Japan Press Weekly

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2008 January 9 - 15 [JCP]

JCP sports policy

The JCP makes it clear that “the diverse development of sports” is one of its programmatic objectives essential to nurturing respect for human dignity, achieving the full development of human abilities, and promoting social progress.

The JCP also maintains that every citizen will have the right to sports and recreation at all stages of Japan’s social development.

This position coincides with the International Charter of Physical Education and Sport, adopted at UNESCO’s 20th General Conference in 1978, which states, “Every human being has a fundamental right of access to physical education and sports.”

The LDP government has never declared that every citizen has the right to sports. In pushing ahead with its Basic Plan for the Promotion of Sports, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology lacks this principle that people should enjoy sports based on their independent judgment. The government leaves improvement of sports facilities to the private sector. This approach is far from serving the promotion of sports among the people.

The “toto” soccer lottery has a debt of 26.4 billion yen. The annual government budget for sports is only 18 billion yen, which is inadequate. Under these circumstances, it is very difficult to train athletes or improve facilities serving the promotion of “life-time” sports or the training of sports leaders.

In the early 1980s, the government expended 11.8 billion yen to subsidize the construction of gymnasiums and other facilities. Today, there is no such item in the government budget.

The JCP has been calling for a drastic increase in sports-related expenditures. It opposed the introduction of the “toto” lottery. Last year, JCP members of the Diet and its members in the Nagano Prefectural Assembly and the Nagano City Assembly joined hands with the city and athletic organizations in Nagano to petition the government for the renovation of the Nagano Olympic Games site into a national winter sport center.

Together with athletes and other people who love sports, the JCP will urge the government to drastically increase its budgets to ensure that everyone can enjoy sports.