Photo/Illutration The Science Council of Japan holds a general meeting in Tokyo on April 17. (Rintaro Sakurai)

The government stirred up a hornet’s nest with its plans to revamp the outspoken Science Council of Japan by involving a third-party panel in the body’s member selection process.

“This threatens the independence of scholarly activity,” thundered one scholar at the council’s general meeting on April 17. Another labeled the move as almost tantamount to “intimidation.”

The two sides have been locked in a bitter row since autumn 2020, when Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga broke with tradition and refused without explanation to endorse the appointment of six candidates.

At the general meeting, Cabinet Office officials said the government intends to submit revisions to the Law on the Science Council of Japan during the current ordinary session of the Diet.

Under the bill, an advisory panel of outside experts would be set up within the council to select candidates for new members and non-members would be allowed to recommend nominees.

Suga never discussed his reason for blocking the appointments of the six candidates, who were generally critical of government policies, notably the enactment of national security legislation and the state secrets protection law, as well as its attempts to amend the pacifist postwar Constitution.

Takeshi Sasagawa, who heads the Cabinet Office’s general policy promotion office, contended that securing transparency in the member selection process is a minimum requirement for the council to win the understanding of the public.

He stressed that the government has no intention of intervening in the council’s member selection process.

But council members said its intentions will be reflected in the proposed advisory panel’s membership, noting that scholars out of favor with the government will likely find it difficult to be enrolled in the council.

The revised legislation would call for the council president to choose five members of the advisory panel in consultation with members of the Cabinet Office’s Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, which is chaired by the prime minister.

The Cabinet Office said it plans to enlist business leaders and other experts on the panel, whose opinions the council would be obliged to “respect.”

In February, eight Japanese scientists, mostly Nobel Prize winners, submitted a statement calling on Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to reconsider the government’s plans to reform the council’s organizational structure.

Takaaki Kajita, the council’s president, told the general meeting that 61 Nobel laureates in natural science from around the world had issued a joint statement in support of the Japanese academics by expressing concerns about the proposed revisions.

Scientific bodies in industrialized countries select members independently. In the United States, Britain, France and Germany, national academies do not have an organization like the selection advisory panel included in the government bill.

Sasagawa was adamant that it is essential to have outside experts involved in the member selection process.

“It will be difficult for the council to remain as a government organ unless institutional transparency is secured,” he said.

A senior government official stated that the government proposal is the bare minimum for the council to maintain its status as a special institution operating independently from the government.

The Cabinet Office incorporated many proposals from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which is critical of the council, into the bill.

In December 2020, an LDP task force called for the council to be reorganized as a new independent organization.

“We will have no other choice but to reduce the budget for the Science Council of Japan if the government gives up submitting the bill,” said a member of the task force.

The Science Council was established in 1949 as a bulwark to the prewar period when scholars were enlisted for the war effort.

Its mission includes making policy proposals concerning science, promoting cooperation among Japanese and foreign scientists and enlightening the public on scientific issues. 

(This article was written by Akiyoshi Abe and Rintaro Sakurai.)

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