Challenges in Identifying Issues Through Comparative Analysis of Local Assembly Minutes from All Municipalities in Tokachi, Hokkaido

Abstract

This study aims to uncover cross-regional issues by collecting and comparatively analyzing the local assembly minutes made public by 18 of the 19 municipalities within Hokkaido’s Tokachi Subprefecture. First, we catalogued the number of regular and extraordinary sessions and the corresponding count of publicly released files for each municipality, thereby quantifying their information-disclosure practices and the intensity of legislative activity. Next, using wildlife damage as a case study, we applied natural-language processing to extract the number of animal references and compared their frequencies across municipalities in deliberations on agenda items and petitions.