now on bbc news — hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. not so long ago, the rest of the world regarded japan as an inspiration, a powerhouse economy based on cutting—edge technology. well, how times change. today, japan is struggling to adapt to the demands of the 21st century. innovation too often stifled by bureaucracy and political paralysis. an ageing, declining population slow to embrace change. my guest is taro kono, japan's minister for digital transformation. is japan ready for a national reboot?

taro kono in tokyo, welcome to hardtalk. hello, how are you? i'm very well, minister kono, and thank you forjoining us. what has gone wrong? a simple question, what has gone wrong injapan? you're a global powerhouse economy, which seems to have been stalled for decades. why do you think that is? well, there was a bubble economy back in 1980s, and the japanese economy went through some adjustment, and now we are back on track. the economy is getting

warmer and warmer. back on track. you thinkjapan�*s back on track, when you look at your massive debt problem, you look at your very weak currency on global markets right now, you look at a cost of living crisis, which is clearly affecting japanese people, who seem to be very disaffected, weary with the political and economic status quo. well, the post—covid inflation injapan is much, much lower than uk or the united states. so, don't worry about it. and economy is clearly back on track. the japanese economy is growing back again. let me ask you about the politics of japan. for pretty much 70 years, the politics of your country has

been dominated by the party of which you are a member, the liberal democratic party, the ldp. others have only runjapan for three or four years in the last seven decades. it looks like a one—party state. do you think that is healthy? well, the post—warjapan has been democratic all the time. the people of japan has been voting to elect a government. and, yes, ldp has been chosen by the government. and we have recreated japan. the economy has grown to number, well, right now, numberthree in the world and japan has not been affected by the war since the end of the world war ii. so japan is quite content.

and, well, yes, there were several times the ldp wasn't ruling the country. but we are back since 2012. mm, it'sjust, in democratic politics one of the keys to success is new ideas, fresh ideas, innovative ideas. ijust wonder how that is possible when one party has been so dominant for so long. i mean, you symbolise this reality, because your father was a president of the ldp. i believe your grandfather was a key founder of the party. you yourself have been an mp for 20 years. you've been foreign minister, defence minister. you're part of this ldp elite. and manyjapanese people kind of, i think, feel that there's no alternative and that cannot be good. well, if it's not good, people could always change the government. it is the people who elect

the government injapan and the ldp with fresh ideas have been elected to govern the country, so, well, it seems to you maybe just a one—party rule, butjapan is a multiparty country and people are free to choose the government, and the ldp, with a track record, has been elected to govern the country by the people. in uk, sometimes there must be change of the government, but it is not always because of the fresh idea. the government party failed to rule the country properly and the people had to choose the alternative. so that could happen injapan. do you think the ldp right now is governing the country properly when your party is mired in scandal, the so—called slush fund

scandal that has seen four cabinet ministers resign? investigations of it continue. many mps in your party seem to have been involved. that doesn't suggest the ldp is running japan properly. well, yes, it is true. several, well, more than several mps failed to report the political contribution. the political contribution injapan is tax—free as long as mps make report to the authority and some members failed to do that. so that's why they left the government. and we are changing the rules. and many of the mps who failed to report have returned the money. so, yes, there were some mistakes involved, but we can fix it. do you think that prime minister

fumio kishida will have to go as a result of this? his approval ratings are now sinking fast. is he going to have to go? well, there's going to be a leadership election in september. and mps and the card—carrying ldp members will decide who is going to be the next leaders. are you going to be a candidate to challenge him? well, you'll see, you'll see in september. you indicated just a few weeks ago to japanese media sources that you were interested in the top job. and you've said in the past that you have an ambition to be prime minister, so i guess you will be running. well, i have ambitions since 28 years ago, first time i came to the parliament, and i have been reiterating my vision ever since. so, to put this bluntly, you have been candid about the degree to which the ldp

has failed to ensure that all of its mps follow the funding rules. if responsibility goes to the very top, i'm imagining you think that mr kishida will have to pay the price. well, prime minister kishida didn't fail to report. he did things properly. and, yes, there were... he's the president of your party. yeah, but each mp has responsibility to make report for their own. so someone made a mistake, doesn't make prime minister responsible for the failure. let's talk about your portfolio as a minister in the government. you've had many positions, defence, foreign minister. but right now you're minister, among other things, for digital transformation. how comejapan, which was such a technological leader, if i can put it like this,

in the analogue era, has so markedly failed to be a true global leader when it comes to the digital era? well, japan was so good with analogue technology of the 20th century. you know, back in the �*80s, if you go to an electric store in london, new york, paris, all you see were made in japan. oh, i'm old enough to rememberthat, minister. i remember it very well, but that's not the case any more. that's right. if one looks at the leaders in digital technologies around the world, japan doesn't figure high. right, so the japanese are quite content with the analogue technology of the 20th century. and we have failed to invest in digital. now we are trying to catch up with the rest of the world

and hopefully will be leapfrogging again and lead the world with digital technology and ai technology as well. well, i'm struggling to buy into your optimism when i read some pretty extraordinary stuff. i mean, you fought a battle to get the floppy disk phased out of government processes and uses across ministries. you've really struggled to persuade japanese people to stop using the hand stamp in official documents. i mean, there is something truly archaic about the ways in which japanese still handles bureaucracy and business. well, my agency went back all the way to 1868. that's the first year of major restoration. we have identified all the laws and regulations that forced people to use analogue technology.

