Brendan F.D. Barrett - Ecological-Modernisation-and-Japan

Ecological Modernization and Japan
In the 1990s, Japan gradually began to turn green and started to experiment with
more participatory forms of environmental governance. Ecological Modernization
and Japan explores this transformation and looks at Japan as a case for ecological
modernization while contextualizing the discussion within its unique history and
recent discussions about globalization and sustainability. It makes a significant
contribution to the ecological modernization debate by unpacking the Japanese
environmental experience.
Leading scholars in the field from Japan, the USA and the UK examine existing
pressures on, and changes to, domestic environmental management structures. In
addition, the book explores tensions that have emerged in relation to, and discourses
that surround, the contemporary form of environmental governance in Japan. This
implies the need for Japan to respond to global policy initiatives in the post-
Johannesburg Summit era while, at the same time, incorporating concerns about the
importance of promoting new indigenous approaches to policy-making that are based
more firmly on the cultural characteristics of the Japanese.
Brendan Barrett is an Academic Programme Officer at the United Nations

University, Japan. He is the co-author of Environmental Policy and Impact
Assessment in Japan (1991) and co-editor of Human Development and the
Environment (2001).
Ecological Modernization
and Japan
Edited by
Brendan F.D.Barrett
LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2005 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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© 2005 Brendan F.D.Barrett
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To my wonderful wife and children Chizu, Erin and
Rian
Contents
List of figures vii

List of tables viii
List of contributors ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
List of abbreviations xv
PART 1
Background 1
1 Ecological modernization and Japan 3
BRENDAN F.D. BARRETT AND DANA R. FISHER
2 Environmental discourses in a developmental state 13
BRENDAN F.D. BARRETT
PART 2
Policies, actors and institutions 25
3 Building a national environmental regime 27
4 Foundations of local environmental governance 49
BRENDAN F.D. BARRETT AND MIKOTO USUI
5 The transformation of social movements and civil society 67
JEFFREY BROADBENT AND BRENDAN F.D. BARRETT
6 Environmental values and ecological modernization 89
PART 3
Issues and responses 109
7 Transformation of the development process 111
vi
8 Ecologically modern industrialization 129

BRENDAN F.D.BARRETT AND ANDREA REVELL
9 Japan in the greenhouse—the challenge of addressing rising 149
emissions
MIRANDA A.SCHREURS
10 Conclusions 167
BRENDAN F.D.BARRETT
Bibliography 181
Index 211
Figures
2.1 Internalization of environmental constraints 17

5.1 Increase in post-materialist values in Japan, 1981–1997 84
6.1 Typology of environmental knowledge orientations 92
6.2 Willingness to accept tax increases for environmental protection purposes 96
6.3 Willingness to accept price increases for environmental protection 96
purposes
6.4 Economy versus environment 98
6.5 Japanese views on science, nature and the environment (ISSP 1992) 99
6.6 Comparison of the environmental values from the ISSP and GOES 99
6.7 Analysis of NIES data using Cohen’s environmental knowledge 101
orientations
6.8 Environmental knowledge orientations of youth in Asia-Pacific 105
7.1 Procedures for the Aichi Expo 2005 EIA 124
8.1 Changes in eco-efficiencies for final energy consumption, CO2 emissions 133
and domestic waste
8.2 Eco-efficiency rates for other air pollutants 134
9.1 Per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the five EM states from the 159
consumption and flaring of fossil fuels, 1980–2000
Tables
2.1 Evolution of environmental related discourses in Japan 16

3.1 Comparison of OECD reviews of Japan’s environmental performance 32
3.2 Major environmental legislation, 1990–2003 32
4.1 Main features of cooperative management regimes 51
4.2 Environmental planning experience in four localities 58
5.1 Chronological comparison of environmental movements in Japan 71
6.1 International surveys on environmental attitudes in Japan 93
6.2 Percentage correct on knowledge of environmental science items among 94
various groups in Japan
6.3 Distribution of Japanese public attitudes on items related to the NEP 95
6.4 Regression analysis of value and behaviour—Japan and the Netherlands 102
6.5 Comparison of ISSP 2000 results for ecologically modern states 103
7.1 Chronology of the enactment and implementation of the EIA Law, 119
1994–1999
10.1 Ecological footprints for ecologically modern countries 171
Contributors
Brendan F.D.Barrett is an Academic Programme Officer at the United Nations

University, Japan. He is the co-author of Environmental Policy and Impact
Assessment in Japan (Routledge 1991) and co-editor of Human Development and
the Environment (UNU Press 2001). He has written extensively on Japanese
approaches to impact assessment, integrated environmental management, Local
Agenda 21 and decentralization. He received a B.Sc. in Town and Country
Planning from Heriot-Watt University (1983) and his Ph.D. from Oxford Brookes
University (1997).
Jeffrey Broadbent received his B.A. in Religious Studies—Buddhism from the

University of California at Berkeley (1974), an MA in Regional Studies—Japan
from Harvard University (1975) and the Ph.D. in Sociology also from Harvard
University (1982). He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of
Sociology, University of Minnesota. The main theme of his research has been the
effects of social networks on environmental and labour politics and protest
movements in Japan. His book Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of
Power and Protest (Cambridge 1998) won two awards.
Dana R.Fisher is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at

Columbia University. Her research falls at the nexus of political and
environmental sociology. She has written a number of articles on the theory of
ecological modernization. Presently, she is working on projects that explore the
ways that civil society participates in political processes on the local, national and
international levels. She is the author of National Governance and the Global
Climate Change Regime (Rowman & Littiefield Publishers 2004). She holds an
A.B. from Princeton University, and a Master’s in Science and Ph.D. from the
Department of Sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Andrea Revell is a Researcher at the Small Business Research Centre, Kingston

University, London. She has an M.Sc. in environmental management and an
industry background in qualitative market research. Recent works include an
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded qualitative study exploring
processes of ecological modernization amongst small and medium-sized firms in
x CONTRIBUTORS
the UK, and a similar study of ecological modernization within the Japanese small
firm sector.
Miranda A.Schreurs is Associate Professor in the Department of Government

and Politics, University of Maryland. She received her Ph.D. from the University
of Michigan (1996). Schreurs is author of Environmental Politics in Japan,
Germany, and the United States (Cambridge University Press 2002) and co-editor
of Ecological Security in Northeast Asia (Yonsei University Press 1998) and of The
Internationalization of Environmental Protection (Cambridge University Press
1997). She currently has a volume, co-edited with In-taek Hyun, under review that
is tentatively entitled The Environmental Dimension of Asian Security: Conflict
and Cooperation in Energy, Resources, and Pollution.
Mikoto Usui has taught at a number of Japanese universities including the

Graduate School of Management and Public Policy Studies at the Tsukuba
University, the Graduate School of Media and Governance at Keio University and
the Graduate School of International Business and Cultural Studies, Shukutoku
University. His areas of specialization include international development,
international negotiation and international political economy. He has extensive
experience working in the international agencies including UNIDO, the OECD and
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, New York.
Preface
At the end of the 1980s, when Riki Therivel and I were working on our book on
environmental policy and impact assessment in Japan, we were concerned that
hegemony of interests groups favouring economic development and the
powerlessness of those favouring environmental protection would continue to
undermine measures to integrate meaningfully environmental policies into the
administrative planning process in Japan. Those were the days when we would
regularly come across newspaper articles and academic papers describing Japan as an
environmental renegade in relation to the destruction of tropical rainforests and the
exploitation of endangered species. Japan’s bubble economy was close to bursting
point and new major infrastructure projects, golf courses and resorts were springing
up across the nation.
Everything changed in the 1990s and we have seen a marked shift in the direction
of Japanese environmental policy with new legislation and administrative reforms.
Consequently, the traditional Japanese approaches to environmental management
have been both challenged and transfigured in response to internal pressures (e.g.
public concern over complex pollution issues such as dioxin and environmental
hormones) and trans-national demands (e.g. the need to respond to global climate
change). This on-going process of change has been protracted and contentious;
dramatic in some areas while dormant and contested in others. Nevertheless,
significant improvements in some aspects of the nation’s environmental performance
have attracted international attention and have led leading academics to categorize
Japan as a member of a group of five ecologically modernized societies which also
includes Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Commenting on the case
of Japan, various researchers mention that the country stands out largely due to the
energy efficiency of its economy. Others consider that Japan has made significant
improvements in recent years and suggest that it offers a different path for the
developing world based on the adoption of environmental technologies as well as
sophisticated control pollution and energy efficiency measures. However, some
commentators are less convinced and argue, for instance, that Japan has witnessed only
a relatively minor decoupling of economic output and environmental impact, with
gains in environmental efficiency being offset by an expansion of output.
Here we can clearly distinguish two conflicting interpretations of Japan’s
environmental performance. In this volume, we will use ecological modernization as
an analytical tool to examine recent efforts in Japan to better integrate environmental
xii PREFACE
and economic concerns. This theory, which has been the source of significant dispute
within the environmental social sciences about the relationship between
modernization and environmental quality, focuses on the feasibility of attaining
environmental improvements through the transformation of production and
consumption patterns. Put simply, ecological modernization looks at how
contemporary societies deal with environmental issues by concentrating on reforms of
social practices and institutional changes. In recent years, many countries around the
world have been analysed for their level of ecological modernization and leading
social thinkers have discussed the relevance of this theoretical approach. Ironically,
although Japan has been described as one of the best examples of an ecologically
modernized society, to date, no comprehensive studies have focused on the
applicability of the theory of ecological modernization to Japanese experience.
As such, this volume makes a significant contribution to the ecological
modernization debate by unpacking the Japanese environmental experience. In
particular, the volume tests the explanatory power of this theory of the society-
environment relationships in the context of the recent evolution of Japanese
environmental management at the national and local level. It examines existing
pressures on, and changes to, domestic environmental administrative structures. In
addition, the volume explores tensions that have emerged in relation to, and
discourses that surround, the contemporary form of environmental governance in
Japan. This implies the need for Japan to respond to global policy initiatives in the
post Johannesburg Summit era while at the same time incorporating concerns about
the importance of promoting new home-grown approaches to policy-making more
firmly based on the distinct cultural, geographic and environmental characteristics.
Acknowledgments
As with any major endeavour, this book would not have been possible without the
support and guidance of many good friends and colleagues. In particular, I would like
to thank Dana Fisher and Sombo Yamamura. Without their inspiration I would never
have started working on this book. I would like to express my gratitude to Jeffrey
Broadbent, Dana Fisher, Andrea Revell, Miranda Schreurs and Mikoto Usui for their
contributions and deep insights on both ecological modernization and on the
Japanese approach to the environmental management. I also appreciate the
supportive comments received on some of the draft chapters by John Dryzek, Arthur
Mol, Andrew Gouldson, Awais Piracha, Grant Boyle, Eric Williams and Yasuhiko
Hotta.
Sections of Chapter 1 are adapted from D.R.Fisher and W.R.Freudenburg (2001)
‘Ecological Modernization and Its Critics’, Society and Natural Resources, Vol. 14,
No. 8:701–709. Permission was granted by Taylor & Francis to reproduce this
material. Chapter 4 is partially based on an article by B.F.D.Barrett and M.Usui
(2002) ‘Local Agenda 21 in Japan: Transforming Local Environmental Governance’,
in Local Environment, Vol. 7, No. 1:46–67. The journal’s web site is http://
www.tandf.co.uk/journals. Again, I thank Taylor & Francis for giving permission to
reproduce part of this paper. Chapter 5 extensively develops the ideas presented by
Jeffrey Broadbent and first published in U.Desai (2002) Environmental Politics and
Policy in Industrialized Countries from Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
I would like to thank MIT Press for kindly providing permission to utilize this
material. Chapter 6 draws on a paper by B.F.D.Barrett, A.Kuroda and K. Miyamoto
(2002) ‘Ecological Modernisation, Environmental Knowledge and Societal Change:
Attitudes and Behaviour of Young People in Japan’, International Research in
Geographical and Environmental Education, Vol. 11, No. 3:237–261. Permission to
reproduce parts of this article was provided by Professor John Lidstone, co-editor of
the IRGEE.
I would also like to thank Professor Harutoshi Funbashi of Hosei University, Japan
for kindly providing permission to rework Figure 2.1, Professor Wilhelm Vosse for
the data in 6.5 and the Ministry of the Environment of Japan for granting permission
to use Figures 8.1 and 8.2.
I am thankful for the invaluable advice, assistance and guidance offered by
Katsunori Suzuki and Yuko Doi of the Ministry of Environment, Setsuo Iuchi of the
Ministry for Economy, Trade and Industry, Kiyohiko Hayashi, Motonari Umakoshi
xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
and Yasunari Shigemoto of the Aichi Expo Association, Ms Midori Aoyagi-Usui

