Japan's bid to double KAKENHI for FY2027: what would grow, and was it really KAKENHI that got cut?

Hello, this is Ryuta Hamamoto from TIMEWELL.

In the FY2027 budget request it published on August 28, Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) asked for 455.2 billion yen for KAKENHI, the country's main competitive research grant. The FY2026 budget is 247.9 billion yen, so this is close to double. I wrote the first version of this piece on August 23, when the plan was only being reported in the press. Since then the official documents have come out, the Finance Ministry has published its totals, and the Cabinet has been reshuffled. This version reflects what was known as of October 4.

The most important point has not changed. This is a request, not a decision. The Finance Ministry is in the middle of its review, and requests are not normally granted in full. Reading this as "the doubling is settled" is premature.

The content is still worth a close look. The official documents show that almost all of the increase sits in the uncapped "Strong and Prosperous Japan" investment framework, and that full conversion to multi-year funds is one of the pillars alongside the money. For researchers, that second part may matter more.

I also want to test a claim that comes up constantly in this conversation: that KAKENHI was heavily cut in the past. I checked it against the published data, and it changed my own understanding.

The short version

• The FY2027 KAKENHI request is 455.2 billion yen, about 1.84 times the FY2026 budget of 247.9 billion. Of that, 204.2 billion is in the "Strong and Prosperous Japan" investment framework
• A separate 30 billion yen came through the FY2025 supplementary budget. Against the combined 277.9 billion, the request is about 1.64 times
• Five pillars: new research fields, international research, early-career support, the Kiban categories, and full fund conversion, which would extend to Kiban (A), Transformative Research Areas (A) and Specially Promoted Research
• The amount gets set in the government draft budget around late December and becomes final when the Diet enacts it. For the investment framework, the Finance Ministry says what matters is effect, not size
• The primary data shows the nominal KAKENHI total growing over the long run, from 117.9 billion yen in FY1998 to 247.9 billion in FY2026. What hurt universities was the decline in operating grants
• MEXT is also requesting 1.2512 trillion yen in operating grants, up from 1.0971 trillion. The baseline side is moving too

What has changed since August 23

When I wrote the first version, I had two things to go on: press reports that MEXT had settled on requesting a doubling, and the Cabinet understanding of July 30 setting the rules for budget requests. The 455.2 billion yen figure and the plan to convert all of KAKENHI to funds both came from the press. Over the following six weeks, the main numbers became checkable against primary sources.

Item	First version (Aug 23)	Now (Oct 4)
Request	455.2 billion yen, as reported	Confirmed in MEXT's official documents; 204.2 billion of it in the investment framework1
Content	Full fund conversion, international joint research, early-career support, as reported	Five pillars published, plus the three categories to be converted (Kiban (A), Transformative Research Areas (A), Specially Promoted Research)1
Government-wide	Uncapped investment framework created (July 30 Cabinet understanding)	Total requests of 143.07 trillion yen, including 12.17 trillion in the framework (Finance Ministry, Sept 4)2
Finance Ministry stance	Unknown	Published its view that what matters for the framework is "not the amount of fiscal spending but its effect on economic growth" (Sept 4)3
Education minister	Yohei Matsumoto	Yoshihiro Seki since the September 17 reshuffle; said at his first press conference that he will pursue a major expansion of KAKENHI4
Review	Not started	The Fiscal System Council began its autumn sessions on Sept 30. The session on education and science had not been held as of Oct 43

The breakdown was what surprised me most. Of the 455.2 billion yen, 204.2 billion is in the investment framework, leaving 251.0 billion as ordinary expenditure. Compared with the FY2026 budget of 247.9 billion, ordinary spending is essentially flat, which means nearly the whole increase is riding on the framework (my calculation from MEXT's figures). The framework has no request ceiling, but in exchange each plan has to spell out who will do what, by when, and how, and the Finance Ministry says it will review plans on that basis. Whether the doubling survives depends largely on how much of that framework portion gets approved.

