Activities

The Genron NPO is organizing high-level discussions on Japan's key policy issues - both domestic and external - with political leaders, government officials, CEOs, policy analysts, academicians, journalists, and others. Access to the discussions is open to our members and available through its Web site, print publications and various types of conferences.

The participatory public debate for the reinforcement of Japan's democracy is being facilitated in the broadly categorized four major areas – politics, diplomacy, civic society, and Japan's future vision.

Politics

Since 2001, The Genron NPO has been conducting the evaluation of each major political party's manifesto policies or election pledges and the evaluation of the incumbent administration's performances, and has released the results for public scrutiny.

Evaluation is assigned to a team of some 30 experts. To reflect the opinion of a broader spectrum of people in the process of evaluation, The Genron NPO conducts an opinion poll each time the evaluation is made, covering about 3,000 prominent figures from various walks of life, while organizing open forums or round-table discussions for politicians to exchange views on various policy matters.

On the occasion of the House of Councillors election in the summer of 2010, The Genron NPO conducted an interview with the chairman of each political party's Policy Research Council, as well as a survey in the form of a questionnaire to each candidate. The interviews and the findings of the survey were publicized on its Web site so that eligible voters were able to make their own judgment on each political party's policymaking capability and each candidate's stance on key policy issues.

Diplomacy

The Genron NPO, in collaboration with China's largest state-run English-language daily newspaper China Daily, launched the Tokyo-Beijing Forum in the summer of 2005, when anti-Japanese demonstrations swept across China. The annual workshop, aimed at creating a new private-sector channel of communications between the two countries, has been conducted every year in Japan and China alternately. The Genron NPO and China Daily agreed to sponsor the annual forum for 10 times from 2005 through 2014, with the Tokyo conference in the summer of 2010 being the sixth. In tandem with the forum, an opinion survey on the overall bilateral relations has been jointly carried out in Japan and China every year. The results of the annual survey have been used by the world's influential think tanks and others as a valuable reference. The Genron NPO and its Chinese partner desire to evolve this forum into a venue to extend debate to other parts of Asia and the rest of the world.

In addition to the Tokyo-Beijing Forum, The Genron NPO is organizing public debate on important matters related to Japan's diplomatic and external policies through the channel of the "Conference on Asian Strategy."

Civic Society

To reinforce the foundations of a democratic society, the initial premise is the presence of independent-minded citizens, who are able to think by themselves and make their own judgment about their own futures and their country’s. By introducing the people who continue to boldly address challenges of society and their activities and by seeking the participation of many citizens, The Genron NPO is determined to create a forum of debate on behalf of the civic society.

Japan's Future Vision

In order to project the vision of Japan's future, we must work out practical solutions to the multitude of problems and tasks we now face, instead of putting them off. The Genron NPO is set to develop participatory discussions on diverse issues and to present the outcomes of these discussions to the government and other parties concerned. By squarely facing Japan's tasks in the face and constructively debating about Japan's future direction, we aim to come out with realistic counter-proposals for the resolution of any given problems.