Press Conference by Prime Minister Kishida regarding His Visit to Chiba Prefecture

（On his thoughts after his visit to the city of Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, where he witnessed soaring commodity prices in a shopping street and visited a kindergarten that offers education and day care featuring an effective use of natural environment; and how he plans to reflect the results of the visit in the Government’s economic measures this autumn）

Today, I first visited the Sakura Jokamachi Shopping Association, where shop owners are dedicated to the promotion of its shopping street based on its distinctive regional feature. I also heard the voices of such shop owners. While we are seeing signs of changes in the Japanese economy, there are many regions across the nation facing major challenges of population decline and soaring commodity prices. Under such circumstances, I saw firsthand how the association I visited today is engaged in efforts, taking advantage of its feature as a shopping street located in a regional city or a historic castle city. During the visit, I also heard those concerned pointing out the importance of finding ways to attract tourists combined with measures for the promotion of regional tourism, as well as measures to generate consumption large enough to overcome soaring prices, at a time when the regional population is on the decline. Other opinions included those referring to the challenges for handing down skills to future generations, such as shortage of successors and manpower, leading to a view stressing the importance of empowering women. Furthermore, I heard them advocate the importance of revitalizing local communities with young people involved and coming up with visions focused on regional culture and history with all local people concerned working together.

The Government is committed to steadily providing assistance for initiatives to formulate visions for shopping streets by working closely in line with the needs of consumers and other various actors. We will also assist efforts for generating consumption and those for attracting tourists by taking advantage of regional resources. Responding to your question about the soaring prices, what needs to be done immediately is to overcome such hikes in energy and commodity prices in regional economies. To this end, we have already taken action to provide additional priority support local grants, but we intend to study such steps as part of the economic package that we aim to formulate in autumn as the second phase of measures to deal with the soaring prices and other issues.

Meanwhile, here at the Sennari Kindergarten, I have seen various specific examples of quality preschool education. I firsthand saw children actively playing in a forest surrounding this mountainous area abundant in nature and interacting with elderly people. Today is August 1 and around this time of the year a decade ago never saw children actively playing like this in a kindergarten. However, with the establishment of such kindergartens with certified childcare center and other initiatives, we have enhanced the quantitative volume of preschool education and day care, with the favorable result that we now see children actively playing in this kindergarten.
Needless to say, enhancing the quality of preschool education and day care is no less important than expanding their quantitative volume. With regard to this qualitative aspect, the Government has been working on improving staffing criteria in terms of the number of children covered by a staff member for the first time in 76 years. In addition, we find it necessary to help establish a regional system to promote preschool education through the establishment of preschool education centers at municipal levels, while also improving the environment surrounding temporary nursing services. I now look back on today’s visit to the kindergarten as a very informative one as I have had various thoughts about the series of issues regarding preschool education. That’s all from me.