You might wonder whether the reshuffle changed anything. The education minister did change in the second Takaichi Cabinet formed on September 17, but the new minister, Yoshihiro Seki, listed "creating new research fields through a major expansion of KAKENHI" among his priorities at his first press conference on September 18, and on September 29 he again spoke of major expansions of both KAKENHI and national university operating grants.⁴ At least at the level of ministerial statements, the policy has carried over. I covered the reshuffle as a whole in this piece on the reshuffled Takaichi Cabinet.

I also owe readers a correction. In the first version, the rows of the JSPS budget table for FY2024 to FY2026 had figures and supplementary-budget notes that belonged to other years. The FY2025 row, for example, showed 303.1 billion yen, which is actually the FY2023 figure. I have rechecked the original chart and fixed the table below.

Groundwork: what KAKENHI is

Terms first, because the debate goes nowhere without them.

KAKENHI (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research)

KAKENHI is competitive research funding that researchers or groups apply for and receive after review. Topics come from the researchers. The state does not dictate the field; it builds from the bottom up.

It covers everything from basic research to applied work, across disciplines. According to MEXT, it receives roughly 100,000 applications a year, with a success rate of about 27%.¹ Decisions are made by peer review, with panels of researchers who know the field. It is the core of Japanese academic research funding.

There is also an entry requirement worth knowing about. The KAKENHI call for proposals states that applications cannot be submitted unless the principal investigator and every co-investigator have registered, in e-Rad (Japan's cross-ministry grant system), their pledge that they have properly reported to their institutions on research integrity matters such as other funding, outside appointments and participation in foreign talent programs. The FY2027 call keeps this rule, and says inaccurate entries can lead to rejection, cancellation of an award or a reduced allocation.⁵ More money does not help a team whose pledge registration is missing. I went through where the disclosure lines fall in this piece on what economic security means for grant applicants. Universities and research institutes that want to check their internal process can also use our research integrity and security self-check sheet.

Operating grants

Operating grants are the baseline funding the state provides to national university corporations: salaries, facility maintenance, utilities, the things that let an institution function as an organization.

These two are completely different in character. KAKENHI attaches to specific research; operating grants fund the organization. No amount of KAKENHI pays a university's salaries. Equally, operating grants do not run individual research projects.

Both are needed, and neither substitutes for the other. Everything in the second half of this piece rests on that.

Does "KAKENHI was cut" match the data?

Let me handle this carefully.

You often hear that KAKENHI was slashed about fifteen years ago and Japanese university research fell behind. The perception that the research environment deteriorated is well supported. Whether the cause was a cut to the KAKENHI total is a different question, and the published data does not say so.

The JSPS series

The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science publishes the budget series.⁶ Here are selected years, with the FY2027 request added at the end.

Fiscal year	Budget	Note
FY1998	117.9 billion yen
FY2001	158.0 billion yen	Indirect costs introduced
FY2009	197.0 billion yen
FY2010	200.0 billion yen
FY2011	263.3 billion yen	Fund conversion introduced
FY2012	256.6 billion yen
FY2014	227.6 billion yen
FY2016	227.3 billion yen
FY2020	237.4 billion yen
FY2023	303.1 billion yen	Includes 65.4 billion supplementary
FY2024	242.9 billion yen	Kiban (B) converted to funds; includes 5.2 billion supplementary
FY2025	267.9 billion yen	Includes 30.0 billion supplementary
FY2026	247.9 billion yen	Transformative Research Areas (B) and Kiban (S) converted
FY2027 request	455.2 billion yen	Request only; 204.2 billion in the investment framework

Note: JSPS counts supplementary budgets in the year they were passed. The FY2027 figure is the request in MEXT's budget documents, not a final amount.¹

Over the long run it has grown, roughly 2.1 times from 117.9 billion in FY1998 to 247.9 billion in FY2026.

Look at FY2010 to FY2011: 200.0 billion to 263.3 billion, a jump of more than 63 billion in a single year, driven by the introduction of fund conversion.

Rebuilding the table, I noticed something else. Strip out the supplementary budgets and look only at the initial budgets, and from FY2019 to FY2025 KAKENHI sat between 237.2 and 237.9 billion yen. It barely moved. The year-to-year swings in the totals come from supplementary money added in some years. The initial budget rose by 10 billion yen to 247.9 billion in FY2026, and now comes a request for 455.2 billion. After seven years of a flat initial budget, the ministry is asking to nearly double it in one go. That is the context in which the word "doubling" carries its weight.