(National Institute for Environmental Studies), Hiroshi Ohta (Aoyama Gakuin
University) and Fumikazu Yoshida (Hokkaido University), Atsushi Kuroda (Iwate
Prefectural Government), Kaoru Miyamoto (Intellectual Property Bank), Changki
Kwon (Institute for Global Environmental Strategies), Michie Kishigami (ICLEI
Japan), Seiko Yamazaki (Dentsu Institute), Michael Danaher (Central Queensland
University) and Hisayoshi Mitsuda (Bukkyo University).
Work on this book has been supported by the United Nations University and I would
like to thank Professor A.H.Zakri, Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies, who
allowed me to initiate the project and Rector Hans van Ginkel who supported my
work, gave me valuable insights and provided me the opportunity to bring the
manuscript to completion.
Last but not least, I would like to express my thanks to Sian Mills at Frank Cass
for commissioning the manuscript and especially to Stephanie Rogers, editor of
Asian Studies at Routledge, who took over the role at a late stage and who did a
brilliant job in providing help, guidance and support.
Abbreviations
BIE Bureau International des Expositions

CCEPC Central Council for Environmental Pollution Control
CEC Central Environment Council
CMR cooperative management regime
CO carbon monoxide
CO2 carbon dioxide
COD chemical oxygen demand
COLGEI Coalition of Local Governments for Environmental Initiatives
COP Conference of the Parties (signatories to the FCCC)
CRG Comprehensive Research Group on Environmental Impact
Assessment
DIVS Dentsu International Values Survey
DP Democratic Party of Japan
EBL Environment Basic Law
EBP Environment Basic Plan
EIA Environmental Impact Assessment
EIS Environmental Impact Statement
EM ecological modernization
EMS environmental management systems
EU European Union
FCCC Framework Convention on Climate Change
FEO Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren)
GDP gross domestic product
GEF Global Environment Forum
GEOS Global Environment Survey
HC hydrocarbons
ICLEI International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives
ISO International Organization for Standardization
xvi ABBREVIATIONS
ISSP International Social Survey Programme

JBIC Japan Bank for International Cooperation
JCP Japan Communist Party
JEA Japan Environment Agency
JEC Japan Environmental Corporation (successor to PCSC; in April
2004, JEC was reorganized and divided between a number of new
agencies including the Environmental Restoration and
Conservation Agency of Japan (ERCA) and the Japan
Environmental Safety Corporation (JESCO))
JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency
JSP Japan Socialist Party
LA21 Local Agenda 21
LDP Liberal Democratic Party
LOE litres of oil equivalent
MAFF Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
METI Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (formerly MITI)
MHW Ministry of Health and Welfare
MITI Ministry of International Trade and Industry (now METI)
MLIT Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport
MoC Ministry of Construction
MoE Ministry of the Environment
MoF Ministry of Finance
MoFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs
MoT Ministry of Transport
NACS-J Nature Conservation Society of Japan
NCC Nature Conservation Council
NEP new environmental paradigm
NET Network Movement
NGO non-government organization
NHK Nippon Hyoso Kyoka—Japan Broadcasting Corporation
NIES National Institute for Environmental Studies
NK New Komeito (Clean Government Party)
NMVOCs non-methane volatile organic compounds
NOx nitrogen oxide
NPO not for profit organization
ODA Official Development Assistance
OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
OPEC Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries
ABBREVIATIONS xvii
PCA Pollution Control Agreement

PCB polychlorinated biphenyl
PCSC Pollution Control Service Corporation
POS political opportunities structure
PP Pollution Prevention
PPP polluter pays principle
RPS renewable portfolio standards
SD sustainable development
SEA Strategic Environmental Assessment
SOx sulphur oxide
TOE tons of oil equivalent
ToP treadmill of production
UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
UNU United Nations University
US United States
WBCSD World Business Council for Sustainable Development
WSSD World Summit on Sustainable Development
WVS World Values Survey
xviii
Part 1
Background
2
1
Ecological modernization and Japan1
Brendan F.D.Barrett and Dana R.Fisher
There is some empirical evidence that such developmental states [as

Japan] with strong links with society are not only able to pursue a
successful industrialization path or transform traditional industrialization
patterns to fulfill the requirements of reflexive modernization…they also
have a good basis for effectively and rather quickly reforming
industrialization patterns into more environmentally sound directions.
(Mol 2001b: 132)
Ecological modernization has come to be known as one of the most promising ways
to explain the potential for a societal shift to a less wasteful form of interaction
between humans and the natural environment (but see Blüdhorn 2000; Pellow et al
2000). The theory, which has brought about significant, and at times heated, debate
within the social sciences (and particularly within the environmental sociology and
political science communities), deals with the practicability of attaining
environmental improvements through transformation of production and consumption
patterns. Although the theory has recently been applied to all types of nation-states (e.g.
Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000; Mol 2001b), it has been mostly used when examining
transformations in society—environment relationships in industrial democracies
(Weale 1992; Hajer 1995; Mol 1995; Dryzek 1997; Young 2000). As part of these
transformations, many scholars have highlighted the role played by the emergence of
new, diverse coalitions and the way that they work to assure the political viability of
environmental protection measures (e.g. Hajer 1995; Cohen 1997).
This volume builds on existing research undertaken in Europe and elsewhere by
looking deeply at the level and extent of ecological modernization in Japan. There are
a number of reasons why Japan represents an interesting case study. First, it is
important to recall that Japan is the first industrialized democracy in the non-Western
world (Ishida and Krauss 1999), with a post-industrial economy (Martin and
Stronach 1992). Second, it is the world’s second largest economy and constitutes one
of the world’s most affluent and sophisticated consumer and industrial markets (IMF
2003). Third, Japan’s history of post-war economic growth and the associated
‘pollution debacle’ has been well documented (Broadbent 1998, 2002a) and its
impact on the global environment is considered to be enormous (Schreurs 2002). In
4 BRENDAN F.D.BARRETT AND DANA R.FISHER
the past, moreover, Japan has also been described as a pioneer with regard to the
development of innovative environmental policy measures, particularly in the 1970s
(Jänicke 2000), as an ecological front-runner (Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000) and
environmental leader (Schreurs 2002).2 Further, the recent improvements in Japan’s
overall environmental performance are beginning to receive some attention outside
of the country (see OECD 2002; Scruggs 2003) and this volume builds upon these
generally positive appraisals using ecological modernization as the main analytical
framework.
The pages that follow are broken down into three sections. First, the literature on
the theory of ecological modernization is discussed. Next, we briefly review those
works that have connected the theory to Japan in order to contextualize our project
within the relevant literature. Finally, we outline the contents of the study that
follows.
The theory of ecological modernization

Ecological modernization was presented in the German language by Joseph Huber
(1985, 1991). With the publication of a modified version of the theory in English by
Spaargaren and Mol in 1992, it has been embraced by a number of scholars—most of
them environmental sociologists and/or political scientists—around the world (see
e.g. Simonis 1989; Spaargaren and Mol 1992; Weale 1992; Mol and Spaargaren
1993; Hajer 1995; Mol 1995; Christoff 1996; Jänicke et al 1996; Dryzek 1997;
Gouldson and Murphy 1997; Mol 1997; Spaargaren 1997; Giddens 1998; Mol 1999;
Blüdhorn 2000; Buttel 2000a, 2000b; Cohen 2000; Leroy and van Tatenhove 2000;
Mol 2000a, 2000b; Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000; Mol and Spaargaren 2000; Pellow et
al 2000; Spaargaren 2000a; Spaargaren 2000a; Spaargaren and van Vliet 2000;
Young 2000; Fisher and Freudenburg 2001; Mol 2001b; Fisher 2002; Dryzek et al
2003; Eckersley 2004). To date, however, the theory has been interpreted in many
conflicting ways. The discussion in this chapter, accordingly, focuses on the work
that has attempted to clarify key issues, much of which has been written by the most
prolific supporters of the theory itself: Arthur Mol and Gert Spaargaren.
In its original form, the theory of ecological modernization presents a complex
interpretation of post-industrial society (for a detailed description, see Mol 1997).
More specifically, there are two main components of ecological modernization that
distinguish it from most past work on society-environment relationships. First, the
theory explicitly describes environmental improvements as being economically
feasible; indeed, entrepreneurial agents and economic/market dynamics are seen as
playing leading roles in bringing about needed ecological changes. Second, in the
context of the expectation for continued economic development, ecological
modernization depicts the emergence of coalitions of political actors promoting the
political feasibility of environmental protection. Within ecological modernization
theory, these two components are associated with the growing independence (or
loosening of the restraints) of the ecological sphere from the political and economic
spheres in state and industrial policy-making (Spaargaren and Mol 1992; Mol 1995,
2001b).
ECOLOGICAL MODERNIZATION IN JAPAN 5
A relatively comprehensive summary of ecological modernization by Mol and

