1. Kishida’s Approval Rating Went Up To 25%
According to NHK’s monthly survey, which was conducted from July 5 through July 7, the Kishida Cabinet’s approval rating went up by 4 points to 25%, while its disapproval rating went down by 3 points to 57%.
Although neither the passage of the amendment of the Political Fund Control Law nor the onetime tax break in June did raise Kishida’s approval ratings, it seems that the Kishida Administration’s decision to provide households with a subsidy for utility from August through October as well as to provide pension receivers and low-income households with a benefit might have contributed to this slight recovery of his approval rating.
In conjunction with the political issues of immigration that are being observed in the U.S. and France, the survey raised a question about further enlarging the acceptance of foreign workers in Japan.
55% of the respondents agreed to expand it, while 36% disagreed.
With regard to the increasing trend of the social and wealth divisions in the world, 77% are concerned (including 30% of very concerned) while 18% are not concerned.
2 Kishida’s Visit To U.S. And Germany
PM Kishida visited Washington, DC on the 10th and attended the NATO Summit on the 11th.
It is Japan’s third consecutive attendance of the annual NATO Summit, which represents Japan’s willingness of strengthening cooperation with and commitment to the NATO.
PM Kishida was welcomed by President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden at the Whitehouse in the dinner reception on Wednesday.
Before attending the NATO Summit, he also participated in the very first summit meeting of Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Ukraine, which was also held in Washington, DC on the 11th.
He left Washington, DC in the afternoon of July 11 and is arriving in Berlin of Germany on the 12th to have a bilateral summit meeting there.
3. Japan And Philippines To Deepen Mutual Security Cooperation
On July 8, Japan’s Foreign Minister Kamikawa and Philippine’s Defense Minister Teodoro signed Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) in Manila.
According to MoFA, RAA is an agreement which establishes procedures for the cooperative activities that are conducted by forces of Japan and the Philippines while the force of one country is visiting the other country and defines a legal status of the visiting force.
The Philippines is the third country with which Japan signed the RAA, following Australia and the United Kingdom.
After signing the agreement, a 2+2 meeting was held between the two nations involving the mutual foreign and defense ministers, followed by a joint press release.
Confronting the Chinese aggressive advancement to the East and South China Sea, the two nations decided to accelerate deepening the mutual security cooperation as well as the security cooperation between Japan-Philippines-Australia in the region.
4. Resonac To Establish US Joint In Silicon Valley
Resonac, one of Japan’s largest semiconductor material suppliers announced on July 8 that it would establish in Silicon Valley, CA a united companies’ group by the name of US Joint.
The group intends to pick up the emerging demand of next-generation semiconductors for generative AI in the United States.
Besides Resonac, five Japanese companies including Tokyo Ohka Kogyo that supplies photosensitive material and four American companies including KLA that manufactures inspection devices form the joint venture.
US Joint plans to start prototyping lines in 2025.
The group companies will aim at post-process of next-generation semiconductor development such as 3-D assembling, etc.
5. Japan To Shift To Active Cyber Defense
Yomiuri reported on July 9 that the government of Japan is considering to shift its defense policy against cyberattacks from foreign countries to active cyber defense from passive as long as critical social infrastructure is concerned such as power plants, etc.
One of options under consideration is to monitor communications of the operators of the critical social infrastructure in question to pick up any sign of cyberattacks and to trace the communication up to the attacker’s servers and neutralize them if so needed.
Since the Japanese Constitution guarantees the confidentiality of communication in Japan, the government intends to receive consent from such operators of critical infrastructure in advance about the communication monitoring.
Since Japan is a major Asian hub of the submarine cables that account for around 90% of international communication, the government expects that it enables monitoring cyberattack information from China, Russia and North Korea relatively easily.