Check the dates, too. Japan's Democratic Party government ran from September 2009 to December 2012, covering FY2009 to FY2012. Across that period KAKENHI went from 197.0 to 200.0, then 263.3, then 256.6 billion yen. It was not cut. It rose sharply in FY2011.

Nominal growth, but what about real terms?

In fairness, here is the other side. A petition launched in 2024 by federations of Japanese academic societies, spanning biology, chemistry, medicine, engineering, the humanities and more, argues that KAKENHI funding per researcher has kept falling, that Japan's growth in research spending since 2000 is the lowest in the G7, and that the real decline in allocations has worn down the research environment.⁷

A nominal total that grows and a real per-project amount that shrinks, once you account for inflation and rising application numbers, can both be true. The table above shows nominal totals. It does not tell you how much actually reached each researcher. So "KAKENHI was not cut" is accurate about the nominal total, but it is not grounds for dismissing what people in labs are experiencing. That is where I land.

So what did fall?

Operating grants.

National universities were incorporated in FY2004. From then, an "efficiency coefficient" cut operating grants by roughly 1% every year.

• From FY2004 to FY2015, a decline of about 147 billion yen (roughly 11.8%) over eleven years
• In the seven years from FY2004 to FY2010 alone, about 83 billion yen

This began with incorporation in FY2004, five years before the DPJ government took office.

The revenue structure itself changed

Going deeper, the structural shift matters more than the headline decline. Here is the breakdown of ordinary revenue across the national university corporations, from a MEXT paper submitted to the evaluation committee.⁸

Ordinary revenue	FY2004	FY2024
Operating grant revenue	1,165.4 billion yen (47%)	1,082.8 billion yen (29%)
Student fees	356.0 billion yen (15%)	362.4 billion yen (10%)
External funds etc.	171.8 billion yen (7%)	752.1 billion yen (20%)
University hospital revenue	624.5 billion yen (26%)	1,414.8 billion yen (39%)
Total	2,445.4 billion yen	3,700.5 billion yen

Note: external funds covers subsidies, commissioned research, donations and research-related revenue. Asset-related reversal income is omitted as it has been zero since FY2022 following an accounting standard change.

Total ordinary revenue grew roughly 1.5 times. At a glance, universities look better off.

Yet operating grant revenue fell in absolute terms and dropped from 47% to 29% of the total. The growth came from hospital revenue (about 2.2 times) and external funds (about 4.3 times).

University income rose, but its composition shifted toward clinical revenue from hospitals and external money that has to be won. The portion universities can direct themselves has thinned, both relatively and absolutely.

When baseline funding that covers salaries thins out, permanent positions cannot be sustained. The structure where early-career researchers cannot find stable jobs, and cannot settle into long-horizon work, comes mainly from here. No amount of competitive funding fills that gap.

Where the 2009 budget review fits

The November 2009 budget screening exercise unquestionably shook science funding. The Institute for Molecular Science issued a statement warning that Japanese academic research would collapse, and Nature ran a feature on Japanese science budget cuts. The alarm in the research community is clearly on the record.

The screening did issue "review" and "reduce" judgments on national university operating grants, on top of the 1% already coming off every year. The published data, however, shows no corresponding cut to KAKENHI itself.

Putting it together

• The perception that the research environment worsened is sound, with evidence behind it
• The main driver was the decline in operating grants, which began with incorporation in FY2004. It does not attach to one administration
• The 2009 screening badly shook the research community, but did not translate into a cut to the KAKENHI total
• The nominal KAKENHI total grew over the long run, particularly with the FY2011 fund conversion. Some argue that per-project amounts have shrunk in real terms

I hold no brief for or against any government. But if you want to fix something, you need the cause right. "Increase KAKENHI and universities recover" leaves the operating grant problem out of frame.

Operating grants are moving as well. MEXT's FY2027 request is 1.2512 trillion yen, up 154.1 billion from the FY2026 budget of 1.0971 trillion.¹ At his August 28 press conference, then-minister Yohei Matsumoto said that if approved, this would slightly exceed the level of the budget at the time of incorporation.⁹ The FY2026 figure had been reported as the first increase in nine years.