Spaargaren (2000) identifies three key stages in the development of the theory.
During the first stage, which they see as roughly covering the decade of the 1980s,
ecological modernization emphasized technological innovations in industrial
production, particularly in the form of market actors and dynamics that overlooked
human agency. During the second stage, extending roughly between the late 1980s
and the mid–1990s, ecological modernization moved away from technology toward a
focus on the institutional and cultural dynamics of industrial production of advanced
industrialized nations, on the national or comparative level. During the third and
most recent stage, since the mid-1990s, Mol and Spaargaren state that recent research
‘is characterized by innovations in three fields: studies on industrial production are
complemented by attention paid to ecological transformations related to consumption
processes; an increasing emphasis on national studies in non-OECD countries (new
industrializing countries, less developed countries, and the transitional economies in
Central and Eastern Europe) in addition to OECD countries; and growing attention
paid to the global dynamics of ecological modernization’ (2000:2).
Within this discussion on the evolution of the theory, the authors point out that
ecological modernization has branched off into both a theory of social continuity and
transformation as well as a political programme for change.3 Mol himself notes the
existence of analytical/descriptive and normative/prescriptive conceptions of
ecological modernization (1997:140; for a fuller discussion, see Fisher and
Freudenburg 2001); in his own words, the first conception has to do with
‘characterizing and analysing the way contemporary industrial societies (are trying to)
cope with environmental crisis’ while the second is a question of ‘feasibility and
desirability of such a normative course or project for environmental reform’.
Changes in the performance of what has come to be known as the ‘environmental
state’ or ‘green state’ (for a full discussion, see Frank et al. 2000a, 2000b; Mol and
Buttel 2002; Dryzek et al 2003; Eckersley 2004; Fisher and Freudenburg 2004) have
been seen as going together logically with increasing engagement with economic
actors and new roles emerging for civil society actors, such as nongovernmental
organizations. The potential for improved ecological outcomes, in short, is also seen
as being dependent on changes in the institutional structure of society (see e.g. Mol
2000a). This point is underscored by studies that recognize the linkage between
ecological modernization and political modernization (Spaargaren 1997; Leroy and
van Tatenhove 2000; Mol 2000b). In the words of Spaargaren, ‘the central feature of
the ecological modernization approach as a theory of political modernization is its
focus on new forms of political intervention’ (1997:15).
Consistent with some other theories of post-industrialized states (for a discussion
on links to other social theories, see Seippel 2000), ecological modernization
separates social actors into four main sectors: science, industry, civil society and the
state. The theory says that modern science and technology emerge as
central institutions for ecological reform. In addition, the state is seen as altering its
traditionally central role, being transformed to a more decentralized and advisory
position. In addition, civil society—sometimes in the form of social movements—is
seen as shifting from the role of critically commenting on political issues to that of
being important participants in ecological transformations (Mol 2000a). In essence,

ecological modernization sees these sets of political actors and the interrelationships
between them—not market forces and economic determinants—as shaping political
outcomes in the case of environmental regulations (for a full discussion, see Fisher
2004).
Despite the complexity of the theory, the lynchpin of the argument involves
technological innovation, which is seen as playing a predominantly beneficial role.
Unlike theorists, including those promoting the Treadmill of Production perspective,4
who see technological development as being generally problematic and who in some
cases highlight a potential need to stop capitalism and/or the process of
industrialization to deal with ecological crises in the developed world (see e.g. Catton
1980; Schnaiberg 1980; O’Connor 1991; Foster 1992; Schnaiberg and Gould 1994),
many of the proponents of ecological modernization argue that environmental
problems can best be solved through further advancement of technology and
industrialization. Buttel summarizes the main themes as follows:
Ecological modernization theorists are basically of the view that as much as

environmental problems in the past have been caused by an industrially driven
process of expanded production and consumption, the solution to
environmental problems cannot be found in radical movements that seek to
restore the lower levels of output and consumption that prevailed years ago, or
in centralized command-and-control regulation. Rather, in the ecological
modernization perspective, the solution to environmental problems caused by
industrialization requires more industrialization—or ‘superindustrialization’—
albeit industrial development of a far different sort than that which prevailed
during most of the twentieth century.
(Buttel 2001:18)
The ecological modernists’ reliance on technology offers a potential point of

engagement with the works of other social theorists, such as Habermas (1970), who
has focused on technology’s role in post-industrial societies.
Reactions to the theory have been complex, ranging from the supportive to the
critical, although many reactions lie between the two extremes. Perhaps the most
negative reactions have come from scholars who believe that ecological
modernization, or what some call ‘sustainable capitalism’ (O’Connor 1994), is not
possible or simply a prescription for business as usual (Blowers 1997:853). In
essence, these researchers see any theory proposing such an outcome as being bound
to fail (see e.g. O’Connor 1994; Cohen 1997; Pellow et al. 2000). Although many of
these critiques are rooted in a neo-Marxist perspective, others are not. A notable
example involves Anthony Giddens (1998), who argues that ‘ecological
modernization skirts some of the main challenges ecological problems pose for social
democratic thought’ (p. 58), and that, as a result, the theory is ‘too good to be true’
(p. 57; see also Leroy and van Tatenhove 2000).
Other authors provide more nuanced criticisms. Several, for example, have
concluded that the work is similar to Beck’s (1987) Risk Society (for a full
discussion, see Mol and Spaargaren 1993; Cohen 1996; Mol 1996; Blowers 1997;
Spaargaren 2000b). Most notions of the Risk Society, and thus Beck’s notion of
reflexive modernization, resemble many of the works of established environmental
socio logical theorists in envisioning a worrisome future, while ecological
modernization points to more optimistic expectations. In the words of Mol and
Spaargaren, the ecological modernization perspective ‘is a programme belonging to
the “simple modernization” phase, making unproblematic use of science and
technology in controlling environmental problems’ (1993:454). Mol and Spaargaren
(1993) state that their work on ecological modernization is a response to the Risk
Society, and Mol (1996) highlights differences and similarities, and then brings both
under the heading of reflexive modernization. Buttel has provided a broader criticism,
arguing that the theory of ecological modernization ‘lacks an identifiable set of
postulates’ (2000a; see also Buttel 2000b), and indicating that the work could be
improved if it were rooted in broader theories of the state, such as Evans’s
‘embedded autonomy’ (1995), or Jänicke’s ‘state failure’ (1990).
In addition to the critical reactions to ecological modernization, however, there
have been a number of positive responses, praising ecological modernization both as
a prescription and as a theory. Positive commentary on the prescriptive aspects of the
theory has come from authors such as Christoff (1996), O’Neill (1998) and
Rinkevicius (2000a). In O’Neill’s own words, ecological modernization offers an
innovative method for ‘understanding national environmental policy as embedded in
changing international context’ (O’Neill 1998:2), particularly given that ecological
modernization sees environmental protection not as a burden on the economy, but as
‘a precondition for future sustainable growth’ (Weale, as cited in O’Neill 1998:14).
Some theorists, such as Hajer, are equivocal with respect to the theory and argue that
ecological modernization ‘recognizes the environmental crisis as evidence of a
fundamental omission in the workings of the institutions of modern society’
(1995:3). Moreover, Eckersley looks at the conditions and virtues of ecological
modernization as a ‘new competitive strategy’ for aspiring green states responding to
the pressures of economic globalization (Eckersley 2004:70). Within this context,
much of the recent empirical research on ecological modernization consists of case
studies in which the theory provides a degree of fit for the cases (Frijns et al 2000;
Gille 2000; Jokinen 2000; Sonnenfeld 2000; see also Mol 1999).
Japan as a case of ecological modernization

Within the literature, Japan has been referenced as the first non-Western,
industrialized democracy to exhibit features of ecological modernization (see e.g.
Jänicke et al 1996; Dryzek 1997; Gouldson and Murphy 1997; Andersen and Massa
2000; Christoff 2000; Gille 2000; Gouldson 2000; Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000; Fisher
and Freudenburg 2001; Mol 2001b) but, to date, it has not been rigorously studied
(but see Revell 2003; Hotta 2004). It is also a very interesting case study from the
perspective of Japan’s significant influence on emerging patterns of environmental
governance in the newly industrializing economies in Asia (Ren 2000; Mol 2001b:
134–135). Japan’s response to its air pollution problems in the 1970s is decribed as a
‘paradigmatic’ example of ecological modernization (Hajer 1996:249). Moreover,

Dryzek (1997) identifies five ecologically modernized societies—Germany, Japan,
the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. In his own words, Japan stands out in the
environmental stakes in large part due to the energy-efficiency of its economy’
(p. 139). Generally, when commenting on ecological modernization and Japan,
observers (e.g. Gouldson and Murphy 1997:76; Mol 2001b: 133) refer to empirical
studies that indicate structural changes in the Japanese economy and related
improvements in environmental performance (see Jänicke et al. 1989, 1996). As
mentioned previously, Japan is described as an ‘ecological front-runner’ nation
mainly due to its efforts to delink material consumption patterns from economic growth
(Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000:12).5
There have been various positive assessments highlighting Japan’s industrial
energy savings in the 1970s and 1980s and the pioneering role it played with the
adoption of catalytic devices for cars, as well as denitrification and desulphurization
technologies for major factories and energy facilities (Tsuru and Weidner 1989;
Jänicke et al 1996; Dryzek 1997; Ren 2000). For instance, between 1971 and 1995,
Japan achieved the largest improvement in energy intensity (measured in terms of
tons of oil equivalent per one thousand 1990 US$ GDP) among industrialized
countries and experienced a decoupling of economic growth from CO2 emissions
over the same period (emissions increased by only 1.8 per cent per annum compared
to a growth of the GDP of 3.6 per cent) (Cruz et al. 2002). This positive assessment
is reinforced by the most recent environmental performance review for Japan
undertaken by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
which notes the significant advancements in recent years with the enactment of a
stream of progressive environmental legislation in the 1990s, in tandem with a highly
effective mix of policy instruments (OECD 2002).
Other commentators, however, argue that Japan has witnessed only a relatively
minor decoupling of economic output and environmental impact, with gains in
environmental efficiency being offset by an expansion of output (Gouldson and
Murphy 1997; Jänicke et al 1997). Further, there have been a number of studies
criticizing Japan’s overall environmental performance and indicating that it came
close to committing ‘ecological hara-kiri’ in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Tsuru
and Weidner 1989; Barrett and Therivel 1991; Ui 1992; Broadbent 1998; Tsuru
1999; Revell 2003) and it has been argued that improvements in the domestic
environment can be attributed to transfer of the dirtier elements of its manufacturing
industry overseas (Ui 1989c; McDowell 1990; Dryzek 1997; Taylor 1999; Mol
2001b). Japan’s has been described as an environmental laggard (Schreurs 1994), as
a reactive state and a foot-dragger on global environmental issues (Clark 2001) and
as an environmental renegade, particularly in relation to the loss of tropical
rainforests and the exploitation of endangered species (Dauvergne 1997; Hall 2001;
Wong 2001). Kerr (2001) criticizes Japan’s environmental track record and claims
the Japanese ‘systemic addiction to construction’ (Japan spends nearly 8 per cent of
GDP on construction alone, compared to 2 per cent in the US), combined with the
absence of an environmental impact assessment law before 1997 (see Chapter 7), has
resulted in prolific development destroying much of the nation’s natural habitat and
threatened wildlife species.6 Water and marine pollution, coastal degradation, habitat
destruction and biodiversity loss are amongst some of the more serious domestic
environmental problems that Japan now faces (OECD 2002). Furthermore, Dryzek
states that Japanese environmental policy is made with a ‘minimum of fuss and a
maximum of consensus’ which implies that policy-making is dominated by
government officials and business executives, described as ‘corporatism without
labour’ (Dryzek 1997:141).
In this volume, we acknowledge these two contrasting perspectives and argue that
in part they help explain why it is difficult to determine whether Japan really is an
ecologically modern state (Dryzek 1997; Mol 2001b; Revell 2003). Looking at the
Japanese experience, therefore, provides an excellent opportunity to explore further
the explanatory powers of ecological modernization as a theory of society-
environment relationships in the post-industrial world outside of Europe and to
examine the factors influencing the accuracy/inaccuracy of the theory’s predictions.
In this volume, we will focus on institutional reforms and changes in social practices
in Japan from the 1990s onwards. It is our contention that Japan is experiencing a
new phase of modernization in terms of its environmental governance system
(reminiscent of the third phase of ecological modernization outlined by Mol and
Spaargaren 2000), which has been taking place since 1997, coincidental with Japan’s
hosting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change third
Conference of the Parties.7 In the 1990s, also described as the lost decade because of
the long-term economic recession (Kingston 2001), there was a significant increase
in civil society activity in Japan (see Yamamoto 1999; Vosse 2000; Barrett and Usui
2002; Hirata 2002; Schwartz and Pharr 2003) and this increase has been given
further impetus with the passage of the 1998 Non-Profit Organization Law (see
Hirata 2002; Tsujinaka 2003; on deficiencies with law, see Vosse 2000). As we will
show in this volume, environmental legislative activity for waste, new energy and
environmental impact assessment also increased significantly at around this period
and further enhancement of the national environmental regime was marked by the
establishment of the Ministry of the Environment in January 2001. Furthermore,
there has been an upsurge in business involvement in on-site environmental
management such as ISO 14000 and the emergence of new forms of policy dialogue
at both the national and local levels.
Outline of this volume