there must have been 10,000 laws and regulations, and we all struck them out. and the floppy disk is one of it. and this war on floppy disk became very famous, because...thanks to bbc. bbc a couple of years ago carried the news that a digital minister ofjapan is fighting war on floppy disk. and it became very famous. my former counterpart, the foreign ministers, have been calling me and asking me jokingly about the floppy disk thing, but now the war is over. we got rid of all the floppy disks from the government procedures, so that's just a part of it. that's a nicejoke, but... well, it's not a joke. it's not a joke, tojust a final point on this, it's not a joke to point out that singapore, for example, which embraces the idea

of digital citizenship, has literally thousands and thousands of people working across government to digitise all governmental activity and processes. whereas as i understand it, you have a staff ofjust 800 and you have a population of 125 million, whereas singapore has just over five million. you're not really taking this seriously. well, we are increasing the number of people working in digital agency, and, well, i think we are most successful in distributing national id card system with ic chip. uh, we are not making that compulsory. we are asking if people would like to use id card, and the more than 80% of the japanese have applied to get the id card with ic chips so they can do business,

or they could do government procedures online. so i think injapan, people are actually moving into digital technology and doing things digital way. but there's a bigger problem... it's in progress. 0k, seems to me there's a bigger problem here which touches on a huge challenge for japan's future. it's about demographics. the calculations from a whole bunch of independent analysts suggest thatjapan is, by 2030, going to be short of millions of tech—savvy digital workers. you just don't have enough people properly trained in these technologies. and this raises the question, it's a much wider one, about where japan is going to find the workers of the future. you have a declining, seriously declining population and a consistently low birth rate. what are you going to do about it? well, the japanese have been growing

up with manga and anime, where ai—controlled robots are doing homework for the kids or fighting villains coming from outer space. so, ai technology for the japanese, always friendly technology. unlike some european countries, where people are afraid of ai stealing theirjob, we are going to actually introduce alto complement people in the work space. so... but forgive me, forgive me, minister. ai doesn't pay taxes. ai isn't going to solve your future problems with far too many dependent people, elderly people, and not enough workers paying tax. i mean, just look at some of the raw data. you're losing half a million people a year from your country. the projections for what japan's population is going to be by 2050 are truly frightening,

well below 100 million. today, the country, correct me if i'm wrong, but the country sells more adult diapers for the elderly than it does infant ones for babies. unless you can reverse this trend, japan's future is grim. no, that's not necessarily true. i think the average age of the japanese is quite long, and more and more people are working long years. people who are in their 70s are willing to work and earn and contribute to the society. so, simply the number is going down doesn't mean it's a bad thing for a country. really? and ijust wonder, going back to prime minister kishida and whether he's actually

achieved his ambitions, one of his key targets when he came into office was to address the demographic crisis facing your country. and he's proposed lots of different tax and benefit incentives to encouragejapanese women to have more babies. they haven't worked. why is it that this natalist strategy, as it's called, isn't working? well, in order to increase the birth rate, you have to try a lot of things and see what's really going to work. the lower birth rate is not an issue only forjapan. many asian countries, or even many european countries, are getting lower and lower birth rate. so we are trying to see what would be most effective policy to reverse the trend and increase the birth rate.

we are still trying to identify what is working. it needn'tjust be about birth rates, need it? you could also address this problem by relaxing your immigration rules, embracing diversity, embracing peoples from outside ofjapan coming as workers and indeed perhaps citizens as well into japan. is japan ready for that? well, we have had many foreign workers coming to japan and working in a company and sustaining the society. just hang on. unlike europeans... just 2.3%, minister, of the japanese population is foreign—born. and in the past you've talked about "the psychological barriers to immigration" amongst the japanese public. do you intend, if you are to assume a leadership role in your country, as i believe you want to do, do you want to address those psychological barriers

and break them down? well, it's not black—and—white issues. i mean, look at the uk politics or look at european politics. immigration has become one of the major, major issues. so we are looking at the situation in europe and the way we handle the immigration is probably different from europe. butjust, 0k, different from europe, you say, butjust let me quote to you the words of a former ldp, your party, prime minister taro aso, who said a few years ago now, he said, "japan is a nation of one race, one civilisation, one language, one culture." sounds like you, leaders of your party, are not interested in a more diverse, a more multiethnicjapan. well, there are many voices. there are many visions injapan. some people thinks it is good