What the request would grow

From here I follow MEXT's official document from its Research Promotion Bureau.¹ Everything below is at the request stage.

The number and the breakdown

The request is 455.2 billion yen, of which 204.2 billion is in the investment framework. That is about 1.84 times the FY2026 budget of 247.9 billion. The document also lists the 30 billion yen from the FY2025 supplementary budget, which was used to convert continuing Transformative Research Areas (B) and Kiban (S) projects to funds.¹⁰ Japanese budget watchers often look at a supplementary budget and the following year's initial budget together as a "15-month budget". On that basis, adding the 30 billion to the FY2026 budget gives 277.9 billion, and the request is about 1.64 times that. So the multiple depends on what you compare against. Either way, it is well above the previous high of 303.1 billion in FY2023, which included supplementary money.

Five pillars

The document splits the expansion into five areas.

Pillar	Main content
New research fields	Expand Challenging Research (Pioneering) with a dedicated early-career frame; extend and expand Transformative Research Areas (B); expand (A)
International research	Expand Fostering Joint International Research, with a new application track for Early-Career Scientists awardees and JSPS Research Fellows; more priority allocation for internationally oriented Kiban (A) projects
Early-career researchers	Expand Research Activity Start-up, Early-Career Scientists and the JSPS Research Fellow grants
Diverse research	Expand Kiban (S), (A), (B) and (C)
Full fund conversion	Convert Kiban (A), Transformative Research Areas (A) and Specially Promoted Research

MEXT's summary document also lists a new 7.3 billion yen KAKENHI menu to support overseas travel by early-career researchers.¹ What I described in the first version simply as "international joint research and early-career support" turns out to mean two things: sending young researchers into overseas research communities, and giving them room to take on large new-field projects.

Full fund conversion

Practically, I think this is the bigger item.

Japanese government budgets are normally single-year: spend it within the fiscal year. The end-of-year scramble to buy equipment is a familiar sight in research.

Fund conversion allows flexible spending across multiple years. Research does not run to schedule. Instruments arrive late; experiments fail and directions change. Single-year constraints do not match how research works.

KAKENHI fund conversion began partially in FY2011 and has widened category by category since, with Kiban (B) in FY2024 and Transformative Research Areas (B) and Kiban (S) in FY2026. The new document says the ministry will convert Kiban (A), Transformative Research Areas (A) and Specially Promoted Research, all categories with large per-project allocations. The government's Basic Policy 2026 also calls for promptly advancing full fund conversion "to reduce researchers' burdensome paperwork and secure research time."¹

The freedom in how money is used may matter more to researchers than the size of it. Even if the total is trimmed in review, whether the conversion plan survives is worth watching on its own.

International joint research and early-career support

Early-career support has already been getting attention; the FY2026 draft budget was reported to create 1,000 new slots aimed at young researchers. The shape of it is using competitive funding to compensate for the stable positions lost as operating grants fell.

But as noted, competitive funding does not substitute for baseline funding. Three- or five-year project money does not create permanent posts. That is why the simultaneous request to raise operating grants matters here.

Why a doubling can even be requested

There is a structural reason, and it is documented.

On July 30, 2026, the Cabinet reached an understanding on the "Basic Policy for FY2027 Budget Requests."¹¹ It opens:

For the FY2027 budget, based on the Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform 2026 (Cabinet decision of July 21, 2026), in order to implement with predictability measures that raise the potential growth rate through domestic investment, including crisis management investment and growth investment, a "Strong and Prosperous Japan" investment framework shall be created separately from ordinary expenditure.

The request rules differ for this framework alone:

For the "Strong and Prosperous Japan" investment framework, promote highly effective policies based on the Japan Growth Strategy, the Regional Future Strategy and others (...) without setting a request ceiling, requesting the necessary amounts appropriately, including item-only requests.

Ordinary expenditure must be requested within the previous year's initial budget, with additional requests up to 20% of that. Under those rules, a doubling could not be requested at all. The uncapped framework is what makes the number possible, and as shown above, KAKENHI's ordinary spending stayed flat while the increase went into the framework.

The same policy adds:

To enhance predictability and support continuous efforts, measures based on multi-year plans shall be the norm.

