Internet Governance Conference Japan (IGCJ) — 2015 Meetings — In-Depth Report: Minutes Digest & 3-Line Summary

The 3-Line Summary

1. In 2015 the Internet Governance Conference Japan (IGCJ) held six open meetings in Tokyo (its 5th through 10th), bringing government officials, engineers, businesses and civil society to one table.
2. The dominant topic was the IANA stewardship transition away from US-government oversight, tracked all year from proposal briefings to a review of the community's own public-comment submission; the WSIS+10 negotiations and Japanese IDN rules were also on the agenda.
3. The roughly bimonthly, open-to-anyone format took root this year, laying the groundwork for Japan's multistakeholder internet-governance dialogue.

Welcome — this is the Japan IGF Support Organization. This in-depth report on Internet Governance Conference Japan (IGCJ) — 2015 Meetings draws on official outputs, session records and on-site reporting. In a hurry? The three lines above and the diagrams carry the gist.

Conference at a Glance (from official records)

(See the source list at the end of this article.)

Discussion Digest — from the Session Records

Key exchanges extracted from session records and transcripts.

1. IANA Stewardship Transition — Tracking a Historic Handover All Year

Sessions: 5th meeting (29 Jan), 'On the IANA stewardship transition'; 9th meeting (29 Sep), 'Review of the community input submitted on the combined transition proposal'

• At the 5th meeting, JPNIC's Akinori Maemura walked participants through the transition proposals drafted separately for names, numbers and protocols, followed by open discussion [2][4]
• The 9th meeting reviewed how volunteers from the IGCJ community had submitted comments on the combined transition proposal — a case of Japan's community speaking directly into the global process [2][4]
• With the handover heading toward implementation in 2016, IGCJ was one of the few domestic venues continuously tracking its progress [2][4]

2. WSIS+10 and Global Currents — Direct Dialogue with the Ministry

Sessions: 8th meeting (28 July, Cisco Systems Japan HQ) and others

• Mitsuhiro Hishida of the communications ministry (MIC) briefed the community on the WSIS+10 review negotiations, taking questions directly from the floor [3][2]
• JPNIC's Akinori Maemura reported on the NETmundial Initiative and JPRS's Yuri Takamatsu on APrIGF 2015 in Macao, channelling international debates back into Japan [3][2]
• At the 5th meeting, Izumi Aizu (Institute for HyperNetwork Society) examined China's World Internet Conference, adding a lens on the multipolarisation of governance debates [3][2]

3. IGF Japan FY2014 Debrief — Restarting the Domestic Report-back

Sessions: IGF Japan FY2014 Debrief (24 March, AP Shibuya Dogenzaka; hosted by IGF Japan, supported by MIC and Tama University's Institute)

• A Japanese-language debrief covered the year's accelerating international scene — the Snowden-triggered NETmundial meeting and the Istanbul IGF among them [6]
• After opening remarks including Jun Murai's, the programme featured MIC's domain-name policy committee report (Tatsuya Kawauchi), an explanation of the NETmundial Initiative (Akinori Maemura) and cybersecurity trends (Yasuhiko Taniwaki) [6]
• The invitation stated frankly that such debates were 'not yet sufficient in Japan' — a marker on the road toward stronger domestic IGF activity [6]

4. Homegrown Agenda-setting — A Security Paper and Japanese Domain Names

Sessions: 8th to 10th meetings

• A drafting team used IGCJ as its platform to develop a community paper setting out a shared way of thinking about security [3][4][5]
• JPRS's Hirofumi Hotta, chair of the Japanese Generation Panel, reported at the 9th and 10th meetings on rule-making for Japanese IDN TLD strings [3][4][5]
• At the year-end 10th meeting during Internet Week 2015, Tsuyoshi Kinoshita and others reviewed IGCJ's overall activity and debated its future direction [3][4][5]

Three-Minute Short Talk — Your Questions Answered

Q. What exactly is IGCJ?

A. An open conference on internet governance launched in June 2014 — unusually, 'a gathering of individuals hosted by the community itself' with no named organiser, JPNIC serving as secretariat. Anyone can attend and speak.

Q. What was the big theme of 2015?

A. The IANA stewardship transition — moving oversight of the internet's core resources away from the US government to the global community. Participants studied the proposals together, and volunteers even filed comments into the international process.

Q. Why should I care?

A. The rules for Japanese domain names and the community's security thinking discussed here feed directly into the internet you use daily. And the very fact that government, business and individuals now debated as equals in Japan was a milestone in itself.

What Is Japan IGF? (for first-time readers)

Japan IGF is a National or Regional IGF Initiative (NRI), aligning local internet governance discussion with global IGF principles.

Why It Matters to You

What was discussed here becomes the baseline for national digital policy, platform rules and AI regulation worldwide within a few years. The principles confirmed at the 2015 meeting are the foundation of the "next rules" for the phones, social platforms and AI services you use every day.

Sources & References

1. 日本インターネットガバナンス会議（IGCJ）ミーティング一覧 — 日本インターネットガバナンス会議（IGCJ） (accessed 2026-07-11)
2. 第5回日本インターネットガバナンス会議（2015年1月29日）プログラム・資料 — 日本インターネットガバナンス会議（IGCJ） (accessed 2026-07-11)
3. 第8回日本インターネットガバナンス会議（2015年7月28日）プログラム・資料 — 日本インターネットガバナンス会議（IGCJ） (accessed 2026-07-11)
4. 第9回日本インターネットガバナンス会議（2015年9月29日）プログラム・資料 — 日本インターネットガバナンス会議（IGCJ） (accessed 2026-07-11)
5. 第10回日本インターネットガバナンス会議（2015年11月19日、Internet Week 2015内）プログラム・資料 — 日本インターネットガバナンス会議（IGCJ） (accessed 2026-07-11)
6. IGF Japan 2014年度 報告会 開催案内 — 一般社団法人日本インターネットプロバイダー協会（JAIPA） (accessed 2026-07-11)
7. 日本インターネットガバナンス会議（IGCJ）とは — 日本インターネットガバナンス会議（IGCJ） (accessed 2026-07-11)

Quotes are translated or condensed from the records listed above. Bracketed numbers [n] refer to the source list.

Related links

• IGF official (NRI list): https://www.intgovforum.org/en/content/national-and-regional-igf-initiatives
• Japan IGF: https://japanigf.jp/
• Yuki Nakazawa's blog: https://nkzw.jp/category/igf/

Revision History

Rev. 1 — published 30 October 2015, 14:00 (Article published)

Rev. 2 — updated 16 July 2026, 20:09 (Fully revised into the in-depth edition: added the 3-line summary, minutes digest, short talk, source list and diagrams (all quotes verified against the listed sources))

— 中澤祐樹