Future Today: Satoshi Takayama secretly showed me the work of a 'Secretary-General'

Here is what happened

I wrote before about how the Vice-Capital Bill was passed, right?

It is a bill to prepare an alternative city in case Tokyo becomes incapacitated by a major disaster.
Actually, behind the scenes of that passage, there was someone who sat directly at the table with the Liberal Democratic Party and the Japan Innovation Party to


negotiate the contents of the law.

That person is Satoshi Takayama, the Secretary-General of Team Mirai.

Secretary-General is a title you hear often, but to be honest, I didn't really understand what they actually do.
I didn't really know.

What Takayama-san was doing this time was
negotiating to have the actual text of the bill rewritten.

Team Mirai requested two things.

One was to explicitly state that 'development of digital administrative infrastructure,' in other words, information and communication technology, should also be properly used in creating the vice-capital.
The other was for the government to properly report the progress to the Diet every year.

He had these two points formally added to the text through three-party consultations with the LDP and the Innovation Party.

The part that struck me

Takayama-san's comment at this time changed my image of the Secretary-General's job a little bit.

'I consider ensuring the continuity of capital functions in preparation for large-scale disasters to be a very important theme. In doing so, it is necessary to properly implement not only physical continuity but also digital administrative infrastructure, that is, digital preparedness.'

The point that we shouldn't forget 'digital preparedness,' such as data and systems, in addition to 'physical preparedness,' such as roads and buildings.
I thought it was very characteristic of a political party with engineer roots.

Moreover, he didn't just express whether he was for or against it;
he discussed it at the level of the legal text with other parties,
and actually made them change the wording of the law.

I was able to realize for the first time that the position of Secretary-General is a job where you sit at the negotiating table as the face of the party and work out the fine details of the text one by one.

For a new political party with few seats to get such specific proposals passed against established, major parties.
It's low-key, but I think it's actually quite impressive.

It's quite a feat, even if it doesn't get much attention.

A word

When I saw the title 'Secretary-General,' I just had the image of someone important,
but in reality, they were a
negotiatorfacing every single character of the law.

The only thing that makes the news is the result that 'the bill was passed,' but knowing there is this kind of steady, behind-the-scenes work leading up to it,
my perspective has changed a little.