The fund conversion plan and the framework's design point the same way, away from spend-it-this-year.

For scale: the Finance Ministry's September 4 tally put total requests across ministries at 143.07 trillion yen, with 12.17 trillion of it in the framework.² MEXT's general-account request is 8.775 trillion yen, against an FY2026 budget of 5.881 trillion, with 2.183 trillion in the framework.¹ KAKENHI's 204.2 billion is one piece of that. Across all ministries, science and technology requests came to 10.9983 trillion yen by the Cabinet Office's count, up 73.7% on the FY2026 initial budget.¹²

The Japan Growth Strategy and Regional Future Strategy referenced here sit in the same package as the investment promotion tax measures under the amended Industrial Competitiveness Enhancement Act. This is not only about research budgets; it is part of a policy package aimed at lifting domestic investment overall. I have written separately about the Growth Strategy and the startup package and the Regional Future Strategy.

Who is saying what

People in different positions are saying different things about this request. I will lay out who said what, and where, without grading any of them.

On the government side, Prime Minister Takaichi told the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation on July 10 that in the FY2027 budget requests the government would "aim for a real doubling of research funding," use the "Strong and Prosperous Japan" investment framework, and work to secure the budget needed for the foundations of knowledge, including major expansions of KAKENHI and university operating grants (my translation).¹³ The Integrated Innovation Strategy 2026, adopted by the Cabinet on July 14, also commits to a major expansion of KAKENHI and to full fund conversion.¹ I read that strategy from a business angle in this piece.

At MEXT, then-minister Matsumoto explained on August 28 that the ministry had requested 455.2 billion yen, "roughly double the previous year's budget," to strengthen support for early-career and new-field research, international research and diverse academic research, and to advance full fund conversion. At the same press conference he said a budget is "never a goal but a means," that delivering results once it is approved is what counts, and that the ministry would keep working to prevent misuse of research funds.⁹ His successor, Seki, has carried the expansion policy forward, as noted above.⁴

As far as I can find, the Finance Ministry has not yet commented on KAKENHI specifically. What it has published is a view on the investment framework as a whole. A September 4 document says "what matters is not the amount of fiscal spending but its effect on economic growth," that plans must make clear who will do what, by when, and how, and that the ministry will check whether the case for support can be verified and whether each year's spending is realistic.³

On the researchers' side, the 2024 petition mentioned above calls for higher KAKENHI funding, pointing to the real decline in allocations.⁷ Parts of the request overlap with what that petition asks for.

Put side by side, the debate seems to be shifting away from "doubling, yes or no" toward how to show the effect of the 204.2 billion yen in the framework. Basic research takes a long time to produce results. What plan and indicators MEXT puts forward, and how the Finance Ministry assesses them, looks like the thing to watch through year-end.

Getting from here to certainty

What "not yet decided" means in practice, with dates. As of October 4, the first five rows are done.

When	What
July 14 – Sept 17	Call for KAKENHI projects starting in FY2027 (Kiban, Challenging Research, Early-Career Scientists), run before the budget is enacted14
July 30	Cabinet understanding on budget request rules; investment framework created11
August 28	MEXT publishes its request, including 455.2 billion yen for KAKENHI1
September 4	Finance Ministry publishes total requests of 143.07 trillion yen2
September 30	Fiscal System Council begins autumn sessions (agenda: fiscal overview and local finance)3
October – November	Sector-by-sector sessions; last year education and science came up on November 11
Early December	Council issues its recommendations; last year on December 2
Late December	Cabinet approves the government draft budget
January – March 2027	Diet deliberation; final once enacted within the fiscal year

One thing researchers can easily miss: the call for projects starting in FY2027 has already closed. JSPS accepted applications for Kiban (A, B, C), Challenging Research and Early-Career Scientists from July 14 to September 17. The call notice states that it was opened before the budget's enactment so review could start early, and that the funding sources and content may change depending on the budget.¹⁴ If the increase is approved, how it feeds into award numbers or allocations by category will only become clear once the draft budget is set. I have also not yet seen any announcement of when or how the new application tracks in the request would be opened.