This volume, accordingly, moves forward to test empirically the claims about the
applicability of ecological modernization for Japan, as well as the general feasibility
of the theory itself. As a first step in this study, Chapter 2 provides background for
this volume with a brief history of Japan’s environmental crisis. The next four
chapters look at the roles of policies, actors and institutions. Chapter 3 outlines
the institutional changes in the Japanese government and the recent attempts to
reformulate the national environmental regime. After looking at the environmental
activity within the national state, Chapter 4 presents the foundations of local
environmental governance focusing on various locally based environmental projects.
Chapters 5 and 6 present two different sides of civil society in Japan by looking at the
issues of social movements and the environment, and public environmental
knowledge/values respectively. The last section of the volume provides three case
studies. With Chapter 7, we return to the role of the Japanese state by looking at the
transformation of the development process. Chapter 8 looks at the role of
industrialization in Japan in relation to ecological modernization, focusing on waste
management, energy and the role of small and medium-sized enterprises. Chapter 9,
in contrast, looks at Japan in comparison with other countries by presenting its role in
the emerging international climate change regime as well as the development of a
domestic climate change regime to meet the commitments of the Kyoto Protocol. In
the concluding chapter, we present a brief comparison of experience in the five
leading ecologically modernized countries—Germany, Japan, the Netherlands,
Norway and Sweden. Of these five, Japan has received the least attention in the
academic literature and we specifically address the question of whether Japan really
is an ecologically modern society.
Notes
1 Sections of this chapter are adapted from Fisher, D.R. and Freudenburg, W.R.
(2001) Ecological Modernization and Its Critics: Assessing the Past and Looking
toward the Future, Society and Natural Resources 14, 8:701–709.
2 In the early 1990s Japanese industry accounted for around US$30 billion of the
global market of environmental technologies and services (Schreurs 2002).
3 This point is reinforced by Young (2000) who argues that ecological modernization
represents a new paradigm for social scientists analysing the changing nature of
environmental politics and functions as a prescriptive way to refer to programmes
of environmental and economic policies.
4 The treadmill of production is characterized by (1) economic expansion—viewed as
the core of viable social, economic and environmental policy, (2) increasing
consumption—the main role of the state is to guarantee a cycle of production and
consumption, (3) solving problems by speeding up the treadmill—the underlying
assumption is that economic growth will reduce social and ecological problems and
(4) economic expansion via large firms—the view that large firms are the driver of
the economy, with all of the above supported by (5) an alliance between capital,
labour and government (Schnaiberg et al. 2002). The differences between and the
commonalities of ToP and ecological modernization have been widely discussed
(Mol 2001b; Fisher 2002; Schnaiberg et al 2002). Mol summarizes the situation as
follows: ‘Most Treadmill of Production studies report a major gap between the
quite advanced and detailed theoretical analysis of the immanently destructive
character of the treadmill of global capitalist production and the suggestions made
for concrete trajectories toward social change’ (2001b: 204). Dryzek et al. 2003
provides a slightly different explanation and argues that there are two roads for the
development of ecological modernization, that attract different types of
environmentalists. Mainstream groups ‘seek the connection of environmental
concerns only to the economic imperative of the state’ whereas more radical groups
‘raise questions of legitimation’ and ‘highlight issues of risk and promote the more
participatory aspects of modernisation’.
5 Mol and Sonnenfeld qualify their statement by arguing that Japan should be
considered as a front-runner only in terms of the policies that ‘transform existing
trends of increasing resource consumption and emissions’ rather than in absolute
terms of minimal environmental additions or withdrawals per capita.
6 For instance, Japan lays about 30 times as much concrete per square foot as does
the United States, with 60 per cent of the Japanese coastline now covered in
concrete and 110 out of 113 major rivers dammed (Kerr 2001).
7 Schwartz (2003:14) describes the 1990s as a watershed for Japanese civil society
and cites the finding from Yamamoto (1999) regarding the increase in newspaper
articles in the three leading Japanese newspapers on NGOs and NPOs from 178 in
1990 to 2,868 in 1997.
12
2
Environmental discourses in a
developmental state
Brendan F.D.Barrett
Having escaped the bonds of the traditional, undeveloped economy, and

unlocked the secrets of growth, the question remains of how to channel
that growth so that human needs are met…The problem is profoundly
political but at the same time it is a moral and philosophical issue. While
it confronts Japan in its most acute form, it is a problem of modern
industrial civilization as a whole, and the Japanese failure, or success, in
coping with it has huge significance. It is at the root of the problem of
establishing social control over the forces of production.
(McCormack 2001:25)
Japan has been described as the archetypal developmental and construction state
(doken kokka) ensnared in endless cycles of public-debt financing for massive
infrastructure projects impacting on the environment and social life across the
archipelago (Johnson 1995; Woodall 1996; Pollack 1997; Kerr 2001; McCormack
2001). It is characterized as an advanced capitalist, industrialized democracy caught
in what appears to be a perpetual and contested choice between economic growth and
environmental conservation (Broadbent 1998; Tsuru 1999). In the 1960s and 1970s,
Japan was certainly notorious around the world for its pollution crisis (also described
as pollution debacle) with names of pollution related diseases like Minamata and itai
itai ingrained on the psyche of generations of Japanese (Ui 1972; Huddle and Reich
1975; McKean 1981; Iijima 1984; Torigoe 1989a; Tsuru and Weidner 1989;
Ishimure 1990; Mishima 1992; Ui 1992; Broadbent 1998; Kada 1999; Tsuru 1999;
George 2001; Keibo 2001; Broadbent 2002a). In the late 1980s, however, critics
began to talk about a development crisis throughout Japan that also stretched across
national boundaries impacting on the broader environment, but particularly in Asia-
Pacific (Barrett and Therivel 1991; Dauvergne 1997; Taylor 1999; Hall 2001; Wong
2001).
Perhaps to do justice we may now need to present a more nuanced interpretation of
Japanese society—environment relationships in the context of recent positive reviews
of the nation’s environmental performance, which describe the Japanese as
innovators with respect to the creation of new institutions, policies, instruments and
technologies in the environmental field and depict Japan as an important ecologically
modern state outside of Europe (Dryzek 1997; Mol 2001b; OECD 2002; Revell
14 ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSES
2003; Scruggs 2003; Imura 2004). In this chapter we will briefly review the major
post-war developments as covered in the literature (Barrett and Therivel 1991;
Funabashi 1992; Hoshino 1992; Iijima 1995; Mitsuda 1997; Broadbent 1998; Tsuru
1999; Broadbent 2002a; Ishii 2002). We will look at some of the main environmental
discourses that have come to the fore from the late 1990s onwards, which lay the
groundwork for the discussions presented in subsequent chapters and point toward an
emerging view of a more environmentally benign, Japanese sustainable society.
A framework to understand Japanese environmental politics

In the analysis presented in this book, ecological modernization is applied as a meta-
theory or grand narrative. However, where applicable and advantageous we will also
use various sub-theories such as political opportunities structure (POS) or
cooperative management regimes (CMR) to explore Japanese thinking on, and
institutional responses to, contemporary society—environmental interactions
(Seippel 2001). Discourses in environmental politics in a given country can be
analysed from three perspectives, each offering partial explanations (Schreurs 2002:
22–23). The first perspective explains differences in environmental politics as being
culturally specific based on a range of traditional norms, values and beliefs (including
religious beliefs). This perspective adopts a cultural framing that refers to the
Japanese affinity to nature (e.g. seasonal poetry, bonsai, temple gardens), also
described as eco-nationalism with strong links to nihonjinron—the notion of
Japanese identity (see Kalland 1995; Asquith and Kalland 1997; Morris-Suzuki
1998; Befu 2001; Thomas 2001). The second perspective explains the influences on
political discourses in terms of the acuteness of pollution and the geographic
conditions and natural resource endowments where Japan is portrayed as densely
populated, highly polluted and dependent on resources from overseas (see Barrett and
Therivel 1991; Iijima 1992; Ui 1992; Tsuru 1999; Wong 2001). The third
perspective, political opportunities structures (POS), requires that we look into the
way that Japanese institutional structures constrain or promote political mobilization
(see Chapter 3), as well as prevailing strategies and alliance structures (Kriesi et al.
1995; van der Heijden 1998; Seippel 2001; Broadbent 2002a; Schreurs 2002). Here
there is a clear distinction between the openness of the political system to new
demands and the capacity of the political system to implement resulting decisions
(Dryzek et al. 2003). This in turn influences the strategies adopted by different social
movements (confrontational or cooperative) and their likely impact on the outcome
(see Chapter 5; also see McKean 1981; Iijima 1992; Vosse 2000; Broadbent 2002a;
Reimann 2003).
Through POS, it is essential to recognize, especially with regard to Japan, the
importance of informal relationships as explanatory factors for political mobilization
and the distinction between the exclusive (repressive, confrontational and polarizing)
and integrative (facilitative, cooperative and assimilative) strategies of political
actors as they combine with the formal state structures (Kriesi et al 1995; van der
Heijden 1998; Vosse 2000; George 2001; Seippel 2001; Broadbent 2002a; Danaher
2003; Pekkanen 2003). Moreover, acknowledgment of the changing configurations
BRENDAN F.D.BARRETT 15
of power are central to the POS perspective and help to identify the degree to which
more open, participatory policy practices are occurring, whether shifts in ruling
alignments are happening, as well as whether new influential alliances are emerging
within Japan and trans-nationally (Kriesi et al. 1995; Broadbent 2002b; Schreurs
2002; Dryzek et al. 2003; Reimann 2003).
Transitions in the main environmental discourses

