The education ministry is expected to send a new notice that allows high school students to take part in political activities under certain conditions to each prefecture's board of education and other parties concerned by the end of this month. The move is reasonable since the minimum voting age has been lowered from 20 to 18 and some 2.4 million 18- and 19-year-olds will join the nation's electorate beginning with the Upper House election next summer.

In a related move, the education ministry and the internal affairs ministry have jointly disclosed supplementary material designed to help high school students learn about politics and elections in concrete terms. The government plans to distribute 3.7 million copies of the material to high school students for use in civics and other classes by December.

It is hoped that the notice and the supplementary material will facilitate young people's participation in the political process in a healthy manner, since a low voter turnout for people in their 20s has been a problem for decades, and it has been said that Japanese high schools take up political issues in classes less frequently than in other countries. In the Lower House election last December, turnout for people in their 20s was 32.6 percent and that for people in their 30s 42.1 percent — much lower than the 68.3 percent among voters in their 60s.