Requests and final figures do not usually match. Reductions from request are the norm. Planning around "455.2 billion yen" would be unwise.

On the other hand, this request uses an uncapped framework, which is not the usual situation. With the government committed to lifting domestic investment, the usual trimming may not simply apply. Watch what the Finance Ministry raises at the council's education and science session, then wait for the December draft. That is the right posture.

Will universities and startups get closer?

Worth addressing, and worth separating carefully.

KAKENHI is competitive funding for basic research, not commercialization money. More KAKENHI does not directly produce more university spinouts. Commercialization is supported through separate schemes.

Indirect effects are plausible, though.

First, time freedom from fund conversion. Multi-year flexibility means researchers can settle into long efforts. Technology that survives commercialization rarely comes out of short projects.

Second, early-career support. University spinouts are largely driven by doctoral students, postdocs and junior faculty. Whether that layer can stay in research sets the size of the pool.

Third, international joint research. Ties to overseas institutions double as routes to overseas markets, and the new menu for sending young researchers abroad helps on that front.

What this does not supply is equally clear. Commercialization needs management talent, early capital, and clean handling of IP, separately from research money. Treating a KAKENHI increase as leading directly to industry-academia collaboration is a leap.

Directionally, though, I think it is sound. Pushing collaboration on a thin base does not increase output.

What to watch

Researchers and universities. MEXT's Research Promotion Bureau document now shows the direction for each category.¹ Amounts by category, though, only firm up with the December draft budget. Until then, it is safer not to rework research plans around the "doubling" headline. Meanwhile, confirming that the principal investigator and every co-investigator have registered their research integrity pledge is worth doing now.

Companies. If you are considering joint research with a Japanese university, fund conversion changes how your counterpart's budget behaves. The habit of rushing to sign contracts before fiscal year end may ease. Revisiting joint research timeframes once the scheme settles is worthwhile.

Startups. KAKENHI is not commercialization money, but your academic counterpart's circumstances may change. Easier multi-year planning on their side means easier multi-year collaboration.

On the calendar, the next two milestones are the Fiscal System Council's education and science session (mid-November last year) and the late-December draft budget. Once the draft is out, I want to check against the primary documents how KAKENHI's categories and the scope of fund conversion came through.

Closing thought

Writing this changed my own view of something. I had accepted the "KAKENHI was cut and research stalled" account without examining it.

The JSPS series shows the nominal KAKENHI total rising over the long run. What fell was operating grants, and that began with incorporation in FY2004. Rebuilding the table for this update, I also noticed that the initial budget had been flat for seven years.

The update taught me one more thing: between a headline and an official document sits the breakdown. Had I followed only the 455.2 billion yen figure, I would have missed that ordinary spending is flat and the increase is concentrated in the investment framework. With budgets, looking at which bucket the money sits in tells you more than the headline number.

The sense that conditions got harder is real. But misidentifying the cause misdirects the fix. Baseline funding and competitive funding are separate problems, and both need watching. That is what the data left me with.

The doubling request is a welcome move. It does not, by itself, solve the baseline funding problem, and that is worth keeping in view alongside it.

Wrapping up

• MEXT has requested 455.2 billion yen for KAKENHI in FY2027, about 1.84 times the FY2026 budget of 247.9 billion. Of that, 204.2 billion is in the investment framework; ordinary spending is roughly flat. Nothing is decided yet
• Adding the 30 billion yen FY2025 supplementary to the FY2026 budget gives 277.9 billion, against which the request is about 1.64 times. It is still well above the previous high of 303.1 billion in FY2023
• Content: expansion for new fields, international research, early-career researchers and the Kiban categories, plus full fund conversion extending to Kiban (A), Transformative Research Areas (A) and Specially Promoted Research
• Enabled by the uncapped investment framework from the July 30 Cabinet understanding. The Finance Ministry says it will judge the framework on effect rather than size and review plans down to who, what, when and how
• The primary data shows no cut to the nominal KAKENHI total. The initial budget was flat at around 237 billion yen from FY2019 to FY2025. Researcher groups point to a real decline per project
• What hurt universities was the decline in operating grants, roughly 1% a year since FY2004, about 147 billion yen (11.8%) over eleven years. MEXT is now requesting 1.2512 trillion yen
• The FY2027 call for proposals closed before the budget was set, so where any increase lands depends on the draft budget

The headline number draws the eye, but fund conversion still looks like the part that will actually bite. Where the total ends up in December matters, and so does whether full fund conversion survives into the draft budget.