There is a rich English literature on environmental politics in Japan and this has
worked to mould our conceptualization of the Japanese environmentalism (for
example, see McKean 1981; Tsuru and Weidner 1989; Barrett and Therivel 1991; Ui
1992; Broadbent 1998; Tsuru 1999; Schreurs 2002). From a POS perspective, the
works collectively embrace the notion of a closed political system in Japan with
informal and formal polity structures incapable of responding to demands from
outside the ruling triad (politicians, bureaucrats and industry). The result was a
complex state of affairs (not unique to Japan) characterized by conflict in the 1960s
(Ui 1992) and finally dramatic change/accommodation in the 1970s (Broadbent
1998; Tsuru 1999), following the ‘crisis and compromise’ pattern (Calder 1988).
Table 2.1 presents the post-war evolution of environmental issues in Japan and
incorporates different periods of socio-economic development, institutional reform
and policy change (based on Iijima 1979; Broadbent 1998; Funabashi 2001; Ishii
2002). Also included are selected environmental events as well as key theoretical
perspectives from leading Japanese social scientists (Torigoe 1989b; Mitsuda 1991;
Funabashi 1992; Hoshino 1992; Iijima 1992; Ui 1992; Iijima 1993; Hasegawa 1995;
Hasegawa 1996; Mitsuda 1997; Torigoe 1997; Torigoe 1999; Funabashi 2001). The
divisions between stages are imprecise and the antecedents for each stage stretch
across boundaries deep into the history of Japanese modernization (Totman 1989;
Morris-Suzuki 1991; Tsuru 1999). For instance, Totman (1989) explains how the
first ecological crisis in Japan took place in the pre-industrial period as a result of
excessive logging, and Tsuru (1999) provides insights on pollution problems during
early industrialization in the late nineteenth century. Most commentators (Japanese
and otherwise) seem to suggest the existence of four or more main stages of
interaction between the economy and environment in Japan since the 1950s which
relate reasonably closely to Funabashi’s theory of environmental control systems
(Funabashi 2001). This theory essentially suggests that the internalization of
environmental constraints takes place in four stages beginning with a situation where
the environmental and economic spheres are completely separate and shifting to the
condition where there is closer integration between the two (stages 2 and 4 are shown
in Figure 2.1).
The first stage shares many characteristics with the treadmill of production model
of laissez-faire economic growth (see Schnaiberg 1980; Schnaiberg and Gould
1994). In the initial post-war period, the pro-growth elite coalition effectively
supported the creation of a Japanese-style treadmill of production, wherein greater
productivity was the paramount objective, regardless of its social need or impact. In
Japan’s Asian-style capitalism, also described as communitarian elite corporatism,
Table 2.1 Evolution of environmental related discourses in Japan
the state essentially, through major government ministries like the Ministry
for International Trade and Industry (now the Ministry for Economy, Trade and
Industry—METI), played a large role in organizing the economy with military-like
efficiency to bring about rapid expansion1 (Okimoto 1989; Sakakibara
1993; Broadbent 1998). Accordingly, the Japanese state did not so much impose
rules upon industry as partner with them. When environmental conflicts occurred,
Figure 2.1 Internalization of environmental constraints (source: Funabashi (2001), partly

modified).
government ministries tended to function as reasonable brokers or bridge keepers

between opposing social and political blocs (Broadbent 2000). The lack of an
effective countervailing bloc arising from a continuously vital civil society, coupled
with the highly centralized quality of state authority, set the stage for Japan’s past
environmental tragedies (McKean 1981). As a result, the widespread and long-held
perception of Japan is that of a nation that has suffered a high social intensity of
pollution (Huddle and Reich 1975; Ui 1992; Broadbent 1998; Tsuru 1999).
During the initial period of development and growth (roughly from the 1950s to
the late 1960s) there was only limited government environmental regulation, mainly
from local governments such as Tokyo or Osaka (Barrett 1994). Some national
environmental legislation was implemented (Water Quality Conservation Law and
Factory Effluents Control Law in 1958) but proved ineffective (Barrett and Therivel
1991). Japanese cities grew rapidly, and some seemingly intractable problems came
to the fore including high population densities, land shortages, lack of green spaces
and lack of public facilities (Shapira et al 1994). An extensive range of serious cases
of pollution poisoning occurred including air pollution in most large cities and
arsenic poisoning (Morinaga Milk), organic mercury poisoning (Minamata),
quinoform poisoning and cadmium poisoning (itai itai disease) (Funabashi 1992;
Iijima 1992; Tsuru 1999). The interactions between locally affected communities and
the ruling triad tended to be characterized by social exclusion and repression of the
victims (McKean 1981; Ui 1992; Broadbent 1998; Kada 1999), perhaps best
understood by the following quote:
Over the ages it has come to be a well-accepted principle that in any dispute
there are only two positions, the oppressed and the oppressor. As to
environmental pollution, there are only the polluters, whose orientation is to
ignore the problem, and the victims whose concern is to understand all factors
surrounding it.
(Ui 1992:6)
Japan then entered the second stage described by Funabashi as the ‘imposition of
constraints’ with some similarities to Beck’s ‘reflexive modernization’ (as discussed
in Chapter 1). This stage, spanning the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, was
characterized by widespread environmental disruption from air pollution, noise from
new bullet-trains and airport developments. At the same time, we witnessed an
explosion of environmental protest/anti-development groups and the initiation of
lawsuits against developers as the situation escalated to crisis proportions (Gresser et
al. 1981; McKean 1981; Funabashi et al 1985; Barrett and Therivel 1991; Broadbent
1998; Tsuru 1999; Broadbent 2002a). The environmental administration in Japan
during this stage has generally been viewed as reactive (Barrett and Therivel 1991;
Wong 2001). When the Japanese government did act, the ministries, business
leadership and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) negotiated ways to reduce the
worst pollution and developed soft control measures to weaken protest movements
and opposition political parties, which at the same time worked to fend off long-term
sources of challenge to the ruling triad and reduced the scope for the emergence of an
autonomous civil society (Barrett and Therivel 1991; Broadbent 1998). The
government repeatedly wrote new laws vaguely, without teeth, so as to avoid
empowering ordinary citizens to challenge projects and decide issues (Upham 1987;
Broadbent 1998). Rather than prevention—assessing and rejecting potentially
damaging projects—environmental policies were characterized by post-pollution,
elite-controlled technical and administrative solutions to threats to human health.
Less visible, creeping forms of pollution, such as toxic waste, soil contamination or
groundwater pollution, did not call forth immediate public outcry, so the government
ignored them (Yoshida 2002). Similarly, policy measures tended to largely ignore
environmental amenities—protection from noise, vibration, crowding and the lack of
greenery, and preservation of other species. Nevertheless, we find again progressive
local governments responded quickly and initiated new innovative forms of
environmental regulation. Furthermore, increased public pressure at the national
level resulted in the passage of 14 environmental laws in the so-called 1970
‘Pollution Diet’ (Gresser et al 1981; Barrett and Therivel 1991; Broadbent 1998).
Subsequently, in 1971, the Environment Agency was established.
In stage three, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, at about the same time as
ecological modernization was emerging in Europe, the environmental modernizers in
Japan suffered a series of major setbacks.2 At this point, following the first oil shock
in 1973, the energy crisis overtook the pollution crisis as a national concern. In this
period, Japan experienced economic restructuring induced by high inflation and

public sector monetary control. Some environmental regulations were weakened (e.g.
NO2 emission standards) and legislative efforts were undermined including the
passage of a law on environmental impact assessment (Barrett and Therivel 1991;
Tsuru 1999). The Japanese approach to environmental management, during this
stage, included a strong physical project orientation with an emphasis on new
pollution control technologies, the creation of greater convenience in relation to
transport, access to services and amenities, land readjustment in urban areas and land
reclamation at the urban waterfront. Key policy instruments included the
development of a comprehensive system of emission and environmental quality
standards covering air, water quality, noise and odour; establishment of area-wide
environmental pollution control programmes in locations with severe pollution
problems; emphasis on compensation for environmental damage and detrimental
effects on communities and human health; conservation of the natural environment
through a system of area designations and efforts to increase the extent of green
spaces in urban areas; a wide range of administrative measures to deal with effluent
from industrial premises including guidance provision and the establishment of
pollution control agreements; use of financial and fiscal incentives to encourage
private sector environmental expenditure; and widespread environmental monitoring
and public information systems (Tsuru and Weidner 1989; Barrett and Therivel
1991).
Impact of recent modernization on Japan—the fourth stage

The environmental discourses in the late 1980s in Japan were increasingly influenced
by international concerns including global warming, whaling, tropical deforestation
and acid deposition in Asia (Dauvergne 1997; Wong 2001; Danaher 2002b; Schreurs
2002). From around 1987–1988, the ruling elite placed growing emphasis on Japan’s
leadership role in the use of environmental technology as a potential contribution to
the conservation efforts of the international community (Schreurs 1996a; Tsuru
1999). In response to international criticism, there was a noticeable ‘greening’ of
leading politicians (including former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita), impacting
on national policies and resulting in major increases in Japan’s donations to overseas
environmental programmes and increased participation in international efforts to
address global climate change.3 For instance, a Council of Ministers for Global
Environmental Conservation was established in 1989 and included 19 ministers (out
of a total of 21) and was concerned with furthering the development of Japan’s
global environmental policies.
From 1991 onwards, with the collapse of the bubble economy, Japan experienced
falling land prices, major problems for financial institutions, an ever-deepening
economic recession and fairly dramatic political change (Kingston 2001). Moreover,
following the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, we can note significant efforts by the Japanese
administration to respond to the question of sustainable development and to reduce
the environmental burden of society as embodied in the 1994 Environment Basic
Plan (Imura 1994). Schreurs’s (1996a) review of Japanese environmental policy
highlights how changing discursive practices were evident within the Japanese polity
during this period largely as a result of top-down, elite-driven, reactive policy
initiatives rather than from grassroots pressure. More specifically, some segments of
the ruling triad in Japan began to clearly see the environment as an opportunity and
not a burden. Essentially, these changes reflect Funabashi’s theory on the
internalization of environmental constraints (Figure 2.1). This dynamic period of
change was also characterized by the opening up of policy structures and the
emergence of new coalitions around national and global environmental issues. It is
argued that:
The government, out of concerns for its foreign relations, chose in the early
1990s to pursue global environmental matters. An unintended consequence of
this decision was that the state placed pressure upon itself to undo the
institutional barriers that it had created to the formation of a vibrant civil
society.
(Schreurs 2002:258)
Schreurs (2002) acknowledges that there is another interpretation that sees Japan’s
global stance as that of ‘symbolic politics’ and there is considerable cynicism
surrounding recent institutional changes, claiming they are neither extensive nor
deep. Taylor (1999) concurs with the view that Japan has in recent years made a
concerted effort to recast itself as an environmental leader but argues that such an
image is mainly rhetorical since Japan continues to have serious domestic
environmental problems (including waste disposal, water and marine pollution,
coastal degradation, habitat destruction and biodiversity loss) and plays a dominant
role in causing international ones. Crump (1996) remains sceptical of Japanese
politicians, bureaucrats and corporations whose ‘tears for the environment have
always been of the kind crocodiles are reputed to weep’. So we find ourselves with
two scenarios: one which paints Japan moving toward a pattern of pluralistic
environmental politics and another which says nothing has really changed in terms of
the political opportunity structures but rather we are witnessing measures that are
merely cosmetic.
In his mid-1990s review of environmental politics in Japan, John Crump argued
that the environmental political scene looked like:
an incomprehensible tangle of politicians and bureaucrats, regular institutions

and ad-hoc groups, companies and consumers, citizens (shimin) and activists,
all pulling in different directions and all holding widely varying views of what
an ‘ecological society’ might look like. In this, Japan may be no different from
other countries.
(Crump 1996:115)
This complex composition of environmental constituencies and their interaction

makes analysis of the overarching contemporary environmental discourses somewhat
difficult, especially in the period of dramatic societal change as found in 1990s
Japan. Clearly many significant environmental measures were introduced in this

