Research Planning Division,
Research and Legislative Reference Bureau

This is based on an article of the same title in the series <“1998-2008”
Topics during the last decade and future> in
the NDL Monthly Bulletin No. 565 (April 2008).

The National Diet Library Law declares the library’s purpose in the article 2 as follows: “The National Diet Library shall collect books and other library materials for the purpose of assisting the members of the National Diet in the performance of their duties” and the article 15 stipulates that a department to be known as the Research and Legislative Reference Bureau (RLRB) shall be established and its main function shall be services to the National Diet.

In short, provision of services to the National Diet is the primary role of the National Diet Library, which is mainly carried out by the RLRB. The Bureau fulfills a wide range of functions as follows:

(1) To analyze, appraise or evaluate pending legislation and proposals
(2) To gather, analyze and report about materials for or related to legislation, and to provide them
(3) To provide a bill-drafting service that assists both Houses of the Diet, their committees and Members in the preparation of legislation
(4) To provide materials and information to the executive and judicial branches of the government or to the general public

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Services for the National Diet provided by the NDL consist of the legislative research and information services (research and information provision on national political issues) and library services (reading, lending and copying services of library materials). The RLRB is mainly in charge of the former. The latter is performed by the library as a whole including the Kansai-kan and the International Library of Children’s Literature.

(1) Research on request

The RLRB responds to research requests from Diet Members and their secretaries, using vast amounts of materials and information collected from inside and outside of Japan mainly through the legal deposit system and international exchange of publications. In recent years, the number of research requests has been continuously increasing because of active deliberations in the Diet and wider areas of interest of Diet Members. The number of responses, which was about 20,000 for FY1995, reached about 45,000 for FY2006. This means that the number has more than doubled in the past ten years.

Transition in number of research requests

With the increase in the number of research requests, we have been working at a lot more preparation of research reports, and giving briefings at policy subcommittees of political parties, working group meetings and on other occasions. For example, while we produced only about 1,200 research reports in FY1995, the number of reports surpassed 5,500 in FY2006. Deadlines for report submission are getting shorter, with about 70% of the requests needing to be answered on the same day or within the next day. In order to respond to this situation, all the researchers are constantly striving to be capable of producing high quality results in a short period by improving their knowledge in their own area of expertise and by keeping up with printed information, several kinds of databases and the Internet resources.

(2) Anticipatory research

The research conducted in a planned manner by the RLRB in advance of short-term or mid-and long-term national political issues is called anticipatory research. The results of the research are provided chiefly to the Diet through our publications and websites. The researchers work on a routine basis researching issues for which it is anticipated that research requests will be made.

According to the latest statistics, 332 articles in one year were published in publications issued by the RLRB, with 3,331 pages in total.

Services of the Research and Legislative Reference Bureau

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Next we would like to introduce some recent trends in our legislative research and information services.

(1) Enhancement of interdisciplinary research

Interdisciplinary research, launched in 2001, is research on basic national political issues requiring long-term and cross-subject studies. A project team consisting of staff members across the research divisions studies and analyzes situations and systems concerned with a specific subject both at home and abroad.

Interdisciplinary research includes exchange of opinions with experts and field studies both inside and outside Japan as well as literary research based on materials and digital resources such as Internet information. In recent years, “International Policy Seminars” in which foreign experts are invited to exchange opinions and discuss issues, have been held. In addition, some studies have been conducted in cooperation with outside experts invited to the project teams.

The results of such interdisciplinary research are published as the “Interdisciplinary Research Report.” Since 2001, we have chosen a specific topic each year and conducted interdisciplinary research (see the table below).

Interdisciplinary Research Reports

List of themes of the interdisciplinary research

At present, interdisciplinary research on “Juvenile problems,” “Policy issues of Japan in international comparison,” “Policy of the new administration in Australia,” “Influences of realization of regulations policy in economic areas” and “Deliberation trends on Japan in foreign parliaments” are being carried out by each project team.

For the Interdisciplinary Research Report “Problems of Immigrant Policy and Foreign Workers Policy in a Depopulation Society,” published at the end of January 2008, a presentation meeting to introduce the contents to the Diet Members and their secretaries was held on February 21.

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(2) Launch of “Policy Seminar”

The fruits of the interdisciplinary and anticipatory research have been distributed as publications to the each Diet Member’s office located in the Diet Members’ Buildings as well as being posted on the “Chosa-no-Mado,” an exclusive website for the Diet Members. However, we had not provided the occasion to explain the research directly to them. Some Members say they do not know what kinds of research results are available. Therefore, last year, we started “Policy Seminars” where we explain national political issues to the Diet Members and their secretaries.

Two policy seminars took place in September and October 2007 during the 168th Diet session (extraordinary session).

The first one on September 26 was focused on the problem of the “Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law” extension which was a core issue in the extraordinary session. In total, 70 (13 Diet Members from both Houses and 57 secretaries) participated in the session. The second was on October 4 on the themed of “Reform of tax finance for local vitalization,” which attracted 3 Members of the House of Councillors and 24 secretaries.

2nd Policy Seminar on October 4

Responses to the seminars include requests for handouts of the seminar and research related to the subject. A request to have a meeting on the same content by a Diet Member who was not able to join the seminar was also received. We will continue to offer the “Policy Seminars” regularly.

(3) Providing materials in digital form

We can say that the significant change in the RLRB over the past decade is the spread of online operation and performing research with PCs. A decade ago when the first PCs were introduced in the research divisions, they had limited use. Later the “Total System for Research and Information Services,” which deals with research and reference work done by computer, was fully introduced aiming at accelerated statistical processing, accumulation of institutional memory, and other advanced functions.

In October 1998, a website exclusive for the Diet Members, “Chosa-no-Mado” (window on research services), was established. In addition, we proceeded to make a database of full-text minutes of the Diet, which had previously been published only in paper form, construct the Database System for the Minutes of the Imperial Diet, and compile a database of the “Index Database to Japanese Laws, Regulations and Bills” (including the early Meiji era edition). These databases are open to the public on the NDL website.

We have made various research publications available on our website, too. Anyone can read and print out publications issued by the RLRB, such as “Reference,” “Issue Brief,” “Foreign Legislation” and “Research Materials Series,” from anywhere using a PC (in Japanese). We have been continuing our efforts to make these systems more useful.

You can choose materials you want to read from “Materials for Legislative Research” in “Information of Services for Diet”

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In addition to these services, the Research and Legislative Reference Bureau conducts various other activities. For example, in FY2005, we started to ask the Diet Members' needs directly in order to improve our services.

On the occasion of the NDL’s 60th anniversary, the NDL set seven visions (Nagao Vision) for which the NDL should aim in future. The premier vision is to “Enhance our legislative support function by improving services for the National Diet.”

We intend to strengthen our own anticipatory research on national political issues as well as improving our research services provided on request in order to function as “brains for the legislative body.” We are also aiming at functioning as “information center for the Diet Members” in tandem with other departments and facilities of the NDL.

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