll back the valuable commitments to open data that Obama made during his administration, which require federal agencies to treat their data as open and machine-readable by default. However, the Trump administration has also failed to make any indication that it intends to honor or expand upon these commitments.

In fact, the White House has archived the guidance on open data from the Office of Management and Budget along with the Open Government National Action Plans, which detail the U.S. government's commitments to meet the goals of the multinational Open Government Partnership, which include publishing open data, further indicating that it does not consider these policies as its own.

Open data has always been a bipartisan issue. Regardless of how the Trump administration decides to approach open data (https://open.whitehouse.gov as of this writing displays a vague disclaimer simply stating "check back soon for new data"), Congress should act swiftly to ensure that publishing open data remains a permanent responsibility of the federal government so it is not subject to changing political winds.

In the last days of the 114th Congress, the Senate unanimously passed the OPEN Government Data Act to do exactly that, and given the bill's bipartisan support, Congress should view the reintroduction and passage of the bill as a quick win that would benefit the public and private sectors alike.