period and increased emphasis was placed on network/partnership styles of
environmental governance in Japan bringing together government, citizens, NGOs
and business (Broadbent 2002a: 334). This may, in turn, be indicative of new political
opportunity structures with fewer barriers to civil society participation. Nevertheless,
while remarking on the shift to more pluralist styles of policy-making, the danger of
co-option is seen as a tangible threat to the activities of Japanese NGOs by both
Broadbent (2002a: 334) and Crump (1996). We will discuss these changes further in
Chapters 3, 4 and 5. In the latter instance, we will make specific reference to
emergence of public concern about toxic substances (dioxins, PCBs and
environmental hormones) and in Chapters 7 and 8 we will look at specific issues
including waste management as well as citizen referendums resulting in the
cancellation of projects.
There are two other influential changes that need to be taken into consideration
here. First, we should note the 1997 adoption of EIA legislation in Japan (see
Chapter 7). This is a major achievement in a country which has faced a long-term and
bitterly contested battle over the development process and repeated failures in
legislating for EIA (for a fuller discussion, see Barrett and Therivel 1991; Tsuru
1999:150–157). When evaluating the impact of this legislation, we need to take into
consideration a complex interplay of factors including the general public’s
dissatisfaction with the misuse of funds for major infrastructure projects, concerns
regarding the continued degradation of the natural environment and the need to move
toward a human-nature interaction that is harmonious rather than destructive, as
signified by new strategies to protect Japan’s biodiversity (as discussed in
Chapter 3). The second relates to Japan’s hosting of the third Conference of Parties to
the Climate Change Convention in 1997. The period prior to, and just after, the
Kyoto negotiations was marked by significant changes in civil society activity and
also in the relationships between different arms of government. This success at Kyoto
was taken forward in the 1998 Law for the Promotion of Measures to Prevent Global
Warming (see Chapter 9). Quite clearly, despite the economic difficulties facing
Japan, the environment remained an issue of key concern in the 1990s and this may
have been an important factor explaining the upgrading of the Environment Agency
to ministerial status in January 2001 (see Chapter 3).
Reflections on Japanese environmentalism

Perhaps owing to Japan’s tragic experience with pollution related diseases there is a
strong anthropocentric ideology underpinning Japanese environmentalism (Huddle
and Reich 1975; Ui 1992; Mervio 2000). The assumptions about relationships
between people and nature in this ideological framework suggest that humans are
higher than all else and nature is seen as a brute force (i.e. humans as victims of
earthquakes, flooding, storms). It is rather close to the Promethean worldview
(Dryzek 1997) under which the dominant entities recognized are markets, prices,
energy, technology and people. All actors and agents are seen as motivated by
material self-interest. Furthermore, this ideology may in part explain the proclivity
amongst the Japanese elite to favour grand-scale nature remaking schemes

(McCormack 2001; Broadbent 2002a). This Promethean worldview, however, has
been undermined somewhat in Japan by fears about nuclear power safety, dioxin and
endocrine disrupters (Kingston 2001; Broadbent 2002a).
This characterization, however, which is similar to the ToP perspective, may be
too simplistic and is not supported by surveys of environmental values in the general
population (see Chapter 6). As such when we discuss the evolution of
environmentalism in Japan we may need to take a broader range of historical and,
more recently, international influences into consideration. First, when discussing
environmentalism in Japan, a number of commentators refer to the influences of pre-
industrial values systems and particularly those associated with the environmentally
sustainable society found in Edo Japan in the Tokugawa Period (Totman 1989;
Asquith and Kalland 1997; Ishikawa 2000). In many respects, this viewpoint has
similarities with Green Romanticism in Europe and North America which tends to
talk in terms of global limits, small-scale, communitarian practices, inner nature,
unnatural practices and innovation (Dryzek 1997). It is the language of Deep
Ecology, eco-feminism, green lifestyles (slow, small and simple), eco communalism
and New Age eco-theology. In Japan, this form of environmentalism is increasingly
in evidence linked to left politics and feminism (Danaher 2003) but also connected
with the emergence of the new slow life movement and the recent tendency to
idealize rural traditions as uncontaminated from Western, industrial or capitalist
influences (Mervio 2000; Thomas 2001). Nowhere is this better illustrated than with
the emergence of the Satoyama movement, which potentially represents a form of
cultural indoctrination whereby Japan’s rural landscapes are given elevated stature
and deemed suitable for preservation (Takeuchi et al. 2002). Through Satoyama,
special value is placed on natural environmental objects (commodified nature) that fall
within a specific set of cultural aesthetic boundaries associated with the notion of
Japanese identity (Mervio 2000; Thomas 2001).
Second, commentators describe how the forces of modernization altered Japanese
perspectives on nature and the environment (Thomas 2001), with some viewing the
dominant forms of environmentalism as stemming from those directly affected by
environmental problems, including pre-war pollution incidents at copper mines in
Ashio and Besshi and re-emerging in the post-war incidents in places like Minamata,
Yokkaichi and Niigata (Iijima 1992; Tsuru 1999). The term used in Japanese to
describe these pollution incidents is kougai (public nuisance), in line with the
anthropocentric focus mentioned above. It was only in the 1970s that a shift occurred
and the broader term kankyoo (environment) was adopted (Tsuru 1999:124–125)
making way for the broader consideration of amenity issues such as landscape
(Horikawa 2001).
Third, in the 1980s and 1990s, we also witness new forms of environmentalism in
Japan associated with the emergence of a politically mobilized, new middle class
with post-materialistic values (see Chapters 5 and 6 of this volume; Inglehart
1982, 1990, 1997). However, this has not translated, as yet, into genuine green
political mobilization independent of traditional societal cleavages as found
elsewhere in the appearance of Green parties (Vosse 2000; Schreurs 2002). As we
will show in Chapter 6, there has been a gradual increase in pro-environmental

values in the 1990s, perhaps influenced by the notions of sustainable development
espoused at the Rio Earth Summit and we can conclude that this trend is implicit in
the development of Japan as an ecologically modernized society (Cohen 2000). The
discourse patterns have also begun to shift with new terms being used more
extensively, such as environmental load, zero emissions, environmentally sound
material cycle, recirculatory society and new energy (wind, solar, geothermal,
biomass, waste to energy). The existence of these divergent ideological perspectives
implies a significant substantive deepening in the environmental discourse in Japan in
recent years, associated with the materialization of more pluralistic policy processes
from around 1997, with the impact of long-term economic decline, societal change
and institutional reform, as well as with the gradual influence of globalization on
values in Japan’s citizenry, and the need to respond to the increasingly complex
nature of environmental problems.
Conclusions
In discussing the contemporary forms of environmentalism in Japan, we have looked
briefly at the historical influences and cultural explanations of the Japanese
relationship to nature, the impact of major pollution problems and the resulting very
strong anthropocentric focus of many of the environmental measures, as well as the
emergence of new value systems (post-materialist). Japanese experience of
overcoming the pollution debacle illustrates the potential for others to follow the
same path that initially placed emphasis on efficiency and economy over the
environment but that was then transformed as environmental concerns were
integrated into the economic sphere. Our review of the post-war environmental
discourses within the framework of the changing political opportunity structures is a
prelude to the more in-depth analysis in the following chapters that will explore the
conflux of institutions and interests at the national and local levels (Chapters 3 and
4), political actors (Chapter 5), values systems (Chapter 6) and eco-material
conditions (Chapters 7, 8 and 9) that have brought about transformations in the
patterns of environmental politics and policies witnessed in the 1990s and early
twenty-first century. A central conclusion from this chapter is that the surfacing of
vibrant and diverse environmental discourses in Japan may in a large part be
associated with new political opportunity structures that are comparatively more open
to civil society participation (see Chapter 5), supported by a shift toward the use of
proactive environmental policy measures (e.g. EIA as discussed in Chapter 7) and the
development of new measures to deal with complex environmental issues like waste
and energy (Chapter 8).
Notes
1 Through loans, subsidies and sponsored research the government extends support
to industry, which in turn is viewed as a national treasure, producing the lifeblood
of the nation.
2 Hidefumi Imura (1997) stated that Japan was initially a pioneer with respect to the
development of new innovative environmental policy tools. However, he expressed
concern that in the 1980s the alliance of ‘environmental modernizers’ was
weakened by the dual impacts of low energy and raw material prices during the
bubble economy.
3 This is in stark contrast to the position Japan took before 1988, where there was
minimal involvement with international environmental action.
Part 2
Policies, actors and institutions

26
3
Building a national environmental regime
Brendan F.D.Barrett
The ecological modernization theory has identified two options for

strategies to overcome the deficiencies of the traditional bureaucratic
state in environmental policymaking…First, a transformation of state
environmental policy is necessary: from curative and reactive to
preventative, from exclusive to participatory, from centralized to
decentralized wherever possible…The second, related, option includes a
transfer of responsibilities, incentives and tasks from the state to the
market.
(Mol 1995:46–47)
The core scholarship on ecological modernization deals with changes in institutions

and social practices, rather than on physical improvements in the environment or in
the patterns of natural resource consumption (Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000). One
central transformation is that of the role of the nation-state. Some commentators
describe a process of political modernization (reinventing government) taking place
in a number of states which has resulted in the emergence of more consensual
governance styles, characterized by a shift away from national top-down command-
and-control environmental regulation with many functions (regulatory, managerial,
corporate and mediating) relocated from state to non-state actors (Jänicke and
Weidner 1995; Mol and Buttel 2002:3). This migration of powers, by default or by
design, is compounded by the impact of emergent supranational institutions (with the
European Commission being the best example) and the forces of globalization
working to undermine the role of the nation-state in environmental reform (Mol and
Sonnenfeld 2000:7; Mol 2001b). The environmental state came under pressure in
many industrialized countries in the 1980s, driven by a clear ideological bent in
favour of deregulation and privatization (Mol and Buttel 2002: 3), in part explaining
why the development of environmental legislation and regulation in Japan practically
stalled in the 1980s, with only four new laws. This situation was reversed in the 1990s
as more progressive modes of environmental governance were pursued across the
globe, and in Japan we witness a resurgence of environmental legislative activity
with 18 new laws in the period 1990 to 1999 (OECD 2002:56–57).
28 BRENDAN F.D.BARRETT
Within the framework of ecological modernization, the state is viewed as working

