e-Gov Public Comment (Administrative Procedure Act public comment procedure)

Its AI responsibilities

The single mandatory consultation channel for all Japanese ministries when making 命令等 (cabinet orders, ministerial ordinances, notices/告示, administrative guidance). Every AI-related ordinance, notice and Basic Plan draft from the Cabinet Office, METI, MIC and the Digital Agency passes through here. Statutory basis: Administrative Procedure Act (行政手続法), Chapter 6. Policy oversight sits with MIC's Administrative Management Bureau.

Honest assessment

This is the single most usable formal route in Japan and the one to actually recommend — no account, no fee, no nationality bar, a statutory 30-day floor, and a legal duty on the agency to publish its response to comments. Two honest limits. First, language: it is Japanese-only end to end, so a non-speaker needs a translated submission and cannot navigate the portal unaided; machine translation of the interface works but machine-translating your own submission into Japanese produces text officials visibly discount. Second, the system explicitly weights substance over volume and says identical repeated opinions do not get proportional weight — a coordinated campaign of identical comments is designed not to work here. One well-argued Japanese-language submission beats a thousand copies.

Current business

Continuously open. Live cases are listed on the portal's 意見募集中案件一覧. AI-relevant recent case: the AI Basic Plan Phase II draft (人工知能基本計画（素案）), comment call announced 19 June 2026.

Public route

Find the case on the portal, open it, read the 意見募集要項 (the case-specific comment call sheet — this is the load-bearing document), then use the 意見提出 (submit opinion) form. Required fields vary BY CASE and are controlled by that sheet: if a name/address/phone/email field is not displayed on the form, that information is not required. The only universally mandatory field is the opinion text itself, which has a character limit that will hard-error if exceeded. No account registration is required.

Format rules

No signature or supporter threshold. Statutory minimum comment period: in principle 30 days or more from the notice date. The agency must publish a summary of comments received and its response when it finalises the rule.

Languages

Japanese only. There is no English interface, no English guidance, and comments are expected in Japanese. Nothing formally bars a non-Japanese speaker or a foreign national from submitting — there is no nationality check — but in practice a submission that officials cannot read will not be processed meaningfully.

Research note

System description, the 30-day statutory floor, the no-account/conditional-fields submission mechanics and the substance-over-volume rule are all VERIFIED from the official e-Gov pages public-comment.e-gov.go.jp/contents/about-public-comment and /contents/help/guide/submission.html. The absence of English support is a verified negative — the official pages carry no language options and no guidance for foreign submitters. The e-Gov top page is JavaScript-rendered and will not load for simple fetchers; the /contents/ subpages do.