to have a plurality or some people wanted to keep the traditional culture. and diversity is good forjapan, i think. let's talk about japan in its neighbourhood and let's talk about geopolitics. japan has in recent years tried to deepen its strategic partnership with the united states. how worried are you about the prospect, a very real prospect, of a return of donald trump to the white house? donald trump has suggested that asian partners of the us need to pay their way in a new way, if the us is still to offer them strategic partnership. are you worried about that? well, i'm not sure what's to worry about. well, we are increasing defence spending, and the president trump,

in his first term, didn't really talk about japan's defence spending issues. japan and the united states is allies and we have been working together. 0ur self—defence force and us forces are doing a lot of exercise together, making some strategic planning together. so there's nothing to worry about. it doesn't matter... there may be, there may be things to worry about. i mean, japan is committed to raising defence spending to 2% of gdp, of national income. at the moment, you're struggling to meet that commitment, partly because your currency is so weak that the military equipment you're buying overseas has suddenly become much more expensive. and the americans are watching you very closely. are you truly committed to meeting that defence spending target? ah, yes, yes, we are.

and you don't have to worry about because only 10% of our defence spending is related to the currency. 90% of our defence spending is paid by yen. so it doesn't really matter if the yen is strong or weak, you don't have to worry about it. talk to me about china. i mean, what we see with xi jinping is a leader who is determined to assert chinese power, particularly in your neighbourhood in east asia. donald trump said to bloomberg just a few days ago, "taiwan should be paying the us to defend it. the us is no different than an insurance company." and he said, "right now, the taiwanese don't give us anything." now, that suggested there may soon be a very different approach to the taiwan issue in the united states. you care deeply about that issue. would you say that right now you are beginning to worry in a new way about the china threat? well, most of the state—of—the—art chips used in united states

are coming out of taiwan. so taiwan gives a lot to the us economy or the daily life of americans. and president trump sees the importance of their semiconductor industries in taiwan and protecting its industry, because if he loses it, there going to be no great america again. and he'll see that. a broader point about the japanese strategy in the region. the constitution, of course, adopted after the second world war, says that the japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation. and it goes on to say that a land, sea and airforce, as well as other war potential will never be maintained. have you effectivelyjunked that constitutional principle as you massively increase defence spending and build what is, in

effect, a powerful military force? well, the constitution doesn't deny our right to self—defence, and that is why we have been training self—defence force members. and our supreme court never ruled the self—defence force against the constitution or anything. so if it's clear that japan hasn't renounced the right to go to war, if necessary, if china were to make military moves on taiwan to attempt to invade taiwan, would japan get involved? well, we have rights to defend ourselves, our land, our people. yeah, i'm talking about taiwan, though. would japan get involved militarily against china if china moved on taiwan? well, if it has any implication on our land and people,

so it depends on the situation. it is not a black—and—white thing. taro kono, we have to end there. thank you very much indeed forjoining me from tokyo. thank you. hello there. thursday brought with it quite a humid feel and a lot of cloud across the country. at times, it was thick enough for some heavy rain, some poor visibility across the channel isles and some choppy seas, so not a day for being by the seaside. but as we move into next week, high pressure is going to build.

that will quieten things down considerably, with some sunny spells around, and certainly warming up, particularly down to the south. but for friday, we're still under this influence of low pressure, still the wind direction coming from the west, so not the warmest of sources. and that is going to drive in a few scattered showers, chiefly to the far north—west to begin with. but as we go through the day, anywhere along the west, we'll see those showers drifting further inland, perhaps across east anglia and south—east england staying fine and dry. but still those temperatures disappointing for this stage injuly. a scattering of showers into wales, 20 celsius the high here. more frequent showers into northern ireland and southern scotland, and some of these possibly heavy. so temperatures again a little bit more subdued. we're looking at highs of 15—19 celsius. so that is how we close out friday afternoon. friday evening, into the early hours of saturday, sees the isobars open up, the winds fall light, clear skies for a time. but we have got this little weak

weather front starting to develop, enhancing more showers out to the west. but it means low single figures to greet us first thing for the start of our weekend. a quiet start for many, particularly in sheltered eastern areas, but once again, we'll continue to see a few showers breaking out from the west, and these will move through the irish sea into wales, across north—west england and into scotland by the afternoon. again, to the east of the pennines, we are likely to see the best of the drier, sunnier weather, but those temperatures still not particularly exciting for this time of year, once again ranging from 15—23 celsius the high. but after saturday, an area of high pressure will start to build in from the west. as we go into next week, that's going to quieten things down considerably. weather fronts will try to topple in across the high, but all in all, it looks quite decent, with that south—westerly flow allowing those temperatures to climb potentially into the high—20s. and for many of us, there's going to be a good deal of dry, settled, sunny weather to look

forward to for at least a few days.

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