with, rather than directing, these new modes of governance in order to steer
society towards a more sustainable future while at the same time adopting new
instruments such as market incentives that push target groups toward eco-efficient
practices (Revell 2003). The state has shifted from the role of protector of common
interests or, perhaps more pointedly, the economic imperative, to become the
facilitator between different interests (Dryzek et al 2003:164; Schaede and Grimes
2003:7). These changes have been linked to the spread of sub-politics whereby
pressure builds within different segments of society to tackle environmental
problems outside of the framework of political parties and bureaucracies, which are
themselves embroiled in a legitimation crisis (Beck 1992). The 1990s legitimation
crisis within the Japanese developmental state has been extensively documented
elsewhere (Kingston 2001; Hirata 2002:82–96; Neary 2002:119–121) and we will
return to this topic in Chapter 5, but it is important to highlight that increasing public
distrust of politicians, bureaucrats and corporations during this period, combined with
values shifts in society (Chapter 6), may have been crucial is creating the pre-
conditions for an opening up of Japanese governance. The resulting shift in approach
in Japan to environmental governance created some new opportunities for active
inclusion of environmentalists within some policy-making forums (Chapters 4 and
5). This is a positive step forward1 and the literature suggests, which we reinforce in
this volume, that Japan’s policymakers have ‘broadly adopted an ecological
modernization position’ (Murphy 2000:3). The reasoning behind this general
perception is threefold. First, the administration has for decades adopted the
widespread use of agreements with industry to pursue environmental best practice
(Sugiyama and Imura 1999). Second, environmental management in Japan, in the
post-war period, has effectively functioned as a cooperative environmental
management regime (Meadowcroft 1999) shared by central and local government
(OECD 1994) and now expanding to include broader civil society participation (as
will be discussed in Chapter 4). Third, since modernization began during the Meiji
Restoration the underlying approach has depended upon cooperative partnership
between industry and government in policy formation (Wallace 1995). Government
agencies and industry have sought to maintain good relationships and open dialogues
on environmental policy issues.2 Environmental objectives can therefore be achieved
at lowest cost (compared to other countries) via flexible processes of
recommendation by government and voluntary action by industry, which in turn
encourages innovation.
In this chapter, we will use the term environmental regime to refer to the system or
style of national government that has been put in place to deal with environmental
externalities found in Japan. We will include within this definition the legislative,
regulatory and policy responses, as well as the approach to enforcement and
compliance and we will describe some of the key changes from 1990 onwards. The
national environmental regime should be understood as the system for control and
management of these externalities, which over time turns into the established or
institutionalized way of doing things. Regimes serve various functions including
organizing issue areas, development of approaches to deal with uncertainty, reducing
BUILDING A NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL REGIME 29
transaction costs, facilitating inter-group negotiations and supporting collective

enforcement (Wong 2001). A regime is essentially a social institution shaped by
norms, rules, knowledge and values supported by networks and communities
(epistemic groups). From the late 1980s onwards, the environmental regime in Japan
has increasingly linked into an trans-national system of environmental governance
(Tsuru 1999:193–223; Wong 2001; Hotta 2004) and can only bring about change on
the ground through active participation of the local government (see Chapter 4). We
will begin our discussion with an examination of findings of the OECD 1994 and
2002 environmental performance reviews to provide context for an evaluation of
strengths and weaknesses of contemporary policy and institutions. We will then
move on to examine the changing role of the Ministry of the Environment, before
discussing the activities of other bodies within government.
Coping with environmental change in Japan

Japan has one of the most comprehensive and effective environmental monitoring
systems in the world. The development of the system began in the early 1970s and
involves a network of monitoring facilities throughout the country operated by
national and local government. The information collected is presented in an annual
state of the environment report referred to as the White Paper on the Environment
and published by the Ministry of the Environment. A brief review of these materials
reveals a number of important issues concerning the quality of the environment in
Japan:3
• Considerable progress has been made with respect to key air pollutants (SOx and
CO) compared to the levels encountered in the 1960s and 1970s.4 However,
control of nitrogen dioxide and suspended particulate matter levels in urban areas
has proven more difficult and environmental standards are not always being met
in these areas. Hence in 2001, the Automobile NOx Law was amended to try to
tackle this problem.
• Japan’s carbon dioxide emissions are below the OECD average. However, the
absolute CO2 emissions are still high (emission rates for 2000 reached an all-time
high of 2.55 metric tons per capita).5
• Trans-boundary pollution from neighbouring countries is a growing concern with
acid rain levels now similar to those found in Europe. Although research is still
on-going, it is predicted that negative environmental impacts from acid rain will
become apparent in Japan in the near future.
• There is nearly 100 per cent compliance with respect to the control of heavy
metals and toxic substance concentrations in water bodies.6 However, the control
of organic pollutants has proven more difficult (i.e. nearly 80 per cent compliance
in 2000) with eutrophication occurring in inland water areas and bays (Tokyo, Ise
and the Seto Inland Sea) around Japan.
• Development activity around the inland and coastal waters poses a threat to the
natural environment in these areas. Roughly 30 per cent of the lakeshores and
56 per cent of the marine coastline have been developed or altered.
• The main methods of waste disposal in Japan are landfill and incineration. While
recycling rates for some materials are high, further efforts are required in order to
reduce waste generation. Alternatives to incineration need to be explored
especially in the context of growing concerns about dioxin emissions from
inadequate incinerator facilities. Regulation of hazardous industrial waste is
another area that needs to be improved.
• There is growing public concern about the potential impact of endocrine
disrupting chemicals (environmental hormones) and an urgent need for more
scientific research.7 About 50,000 types of chemical are currently produced and
circulating in Japan of varying toxicities (including carcinogens). A pollutant
release and transfer register was introduced in 2002 to try to cope with this
problem.
• Although 67 per cent of Japan is forested, natural vegetation cover accounts for
only 18 per cent of the country (mainly in Hokkaido) and is continuing to decline.
Moreover, the most recent version of the Red Data Book shows that 7 per cent of
mammals, 8 per cent of birds, 22 per cent of amphibians and 11 per cent of
freshwater/brackish water fish are threatened with extinction. In order to respond
to this problem, the Government of Japan issued a new National Strategy for
Biological Diversity Conservation in March 2002.
OECD’s evaluation
The OECD’s environmental performance reviews are noted for their objectivity.
They are excellent benchmarking documents and the conclusions they draw are very
useful indicators of the future improvements that may be necessary in order to reach
internationally acceptable levels of performance (OECD 1994, 2002). A comparison
of the findings of the 1994 and 2002 OECD recommendations for Japan is presented
in Table 3.1. Its achievements in decoupling the levels of economic activity and
energy use from air pollution emissions, and willingness to recognize the increasing
importance of international environmental cooperation in recent years were
congratulated in the 1994 OECD review. The same report, however, was critical in a
number of areas but particularly with respect to nature conservation, which was
described as being ‘at a cross-roads as regards its potential to either achieve
significant gains…or to experience irreversible losses of natural resources’. The 1994
OECD’s recommendations focused on the need for greater integration of
environmental and other policy areas, the adoption of ecosystem management and
pollution prevention rather than mere control, the use of eco nomic instruments, and
the setting of targets for nature conservation. The Japanese government responded to
these comments within the Environment Basic Plan of December 1994 which
included proposals for a mandatory environmental assessment system, more
widespread use of economic instruments and the development of systematic
measures to conserve outstanding natural features.
A key theme found in both OECD reviews is the importance of policy integration.
The 2002 report has three chapters dealing with this topic and argues that Japan has
achieved a major decoupling of environmental deterioration from economic growth
during the last two decades in terms of SOx, NOx, fertilizers and pesticides.
However, in other areas, performance has been less positive, particularly with regard
to CO2 trends, energy use and traffic. Concerns are also expressed on weak links
between environmental and physical planning as well as on the general failure to
systematically apply Strategic Environmental Assessment to policies, plans and
programmes. The report is critical of the limited use of market-based instruments
such as fees, charges, taxes, tradeable permits and deposit refund programmes.
Moreover, the expert reviewers argue that two major problems yet to be tackled in a
comprehensive manner are the granting of financial assistance to some producers/
consumers and the sectoral subsidies that undermine both environmental
effectiveness and economic efficiencies. Both reviews have been instrumental in
stimulating changes in the Japanese approach to environmental governance and have
been matched by internal pressures for change. See Table 3.2 for a list of laws passed
in the period 1990 to 2003.
From Japan Environment Agency to Ministry of the

Environment
Most commentaries on national environmental policy-making tend to remark on the
relative status, successes and weaknesses of the former Japan Environment Agency
(upgraded to the Ministry of the Environment in January 2001) in relation to other
major development oriented ministries (Huddle and Reich 1975; Gresser et al. 1981;
Barrett and Therivel 1991; Wong 2001). The Japan Environment Agency was
mandated to promote policies for pollution control, nature conservation and other
environmental issues. It was noticeably smaller than most other ministries both in
financial and human resource terms.8 The OECD estimated that the Agency’s 900 or
so staff represented about 0.1 per cent of all government employees (OECD 1994),
growing to 1,230 after reorganization or 0.2 per cent (OECD 2002). It is very easy to
fall into the false assumption that the Japan Environment Agency was the focal point
of Japan’s environmental management system throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In
reality, the Agency was severely constrained by the fact the policy proposals it made
were closely vetted by other ministries and implemented by local government.
Rather, it may have been more appropriate to consider the Agency as a coordinating
and information collection/dissemination body. During the first two decades of
existence, the Agency struggled to influence national policy-making dominated by
the pro-development ministries (Van Wolferen 1989; Barrett and Therivel 1991).
In the late 1990s, perhaps supported by increased public awareness of pressing
global environmental problems, the status of the Japan Environment Agency was
greatly enhanced. Moreover, as explained in Chapter 2, key political leaders and the
environmental administration effectively utilized the need to respond to global
problems as a means to further development of national environmental policy
approaches. Following the reform, the MoE became exclusively responsible for five
areas. These are: government-wide environmental policy (a coordinating function);
environment basic planning at the national level and regional pollution control
programming; waste measures (including hazardous waste import/export regulation);
Table 3.1 Comparison of OECD reviews of Japan’s environmental performance

pollution regulation and monitoring; and conservation of nature and biodiversity. The
only functions transferred to the MoE were those related to waste, previously with
the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Therefore from functional, budgetary and
manpower perspectives, the gains for the Ministry were marginal. Moreover, some
officials lamented at the loss of agency status and the benefits that accrued from
being part of the Prime Minister’s Office (Wong 2001:54).
The main direct benefits are that ministerial status puts the MoE on equal footing
with some of its strongest competitors within the government system such as the
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). This enhancement in status has
been furthered by the growing political recognition of the MoE’s importance.9
Supported by increased concerns in many quarters with regards to the global and
domestic environment, buoyed and challenged by criticisms and compliments from
overseas and from the OECD in particular, the Ministry made progress in a number of
issue-based areas.10 Further, a large part in the success of the environmental
administration in the 1990s was the fact that negotiating capabilities of the
environmental officials seemed to reach a greater level of sophistication as the upper
echelons became dominated by personnel who had worked their way up through the
Table 3.2 Major environmental legislation, 1990–2003

ranks (see Yong 2001:54 for a discussion on how the JEA was colonized by other
ministries when it was first established).
The recent successes also reflect the efforts made by the environmental
administration in Japan to create more extensive links within different layers of
society. To begin with, the MoE is supported in its work by a number of research
entities and advisory councils. These include the National Institute for Environmental
Studies, which was designated as an independent administrative entity (semi-
privatized) under reform programmes, providing it with some distance from the MoE
but at the same time functioning as a think tank addressing concerns relevant to a
broader constituency. Other affiliated institutions are far more specialized but have
played equally important functions in helping the MoE to interact with Japanese
society and these include the National Institute for Minamata Disease, the National
Environmental Training Institute, the Japan Environment Corporation (providing
funds and technical support to local governments and corporations for projects such
as the construction of zero-emissions industrial areas and industrial waste treatment
facilities) and the Pollution Related Health Damage Compensation and Prevention
Association.
The MoE also sees great importance in establishing links with the NGO
community as a means to win hearts and minds, especially when seeking to influence
national debates on key issues (Wong 2001:56). In 1996, for instance, the Global
Environmental Information Centre (also referred to as the Global Environment
Partnership Plaza, linked to the nearby Environment Partnership Office) was
established at the United Nations University in Tokyo as a venue to promote
information dissemination and exchange between the NGO community and
corporations, and a network of local information centres throughout Japan and
internationally. In order to improve access to research on global environmental
issues, bearing in mind the key role that good information can play in winning policy
debates, the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies was established in 1998.
Other very issue-specific centres have also be created recently including a new
Biodiversity Centre of Japan, established in Yamanashi Prefecture in 1998 (three
years after the completion of the National Biodiversity Strategy for Japan) and the
Japan Centre for Climate Change Actions, established in 1999, pursuant to the Law
Concerning the Promotion of the Measures to Cope with Global Warming. All of the
above represent part of an approach to institutional innovation, resource capture and
capacity building, as well as a response to global obligations. Each initiative reflects
the fact that the MoE cannot respond to new demands by increasing its internal
staffing and these entities bring with them former MoE staff but also attract
representatives from environmental NGOs, local government and business. They
have a powerful networking and intermediary function between the MoE and the rest
of Japanese society. This approach may be indicative of the overall national
bureaucracy’s attitude to the reform programmes throughout the 1990s designed to
bring about smaller, efficient, transparent and more effective democratically
controlled government (Neary 2002:123).
Changes have also affected the role of various advisory councils (shingikai) around
the MoE. Traditionally since the 1970s, there have been two advisory committees
associated with the national environmental administration—the Central Council for

