The Postponement Rate: How 870 Japanese Municipal Councils Use "We Will Consider It"
A study of 18.97 million council speeches from 870 Japanese municipalities measures how often deliberation responses use "kentou-shimasu" (we will consider it) and related deferral expressions. The nationwide weighted average is 3.58%, but the gap between prefectures reaches 10.9-fold — from Tottori Prefecture at 0.96% to Toyama Prefecture at 10.46%. This report presents the postponement rate not as a verdict on municipal performance, but as a single, observable fact about how Japanese local councils respond to questions.
1. What Was Measured
Machikarte tabulated 18,970,333 council speeches from the deliberation minutes of 870Japanese municipalities and measured how often each speech contains conclusion-deferring expressions such as “kentou-shimasu” (検討します — “we will consider it”), “kentou-shite-mairimasu” (検討してまいります — “we will consider this carefully going forward”), and “kentou-chuu” (検討中 — “under consideration”). The resulting share is reported here as the postponement rate (kentou-bound expressions in council deliberation responses). It represents the mechanically detectable frequency of “kentou” expressions in council speech — speaker intent and contextual variants (past tense, negative form, future form, quotation) are not disentangled. Implementation limits are addressed in §5.
A high postponement rate does not necessarily mean “poor municipal governance.” It can signal a deliberate posture of handling weighty matters with care, or it can reflect a tendency to defer responses to residents. This report does not pronounce judgment on whether high or low values are better; it presents the fact that the gap between prefectures reaches as much as 10.9-fold.
2. Nationwide Headline Indicators
| Municipalities in sample | 870 municipalities |
|---|---|
| Total recorded speeches | 18,970,333 |
| Speeches containing kentou-bound expressions | 679,813 |
| National weighted average (by speech count) | 3.58% |
| Simple average across municipalities | 3.72% |
| Median (municipality level) | 3.01% |
| Interquartile range (P25–P75, municipality level) | 1.66% – 4.87% |
| Maximum / Minimum (municipality level) | 21.07% / 0% |
| Maximum / Minimum (prefecture level) | 10.46% / 0.96% |
Note: spec_version v1-tier1-500threshold. Sample restricted to municipalities with at least 500 recorded speeches.
3. Prefecture-Level Ranking
Municipal postponement rates were weighted by speech count and aggregated to the prefecture level. The ranking below indicates the degree to which councils within each prefecture employ kentou-bound expressions.
Top 5 prefectures by postponement rate
| Rank | Prefecture | Postponement rate | Councils in sample | Total speeches |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Toyama Prefecture | 10.46% | 4 | 38,810 |
| 2 | Kagawa Prefecture | 9.41% | 7 | 94,321 |
| 3 | Yamanashi Prefecture | 6.64% | 15 | 141,770 |
| 4 | Akita Prefecture | 5.72% | 14 | 110,755 |
| 5 | Okayama Prefecture | 5.70% | 21 | 409,638 |
Bottom 5 prefectures by postponement rate
| Rank | Prefecture | Postponement rate | Councils in sample | Total speeches |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tottori Prefecture | 0.96% | 6 | 64,344 |
| 2 | Nagasaki Prefecture | 1.71% | 15 | 314,439 |
| 3 | Fukuoka Prefecture | 1.93% | 33 | 411,910 |
| 4 | Kumamoto Prefecture | 1.94% | 17 | 119,297 |
| 5 | Saga Prefecture | 1.96% | 14 | 220,094 |
Detailed data for all 47 prefectures and 870 municipalities is available in the National Council Analytics dashboard. Bilingual coverage of the postponement-rate ranking is planned for a forthcoming release.
4. How to Read the Indicator
A high postponement rate does not automatically mean “the municipality is stagnating.” The following readings are equally plausible:
- A signal of careful deliberation: for matters requiring expert review, councils may decline to commit to immediate answers.
- A culture that respects collegial decision-making: questions are routinely referred to committees or expert subcommittees before being resolved.
- De facto deferral: residents' and council members' questions are pushed into “we will consider it,” postponing the decision.
Conversely, a low postponement rate is not uniformly favorable either:
- A working culture of immediate decisions: councils answer questions with concrete positions rather than reaching for kentou-bound phrasing.
- Low deliberation density itself: questions and proposals are scarce, so few matters reach a stage where deferral expressions become relevant.
- Local editorial conventions for minutes: regional differences in how council minutes are summarized may strip kentou-bound expressions from the transcript.
The postponement rate is offered as one observable fact about the frequency with which “kentou” is invoked in council deliberation, not as a definitive verdict on municipal performance. Readers are encouraged to evaluate the figure for their own municipality alongside peer municipalities of similar size, neighboring localities, and other indicators.
5. Data Limitations
- The indicator measures the frequency with which the literal string “kentou” (and its conjugated forms) appears in speech text. Contextual variants (e.g. past-tense reports such as “we have already considered this and concluded…”, negations, quotations) are not disentangled. False-positive risk remains within the calibration bounds of spec_version v1-tier1-500threshold.
- The sample is restricted to municipalities with at least 500 recorded speeches. Municipalities with sparse data (those where electronic minutes coverage lags, including some town- and village-level councils) are excluded.
- Minutes coverage windows differ across municipalities — some councils have long historical runs while others have only a few years of digitized minutes. Details on the aggregation window will be documented in /en/methodology (forthcoming).
- Besides “kentou,” other expressions in Japanese council language carry similar deferral semantics (e.g. “kenkyuu-shimasu” — “we will study this,” “seisa-suru” — “we will examine carefully,” or “kongo-no-kadai” — “a matter for future consideration”). The current version restricts the analysis to kentou-bound expressions; subsequent versions are planned to broaden the lexicon.
- A minor discrepancy may exist between the national municipality total (870 municipalities) and the prefecture-aggregated council count (867 councils). This stems from the municipality/council mapping (e.g. designated-city wards) at the time of aggregation for spec_version v1-tier1-500threshold. It does not affect the interpretation of ratios but should be noted for any strict count reconciliation; see the methodology page for details.
Source: Machikarte (Institute for Social Vision and Design — ISVD) / spec_version v1-tier1-500threshold