Press Conferences

Mr. Takeshi Osuga, Foreign Press Secretary: There will be information on this in this morning’s press release and part of this has already been released, but on December 19, 22 files of diplomatic records were newly released. It has become possible to view the original copies of these files at the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). The full texts were also digitalized, and it has become possible to view them on the MOFA website. If you go to the “Release of diplomatic records” page in the new press releases with today’s date or go to the “Diplomatic Archives” page, you can access the digital data for all the texts released this time.

The content of the files released this time includes the visits to the United States by Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi in 1957 and 1960, the visit to the United States by Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1987, and Japan-U.S. semiconductor negotiations in the late 1980s.

Through the release of diplomatic records, the MOFA will fulfill its duty to be accountable to the people of Japan and expects that this will provide opportunities for study of the historic results of diplomatic activities of the Government of Japan until now.

Foreign Press Secretary Osuga: From December 23-30, at the invitation of the Government of Egypt, a total of 27 people, comprising 23 high school students and four leaders, from the three prefectures (Okayama Prefecture, Hiroshima Prefecture, and Aichi Prefecture) affected by the heavy rain in western Japan this July are scheduled to visit Egypt.

When he heard about the heavy rain damage this July, H. E. Mr. Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi,. President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, indicated that he wanted to invite students and others to Egypt from the disaster-stricken areas to encourage them. The Embassy of Egypt in Tokyo coordinated this with the disaster-affected prefectures and the MOFA also provided lateral support.

This invitation project by the Government of Egypt is expected to further deepen the friendly relations between Japan and Egypt.

Sankei Shimbun, Harakawa: Yesterday, the first Japan-China Foreign Press Officials Meeting in about nine years was held with Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lu Kang of China. Can you please specifically introduce the results and the exchanges?

Foreign Press Secretary Osuga: Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lu and I fulfill our duties to effectively communicate the foreign policy of our respective countries through the mass media and other media. From that shared perspective, particularly in this year when Japan-China relations have been becoming increasingly close, we discussed how we can mutually cooperate for this. We first exchanged information on our initiatives from the perspective of domestic communication in our countries and foreign communication. We had an extremely in-depth exchange of views regarding ideas aimed toward the future.

In addition, as this was the first such meeting in nine years, I would like to announce that we agreed to hold the next meeting in 2019 in China. Although one meeting would not produce specific results, I believe that we had an extremely good exchange of views in the sense that we will cooperate wherever we can from the perspective of deepening and promoting Japan-China relations through increasing mutual understanding more going forward.