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Footnotes

1. MEXT, "Key Items of the Research Promotion Bureau: FY2027 Science and Technology Budget Request" (August 2026, Japanese). https://www.mext.go.jp/content/20260825-ope_dev02-000051779-8.pdf See also "Key Points of the FY2027 MEXT Budget Request" (updated September 17, 2026, Japanese). https://www.mext.go.jp/content/20260917-ope_dev03-000051779_1.pdf ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

2. Ministry of Finance, "FY2027 General Account Budget Requests, including the 'Strong and Prosperous Japan' Investment Framework" (September 4, 2026, Japanese). https://www.mof.go.jp/policy/budget/budger_workflow/budget/fy2027/sy20260904.pdf ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Ministry of Finance, Fiscal System Council, Fiscal System Subcommittee (September 30, 2026), Document 1 "Fiscal Overview," which reproduces the ministry's September 4 view on budgeting for the investment framework (Japanese). https://www.mof.go.jp/about_mof/councils/fiscal_system_council/sub-of_fiscal_system/proceedings/material/zaiseia20260930/01.pdf Past session dates (education and science on November 11, 2025; recommendations on December 2, 2025) are listed on the subcommittee's proceedings page. https://www.mof.go.jp/about_mof/councils/fiscal_system_council/sub-of_fiscal_system/proceedings/index.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. MEXT, press conference transcript of Minister Yoshihiro Seki (September 18, 2026, Japanese). https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/daijin/detail/mext_00731.html Also September 29, 2026. https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/daijin/detail/mext_00733.html ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. JSPS, FY2027 KAKENHI Application Guidelines (Kiban (A, B, C), Challenging Research, Early-Career Scientists) (Japanese). https://www.jsps.go.jp/file/storage/kaken_kiban_2026_g_4978/r9_7_kobo.pdf ↩

6. Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, KAKENHI data: budget series (updated May 15, 2026). https://www.jsps.go.jp/j-grantsinaid/27_kdata/index.html Chart. https://www.jsps.go.jp/file/storage/kaken_27_kdata_g_4795/1-1_r8.pdf ↩

7. Seibutsu Kagaku Gakkai Rengo (a federation of biological science societies) and other federations of academic societies, petition calling for higher KAKENHI funding (2024, Japanese). https://seikaren.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/signature_site_20241024.pdf ↩ ↩²

8. MEXT, "Current Situation Surrounding Operating Grants" (National University Corporation Evaluation Committee, 80th plenary, Document IV, March 3, 2026). https://www.mext.go.jp/content/20260302-mxt_hojinka000047760_4.pdf ↩

9. MEXT, press conference transcript of Minister Yohei Matsumoto (August 28, 2026, Japanese). https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/daijin/detail/mext_00724.html ↩ ↩²

10. JSPS, notice on converting Transformative Research Areas (B) and Kiban (S) to funds in FY2026 (December 26, 2025, Japanese). https://www.jsps.go.jp/j-grantsinaid/06_jsps_info/2025/g_4223.html ↩

11. Ministry of Finance, "Basic Policy for FY2027 Budget Requests" (Cabinet understanding, July 30, 2026). https://www.mof.go.jp/policy/budget/budger_workflow/budget/fy2027/sy260730a.pdf ↩ ↩²

12. Cabinet Office, summary of Minister Kimi Onoda's press conference (September 4, 2026, Japanese). https://www.cao.go.jp/minister/2602_k_onoda/kaiken/20260904.html ↩

13. Prime Minister's Office of Japan, Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (July 10, 2026, Japanese). https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/105/actions/202607/10kagaku.html ↩

14. JSPS, notice of the FY2027 KAKENHI call for proposals (Kiban (A, B, C), Challenging Research, Early-Career Scientists) (July 14, 2026, Japanese). https://www.jsps.go.jp/file/storage/kaken_kiban_2026_g_4978/r9_7_kobotsuchi.pdf ↩ ↩²