Photo/Illutration The Science Council of Japan holds a general meeting in Tokyo on Oct. 2. (Tomohiro Murayama)

The new president of the Science Council of Japan (SCJ) will continue to press the government to appoint six members to the council who were rejected by the Suga administration three years ago.

Mamoru Mitsuishi, who was elected president at the SCJ’s general meeting on Oct. 2, also said he will hold the council’s ground in government discussions about the future of the national academy of scientists.

“I will come out and say what I need to say, continuing the stance of the previous leadership,” said Mitsuishi, 67, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo. “I will also make renewed calls for the appointment of the six rejected members.”

The row between the council and the government erupted in 2020, when then Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga broke with tradition and refused, without giving a reason, to appoint six candidates for SCJ membership who had been nominated by the council.

The council protested, saying that the prime minister’s unprecedented decision threatened academic freedom.

Without responding to this complaint, the government and ruling coalition called for reforms of the SCJ’s organization and operations.

Since August, an experts panel under the Cabinet Office has been discussing whether the council should be retained as a government institution or spun off as a corporation.

The council currently has 203 members, including 105 whose six-year term started on Oct. 1.

Half of its members are newly appointed every three other years. The maximum number of its members is 210 under the Law on the Science Council of Japan.

The SCJ has continued calling on the administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to appoint the six previously rejected members, but to no avail.

“The prime minister at the time made a judgment based on the SCJ Law,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a news conference on Sept. 29. “We understand that the set of procedures have been completed.”

The Kishida administration planned to submit a bill to revise the SCJ Law to involve a third-party advisory panel in the council’s member selection process during the ordinary Diet session this year but eventually gave up in the face of backlash from the council.

Mitsuishi, a native of Okayama Prefecture and expert in mechanical engineering, was elected for a three-year term in a vote by 160 council members in attendance at the general meeting.

He succeeded Takaaki Kajita, whose term expired at the end of September.

Mitsuishi also serves as vice president of the National Institution for Academic Degrees and Quality Enhancement of Higher Education.

A robotics expert, he has been engaged in development of robots that assist in surgeries.

At the University of Tokyo, Mitsuishi served as dean of the faculty of engineering and executive vice president.

(This article was written by Tomohiro Murayama and Akiyoshi Abe.)

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