We have published the full text of "Policy Diagrams" (政策図解; Nikkei BP, December 2023; by Tetsuro Kondoh and Makoto Okiyama, supervised by Prof. Kan Suzuki) on our note. It is available for one year, from November 1, 2026 to October 31, 2027.

Policy Diagrams, full text on note (in Japanese)

A message on the full-text release

A message from the author, Tetsuro Kondoh. It also opens the note article.

This book began with a talk I gave at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in 2019, on diagramming business models for government officials. Someone there said, "If you can diagram business models, couldn't you diagram policies too?" From that, a voluntary group of officials and people working on policy came together, and the book took more than four years to make.

I had my doubts about diagramming something as complex, with as many variables, as public policy this simply. Even so, I felt that unless we expressed each policy with the bare minimum — who is doing it, for whom, for what purpose, and by what means — it would be hard for an ordinary citizen to grasp the countless policies that exist. That is why I put the book together this way.

The world is still unstable. I think the time has come for each of us to look more closely at policy, and to think not only about treating symptoms but about how to change society through its underlying structures. So, although some time has passed since the release, I decided to make the full text of "Policy Diagrams" public.

I hope this book can be a way in to the living wisdom of those who came before us, and something like a charm for people who feel a vague unease about society, and for people trying to take a step toward a better future.

All six of our books are now free to read

ZUKAI has published six books, and we have been releasing their full texts one by one. "Policy Diagrams" is the last of the six.

Our earlier full-text releases have no end date. For "Policy Diagrams," after discussing it with Nikkei BP, we are starting with one year.

Where the book has been used

Since publication we have heard that it is being used in schools and government ministries. Several ministries asked us to run workshops on diagramming policy, and we did. At the request of a business owner, we also held a workshop where business owners diagrammed the policies that affect their own businesses.

What the book covers

It explains, one at a time, 50 policies that have been made in response to society's problems, each with one diagram and a text. The whole runs to more than 110,000 Japanese characters. All the diagrams follow one format, the Policy Diagram. There is no need to read it from start to finish; you can jump from the table of contents to the policies you are interested in.

  • Chapter 1, Supporting the economy Developing people, creating businesses, business activity, working conditions, technology development, and the market environment. It covers J-Startup, the regulatory sandbox, the patent system, the rule on conversion to indefinite-term employment, equal pay for equal work, the SBIR program, TPP11 and others
  • Chapter 2, Supporting society Education, regions, health and medicine, daily life, social infrastructure, and the natural environment. It covers the University Fund, the Local Vitalization Cooperators program, the hometown tax donation system (furusato nozei), the self-medication tax deduction, the Act on the Protection of Personal Information, the Paris Agreement and others

The content is based on data from when the book was made (2023). Errors found after publication have been corrected in the note article.

Book details

  • Title: 政策図解 (Policy Diagrams)
  • Authors: Tetsuro Kondoh, Makoto Okiyama
  • Supervised by: Kan Suzuki
  • Publisher: Nikkei BP
  • Release date: December 7, 2023
  • Price: 2,640 yen (tax included)
  • Format and length: A5, 312 pages
  • ISBN: 9784296000098

The news from the release is here.

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