A late July conference of prefectural governors issued a declaration saying that Japan's falling population and excessive concentration of people in the Tokyo metropolitan area are putting many municipalities across the country at risk of disappearing someday. Warning that such developments could lead to a decline of the nation as a whole, the governors stressed that prefectures will work closely with the national government to achieve regional revitalization. While the prefectural authorities need to work out effective plans to tackle their own problems, the national government for its part should provide adequate financial and other support for local efforts.

The governors, who gathered in Okayama under the auspices of the National Governors' Association, singled out seven priority areas in their efforts for regional revitalization, including measures to increase the population in their areas, resuscitation of local industries, development of human resources and efforts to prevent or reduce the damage from major disasters.

What is noteworthy is the fact that the governors called on the central government to provide much larger grants to support their revitalization projects than the ¥170 billion offered in the fiscal 2014 supplementary budget. They also demanded that at least 20 percent of national government functions covering local administrations be transferred to the prefectural governments' jurisdiction.

However, Shigeru Ishiba, the minister in charge of regional revitalization, told the governors that the national government will aim to provide ¥100 billion in grants to prefectures in fiscal 2016, with the total value of related projects reaching ¥200 billion, including those funded by local governments. This amount will be much smaller than what the governors called for, and could lead the prefectures to doubt whether the national government is really serious about regional revitalization.

Under the setup of the Abe administration's regional revitalization policy, the local governments need to go through cumbersome procedures to receive the grants. They are required to draw up revitalization strategies, develop an index to evaluate the progress of each of the projects they implement with the grants, and to check their achievements each year. Despite these troubles, the overall amount of the new national government grants is not so large, and the governors' demand for more funding seems reasonable.

The need for devolution in the form of transferring some functions of the central bureaucracy to local governments has been talked about for years now, but progress remains slow. The national government should take concrete actions in view of the governors' demand.

Also on the agenda of the governors' talks was the electoral reform of the Upper House. A recent revision to the Public Offices Election Law, to take effect beginning in the 2016 election, combines four prefecture-based constituencies into two and halves the number of seats allocated to the prefectures, raising the prospect that some prefectures may lose their representation in the upper chamber.

Some of the governors said the Upper House should be reformed into a chamber that — like the U.S. Senate — represents Japan's 47 prefectures with an equal number of seats allocated to each. They plan to come up with specific ideas by the end of March for reform of the Upper House. A constructive proposal from the prefectural governors would help further the goal of fundamental reform of the chamber's electoral system.

Gov. Keiji Yamada of Kyoto, head of the National Governors' Association, said at the conference that prefectural governments should demonstrate their resolve to rebuild the whole nation with efforts launched and carried out at local levels. Putting forth their demands to the national government is important. But as Yamada said, the governors should realize that their ability in local administration is being tested by the efforts to revitalize the areas they are serving.