Japan Sets Out First Comprehensive AI Basic Plan to Become 'Most AI-Friendly Country in the World'

Japan has approved its first Artificial Intelligence Basic Plan under the 2025 AI Act, setting a national course to promote 'trustworthy AI' and position the country as the world's most AI-friendly environment for AI development and use. The plan combines broad adoption targets, governance structures, and annual reviews in an attempt to close Japan’s competitiveness gap while avoiding heavy-handed regulation.

Japan Pivots to “Trustworthy AI” With First National Basic Plan

TOKYO — Japan has approved its first Artificial Intelligence Basic Plan, a cabinet-level strategy that aims to make the country “the most AI-friendly in the world” while centering policy on the idea of “trustworthy AI.” The plan is issued under the Act on Promotion of Research and Development, and Utilization of AI-related Technology (Act No. 53 of 2025), which requires the government to set out mid- to long-term measures for AI research, deployment, and risk management.

The Basic Plan responds to a growing sense in Tokyo that Japan has fallen behind both major economies and some smaller states in AI investment, deployment, and infrastructure. It acknowledges that AI is already a core factor in industrial competitiveness and national security, yet notes that AI use in Japanese workplaces and daily life remains limited compared with peers. Policymakers position the plan as a strategic offensive to move from cautious experimentation toward broad use and in-house development of AI systems tailored to Japanese data and needs.

At the heart of the strategy is a push to diffuse “trustworthy AI” across the economy by building systems that are transparent, fair, and safe enough to win public confidence while still supporting rapid innovation. The government frames AI as a dual-use technology that can raise productivity, help tackle labor shortages, and support health care, disaster response, and defense, provided technical and social risks are managed in parallel. Those risks include hallucinations, bias, privacy violations, disinformation, cyberattacks, and over-reliance on automated systems, all of which the plan treats as moving targets as the technology evolves.

To steer implementation, the Artificial Intelligence Strategy Headquarters sits in the Cabinet Office, led by the Prime Minister and including all ministers, and began operating on 1 September 2025. The Basic Plan tasks this body with tracking progress, adjusting measures, and coordinating with a Council for the Promotion of Artificial Intelligence Strategy and an Expert Panel on AI Strategy that can review specific themes in more depth. The government commits to revise the plan in principle once a year to reflect new technologies and conditions, an approach that several commentators describe as agile governance rather than rigid rule-making.

Substantively, the plan organizes policy around four pillars: accelerating AI use in workplaces and public services, strengthening domestic AI development capabilities including foundation models and physical AI for robotics, advancing governance tools to enhance trust, and backing long-term social transformation as people and AI systems work together. It stresses the need to exploit Japan’s existing strengths in high-quality industrial, medical, and research data and to link AI efforts to wider science, technology, and digital policy frameworks.

The Basic Plan itself does not set a single headline budget figure, and public documents so far provide few hard numerical targets for model performance or deployment volumes, beyond broad goals to expand adoption and build domestic capabilities. Analysts note that more specific funding allocations and milestones will depend on later decisions in related science, innovation, and digital society plans, as well as on how ministries translate the Basic Plan into sectoral projects. For now, Japan’s approach to AI regulation in 2025 seeks to close its competitiveness gap without mirroring the more prescriptive regimes emerging elsewhere.