2019 Rugby World Cup and nearby Shikoku Island. No city in the latter region were venues for games in the 2002 FIFA World Cup, but Hiroshima did host games in the 2006 FIBA World Championship. On 17 July 2015, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that plans to build the new National Stadium would be scrapped and rebid on amid public discontent over the stadium's building costs. As a result, the new stadium would not be ready until the 2020 Summer Olympics. World Rugby released a statement saying that they were extremely disappointed by the announcement "despite repeated assurances to contrary from the Japan
Kozo Yamamoto appointed his ministerships in 2016. Yamamoto is a known advocate of reflation policies, and is one of the first to argue for using monetary easing tools to overcome deflation in Japan. As a longtime critic of the Bank of Japan's monetary tightening policies in the Diet, he chaired multiple study groups on monetary policy when the LDP was out of power, and appealed to Shinzo Abe the need for quantitative easing. Yamamoto proposed the consumption tax increase of April 2014 to Abe Shinzo, and advised swift action. He also advocated for basic allowances and various public-works projects for low-income earners