Diet passes 1st petition for increase in culture budget
October 23, 2012
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2012 October 17 - 23 [ARTS AND SPORTS]
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In the latest ordinary Diet session, a petition for an increase in the culture budget was passed for the first time in history. The Cultural Affair Agency recently made a budget request for the next fiscal year. It, however, falls far short of demands made in the petition.
The agency requested a total of 107 billion yen in the budget, up 3.7% from the previous year. The reason for the increase is that the requested budget included some new items such as a project based on the establishment of a law to support operations of performing art facilities like theaters and concert halls and a project to assist art colleges.
On the other hand, the budget request again showed a decrease in financial support for organizations of performance artists, including traditional dance-drama artists.
In the budget request, the agency allocated only 3.15 billion yen to financial support for the organizations. The support budget reached a peak of 6.7 billion yen in 2005, more than twice the amount of the current requested budget.
With anger over the Democratic Party of Japan government’s plan to cut the budget for cultural and artistic activities through its budget-screening process, people in the performing arts sector initiated the petition.
The petition calls for the expansion of opportunities for people to create and receive artistic productions and an improvement in the current system to subsidize artists’ organizations.
The need for the government is to drastically increase the subsidy budget.
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