Hon. Masahiko Shibayama, Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), spoke about the national government’s deliberations on the ILC during a press conference on February 5th, demonstrating that MEXT was continuing to deliberate on the project. “We have received the Science Council of Japan’s opinion on the matter, and are in close contact with other related government ministries.”

He stated, “We are moving forward with our deliberations and also asking different government agencies in every field about their thoughts on the ILC project.” He also talked about the decision-making process: “We think that the master plan is very important to the process as well.”

The master plan is a plan made by the Science Council with various policies regarding building large-scale research projects in Japan. They are currently working on an update to the 2017 version, to be released in 2020.