approximately 87% of gymnasiums, and approximately 26% of swimming pools are open to local inhabitants.

But among school facilities open to local inhabitants, there are some that do not fully meet local needs: for example, where facilities are not regularly available, or where the procedures for using these facilities are very complicated, or where information on how to apply to use them is not communicated well to the local people. It is therefore important to change their style of use from an “open to the public” style (simply providing a space) to “shared use” between the school and the local community and to actively encourage local people to use them to fulfill their own needs.

In addition to school physical education facilities and public sports facilities, private sports facilities also play a significant role as a place where local inhabitants can do sports activities on a daily basis. To make it effective to use welfare facilities owned by companies to promote sports in the locality, tax incentives are provided to companies which let local people use their sports facilities free of charge for at least 800 hours a year or at least 240 days a year.

## 3 Training and Securing Sports Instructors

According to the Public Opinion Poll on Fitness and Sports, people consider the provision of sports instructors to be one of the most important things that can be done by the national and local governments to promote sport.

To cover the diverse and complex range of sports activities people engage in, sports instructors need to have a wide range of knowledge and expertise. Accordingly, the national and local governments as well as sports organizations are implementing a range of different projects to secure and train expert sports instructors. The Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology awards certification to projects to develop sports instructors conducted by sports organizations if they meet certain criteria and are deemed desirable. Under the certification system, as many as 119,000 who are specialized in 82 sports are qualified as sports instructors as of October 2004. The certification system, however, will be abolished by FY2005 following the review of the administration’s involvement with public corporations. Even after it has been abolished, sports organizations will continue to implement projects to develop instructors.

There are approximately 60,000 gymnastics instruction officer, who play a role as local sports facilitators, assigned by municipalities throughout the country (for FY2004). From now on, they are expected to play an additional role as coordinators for local sports activities by actively getting involved in developing and increasing the number of comprehensive community sports clubs.

## 4 Implementing Lifelong Sports Promotion Projects

Various lifelong sports promotion projects are being implemented to enable people to take part in the sport of their choice as part of their daily activities. MEXT is conducting the following projects.

## (1) National Sports Recreation Festival

Middle-aged and older people tend to spend less time involved in sports activities due to their busy work schedules. To support these people in enriching their social lives, it is important that they build healthy lifestyles and they should be encouraged to take the initiative in making sports activities part of their everyday lives.

To this end, MEXT has been holding the National Sports Recreation Festival since FY 1988 to provide people with an opportunity to freely enjoy sports recreation activities and to let sport lovers develop lasting exchanges with each other across the generations. This festival is composed of a range of events, including ground golf, soft volleyball, indiaca, and other sports events, opportunities to experience new types of sport, and symposiums. A large number of people participate in the festival from all over the country every year, making it one of Japan’s most popular lifelong sports promotion festivals.

The 17th National Sports recreation Festival was held from October 2 to 5, 2004 at several sites in Fukui, with the motto “sports recreation can bring happiness to everyone.” As many as 19,000 athletes participated in the festival from 47 prefectures in Japan. Also, some athletes from South Korea participated in the