Diet Houses’ Budget Committees: Reconsider Old-fashioned Aspects of Deliberations’ Content, Procedures

Editorial

15:12 JST, November 14, 2025

The Liberal Democratic Party is now a minority ruling party in both houses of the Diet, with the nation’s first female prime minister, upon whom the party’s fate rests, taking the lead in responses during deliberations. Meanwhile, the rise of new political forces has intensified multiparty politics.

This Diet session was supposed to become a model for debates in a new era, reflecting diverse public opinion.

However, the crucial content of deliberations still prominently features opposition parties nitpicking the responses of the government side. Outdated procedures also remain unchanged, in which the prime minister and bureaucrats have to devote enormous effort to preparing written responses.

Both the content of the deliberations and the way the Diet is managed need to be reviewed.

On the first day of the House of Representatives Budget Committee meeting, controversy arose over the fact that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi had entered the prime minister’s official residence at 3 a.m. to prepare for answering questions. Takaichi said that she did so to coincide with the time when bureaucrats finished preparing written answers for her.

Some have pointed out that opposition parties often notify the government side of their questions just the day before committee meetings, causing delays in preparing written answers. However, it cannot be said that this is an essential issue.

Takaichi spends time preparing written answers partly because there are many lawmakers who seek to have the prime minister personally answer questions that, for example, require detailed data necessary to back up policies.

In fact, during deliberations in the House of Councillors, a lawmaker questioned Takaichi about the number of fraudulent welfare recipients. Some questions gave the suspicious impression of being designed to provoke gaffes or missteps in responses.

In the past, detailed questions concerning factual matters were answered by bureaucrats who served as “delegates for the government.” Under the banner of political reform, the system of having bureaucrats answer Diet questions in lieu of Cabinet ministers was abolished in 1999, establishing the principle that lawmakers should provide answers.

The mistaken idea that keeping bureaucrats at a distance means exercising political leadership has rendered Diet questioning hollow.

During meetings of the budget committees this time, there were some questions that raised doubts about their content. A lower house lawmaker from the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan spent about 15 minutes focusing on Takaichi’s remarks during the recent LDP presidential election campaign that “there are foreigners who kick deer in Nara.”

Although the intent may have been to paint Takaichi as xenophobic, many likely felt uneasy about the relentless pursuit of remarks she made before becoming the prime minister.

Recently, many parties and lawmakers use social media to voice their views. Perhaps due to this influence, voters’ interest in Diet debates is said to be rising.

This is a welcome move in itself. However, if deliberations continue to stray far from policy debates, distrust in politics will only deepen. There should be awareness that under the structure of a minority ruling party in an era of multiparty politics, both the government’s persuasiveness on policies and the opposition’s ability to ask effective questions are being tested.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Nov. 14, 2025)