Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze the historical process by which Japanese bioethics commissions developed their policy-making to build consensus regarding bioethical issues. The method used in this study consists of historical research and semi-structured interviews of experts. In addition, the content analysis of deliberation in national commissions resorts to Benjamin's four forms of agreement: complete consensus, overlapping consensus, compromise, and majority rule. The finding is that the Japanese bioethics commissions were transformed from closed, ad-hoc committees into opened, standing committees, which focused on specific issues of advanced technologies rather than general principles of bioethics. The bioethics commissions did not built complete consensus because of the diversity of the committee members, but instead tended to reach majority rule, compromise, and overlapping consensus, depending upon each specific issue.
