Internet Governance Conference Japan (IGCJ) — 2018 Meetings — In-Depth Report: Minutes Digest & 3-Line Summary

The 3-Line Summary

1. In 2018 the Internet Governance Conference Japan (IGCJ) held four Tokyo meetings, with JAIPA's 'IGF-Japan 2018' forum in March — a year spent facing two storms: GDPR taking effect and Japan's piracy-site blocking controversy.
2. The DNS-blocking dispute, triggered by the government's emergency measures, was debated on legal and technical grounds centred on the secrecy of communications; in September an opinion paper with co-signatories was published on the IGCJ site.
3. The tension between 'effective enforcement' and 'freedom of communications' — the prototype of today's platform-regulation debates — played out in concentrated form in Japan that year.

Welcome — this is the Japan IGF Support Organization. This in-depth report on Internet Governance Conference Japan (IGCJ) — 2018 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. Piracy-site Blocking — A Head-on Clash over the Secrecy of Communications

Sessions: 25th meeting (28 Aug), information-sharing on the government's piracy-countermeasures panel, and the wider April–October 2018 controversy

"The destination of a communication also falls within the secrecy of communications. Routing is accepted as carriers' legitimate business — blocking is not."
— Ryoji Mori (attorney, at the 18 April 2018 emergency symposium co-hosted by JAIPA) [3][5][7][8]

• After the government's April 2018 emergency measures requesting piracy-site blocking, an emergency symposium co-hosted by JAIPA heard lawyers, operators and consumer groups point to the absence of legal grounds and to collateral damage [3][5][7][8]
• At the 25th IGCJ meeting, JPNIC's Akinori Maemura briefed the community on the Cabinet IP headquarters' deliberation panel on online piracy countermeasures [3][5][7][8]
• In September, an 'Opinion on DNS blocking of piracy sites' was published on the IGCJ website with a list of co-signatories — a collective statement from the technical community [3][5][7][8]

2. GDPR Takes Effect — Cross-border Data and the Redesign of WHOIS

Sessions: 24th meeting (25 May), 'Japan's readiness as GDPR takes effect'; 25th meeting (28 Aug)

• At the 24th meeting — held on 25 May, the very day the EU's GDPR became applicable — Kuniko Ogawa of Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission explained the rules for cross-border personal-data transfers [2][3]
• JPNIC's Akinori Maemura, also an ICANN board member, reported on the global puzzle of making WHOIS domain-registrant data GDPR-compliant, while NRI/Kyoto University's Makoto Yokozawa and Yahoo Japan's Kenta Mochizuki presented stakeholder responses [2][3]
• At the 25th meeting, Rikkyo University professor Yoshihisa Hayakawa examined the Hague Global Principles and GDPR from a private-international-law perspective [2][3]

3. IGF-Japan 2018 — 'New Currents in Internet Governance'

Sessions: IGF-Japan 2018 (22 March, Ochanomizu Sola City Conference Center; hosted by JAIPA)

• The forum reported on the new frontiers that surfaced at IGF 2017 in Geneva — AI, IoT, big data, data protection and the sharing economy [6]
• Sessions covered net-neutrality policy trends abroad and Japan's outlook, plus 'the future of internet governance in Japan' [6]
• Billed as deepening 'open, multistakeholder internet governance', it marked a high point of the JAIPA-led forum series running since 2010 [6]

4. Norms in Cyberspace, and the View from Wuzhen — Year-end at IW2018

Sessions: 26th meeting (29 Nov, during Internet Week 2018)

• MIC's Masanobu Sasaki unpacked the international debates on norms for state behaviour in cyberspace [4]
• JPNIC's Akinori Maemura reported on China's World Internet Conference (Wuzhen Summit) and JPRS's Hirofumi Hotta on IGF 2018 in Paris — a panorama of an increasingly multipolar governance debate [4]

Three-Minute Short Talk — Your Questions Answered

Q. How did the blocking saga end?

A. The government panel deadlocked and produced no final report, shelving legislation for the time being. The debate seared the weight of communications secrecy into public awareness, and later anti-piracy efforts shifted to legal alternatives and ad-revenue squeezes rather than blocking.

Q. What did a Japanese meeting have to say about GDPR?

A. On the day it took effect, participants sat in one room with the regulator to work through how Japanese firms should handle EU personal data — and how WHOIS, the once fully public domain-registrant directory, would have to be rebuilt.

Q. Why should I care?

A. The blocking fight was about who decides what you can see online — freedom of communications itself. And GDPR set the rules for how your personal data is protected when it crosses borders.

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 2018 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24回日本インターネットガバナンス会議（2018年5月25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25回日本インターネットガバナンス会議（2018年8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26回日本インターネットガバナンス会議（2018年11月29日、Internet Week 2018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)
5. 海賊版サイトに対するDNSブロッキングに関する意見書（PDF、賛同者連名版） — 日本インターネットガバナンス会議（IGCJ） (accessed 2026-07-11)
6. IGF-Japan 2018 開催のご案内 — 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. 海賊版サイトのブロッキングはなぜ無理筋なのか？ 反対派の市民団体やISP業界団体が緊急シンポジウム開催 — INTERNET Watch（インプレス） (accessed 2026-07-11)
8. IGCJ お知らせ一覧（2018年9月12日 意見書公開の告知を含む） — 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 31 October 2018, 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