Environmental Pollution Control (CCEPC) and the Nature Conservation Council
(NCC). The Director-General of the Agency was required to consult with these bodies
when developing basic policies. This system was reformed in January 1994 when the
Central Environment Council (CEC) was established in accordance with the 1993
Environment Basic Act but also in an attempt to create greater transparency around
the environmental policy-making process (OECD 1994). Members of the Council are
appointed by the Prime Minister and include academics and other knowledgeable
persons. The Council deals with requests from the Prime Minister, other cabinet
ministers and the Director-General of the MoE on topics related to environmental
sustainability. According to Ren (2000:83), the CEC works through a system of sub-
committees and provides a venue for policy consultations and negotiations, with
some of its meetings open to the public, and with extensive public hearings taking
place on the policy proposals that emerge. This level of transparency is uncommon
within the shingikai system, even for the other advisory councils of the MoE.
One of the biggest problems for the MoE is that, owing to its limited resources and
size, its presence outside of Tokyo is nominal compared to other ministries with
strong regional representation such as METI. Only the Nature Conservation Bureau
has regional offices (11 in total) and these are located in national parks. Hence, the MoE
relies extensively on support from ministry-affiliated entities, supervised NGOs and
the local government. They all have different functions, but the latter is by far the most
significant with respect to the actual implementation of environmental policy (as will
be discussed in Chapter 4). There are around 87,000 personnel in prefectural and
municipal government working in environmental management, with 84 per cent
engaged in waste management, 10 per cent in pollution control and 6 per cent in
nature conservation (OECD 2002: 55). This fact alone explains why the MoE was
keen to retain control of local government activities and opposed the decentralization
reforms in the 1990s (Barrett 2000).
Environmental powers throughout government

The national environmental regime in Japan is dispersed throughout several jealously
guarded ministerial jurisdictions over water supply, industrial waste management,
recycling, forestry, fisheries conservation, agrochemical control, energy conservation,
environmental technology development, supervision of commercial nuclear plants,
traffic pollution control, aircraft noise pollution control, urban planning,
development of public works including sewerage, urban parks, roads and dams, river
preservation and flood control (Barrett and Therivel 1991; Wong 2001; OECD
2002). The list is extensive and clearly the responsible ministries exert considerable
influence over the direction of Japan’s environmental policy and have significant
resources at their disposal to achieve their goals. The main ministries with
environment related responsibilities are the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), the
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), the Ministry of Economy,
Trade and Industry (METI) and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport
(MLIT).
These ministries dwarf the MoE11 which is restricted to an advisory role with
respect to the control of chemicals, industrial waste control and recycling, factory
location control, radioactive substances monitoring, climate change and other global
environmental issues, as well as the conservation of forests, rivers, lakes and coastal
areas (Wong 2001:54). It is important to recognize that within many of these
ministries considerable emphasis is placed on pro-environmental policies.12 The
former Ministry of Construction (now MLIT), for instance, underwent something of
a transformation in the late 1990s introducing new measures to try to improve the
quality of the environment through its town planning functions. The consensus view
of many commentators on Japan, however, is that the policy-making process still
appears to be dominated by a pro-development agenda (Kerr 2001; Kingston 2001;
McCormack 2001). Within the overall expenditure of the national environmental
regime, the MoE spends around 9 per cent of the total budget. In 2003, this amounted
to Yen 262 billion (or US$2.4 billion) from a national environmental budget of
around Yen 2.7 trillion (US$25.8 billion). This represents a major increase for the
MoE, effectively tripling the budget compared to that of the Japan Environment
Agency in 1999 (roughly Yen 86 billion) and is mainly accounted for by the funds
allocated for the subsidy system for waste incineration under the MoE’s new
responsibilities. In comparison, MLIT in 2003 had a total budget of around Yen 6.7
trillion (US$63 billion), which included an environmental component of Yen 1.3
trillion (US$12.7 billion). METI’s 2003 environmental budget of Yen 320 billion
exceeds the total budget of the MoE (MoE 2003c); this is mainly due to the transfer
of responsibilities from the previous Science and Technology Agency.
Inter-ministerial conflict is commonplace and some ministries fared better than
others in the administrative reorganization. For instance, METI benefited
significantly from the incorporation of parts of the Economic Planning and Science
and Technology agencies (Elder 2003). The Ministry has long been recognized as a
guiding force behind Japan’s industrial and high-technology policies (Okimoto 1989;
Nester 1991; Sigurdson and Anderson 1991) but it has been argued that in the 1990s
the Ministry was losing its relevance (Zinsmeister 1993). However, the situation
appeared to turn around in the late 1990s, as the Ministry began to shift emphasis to
promote broader economic reforms that in turn require greater cooperation with other
ministries (Elder 2003:161).
The Ministry has always viewed environmental issues as energy issues (Wong
2001:58). However from the late 1990s onwards, METI began to target key
environmental areas for industrial promotion including eco-materials, low-pollution
(zero emissions) manufacturing, recycling, eco-friendly urban construction materials,
building ventilation systems, new transportation systems, refuse derived fuels, clean
energy vehicles and solar power. Elder (2003) presents four political reasons for
METI’s focus on these environment related industries, which include the desire to
appear progressive and green, the possibility of obtaining additional funding for
research and industrial promotion, the possibility that such funds would be viewed by
observers outside Japan as part of environmental policy (heading off possible trade
frictions) and the possibility that the mandated recycling programmes would develop
into a WTO-legal non-tariff barrier. For instance, the July 2003 interim report from
the METI Industrial Structure Council dealing with climate change states: ‘Japan
needs to demonstrate its diplomatic strategy in the field of global environmental
issues as a platform for creation a new national and diplomatic image of Japan’
(METI 2003:68).
Energy is a sector where METI exerts considerable oversight, packaged as part of
Japan’s response to climate change and linked to the pursuit of new and renewable
energy sources (see Chapter 8). Within its organizational structure, METI maintains
the Industrial Science, Technology Policy and Environment Bureau. It also includes a
number of agencies with key environmental functions including the Agency for
Natural Resources and Energy, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and the
Small and Medium Enterprise Agency. Furthermore, the Ministry maintains a
network of regional bureaus that function as its ‘eyes and ears’.
Through a process of continuity and change, which includes internal
reorganization and refocusing of the policy direction, METI has been able to reassert
its authority over a very significant slice of national environmental policy-making
and is disseminating messages to wider society that reflect many of the tenets of
ecological modernization. This is linked to the reliance on key environmental
advisory councils/committees, many of which include the same members as the
MOE’s Central Environment Council, including Professor Akio Morishima, the head
of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies. This sharing of a rather small
group (perhaps in the hundreds) of influential thinkers in Japan who are operating at
the national level to shape environmental policy implies that significant new areas of
inter-ministerial collaboration are developing but as yet through rather narrow
discourse coalitions. These collaborative efforts gained further impetus through the
strengthening of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office in the recent round of
administrative reform (Neary 2002). In instances where a policy action concerns two
or more ministries, the Cabinet Office takes a coordinating role (OECD 1994:42).
MLIT is another government body with very significant powers related to the
actual implementation of environmental conservation measures. As a mega-ministry
(bringing together the previous ministries for construction and transportation) MLIT
addresses a wide range of environmental issues including nature and ecosystem
conservation/rehabilitation, marine pollution, airport noise, management of the
impacts of road and other construction projects, and recycling of construction by-
products, as well as the development and management of environmentally friendly
housing and infrastructure. MLIT is a member of the family of government bodies
responsible for the promotion of the recirculatory society (junkangatta shakai) and is
mainly dealing with the recycling of construction wastes (which represent 20 per
cent of all industrial waste) and car recycling. The Ministry is also implementing
numerous measures related to global warming including efforts to reduce the CO2
generated from the transportation sector by 13 million tons in 2010 (i.e. from a
predicted 81 million to 68 million—the 1995 level). This would involve the
promotion of low emission vehicles, a modal shift and road improvements to increase
traffic speeds. Measures are also proposed to reduce the emissions from the
residential/commercial sector by 27 million tons in 2010. With respect to ecological
modernization, MLIT has on occasion introduced strict regulations that work to
promote innovation and industrial transformation. For instance, by amending the

exhaust emission standards for cars, trucks and buses in September 2003 (which will
go into effect in 2005), MLIT has introduced the most stringent regulations in the
world. The new standards drastically lower exhaust emission limits. For cars, both
nitrogen oxide (NOx) and hydrocarbon (HC) emissions limits are reduced by 55 per
cent from previous levels, while, for heavyweight vehicles such as trucks and buses,
particulate matter limits are reduced by 85 per cent, NOx by 40 per cent and HC
emissions by 80 per cent.13 This kind of stringent regulation is important in that it
offers first mover advantages to domestic producers (Cohen 1997).
MLIT retains control of most of the national planning functions as well as land use
and transportation issues in the urban areas and as such it would be impossible for the
MoE to attain many of its goals without MLIT collaboration. As the main body
responsible for the development of Japan’s infrastructure, the Ministry has been at
the centre of concerns related to the excessive expenditure on public works projects.
In an attempt to revitalize the economy, national expenditure of public works peaked
twice in the 1990s at Yen 15.2 trillion (US$141 billion) in 1993 and at Yen 14.9
trillion in 1998. In between these peaks, public investments on infrastructure fell to Yen
10.5 trillion in 1996 and then to Yen 9.4 trillion in 2001. In its defence, MLIT’s basic
argument is that public works expenditure is not the main cause for the current fiscal
deficit in Japan and that the impact of social security increases and declining tax
revenues need also to be taken into consideration (MLIT 2002).14 The on-going
debate on public works expenditure in Japan continues to place pressure on MLIT to
reconsider the basic approach to development and perhaps is indicative of a search for
a more sustainable model (see Chapter 7).
Overseas manifestation of Japanese environmental policy

Over the past decade, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) has played a key role,
working alongside other government bodies, in presenting Japan’s environmental
activities in a positive light to the international community, which some
commentators read as an attempt to utilize a national commitment to international
environmental protection as a diplomatic instrument of power (Wong 2001:60). A
unique and important situation arose in the late 1980s when external demands for
global environmental action were matched with the support from domestic actors
(politicians, civil society, business leaders) associated with the desire to attain some
form of global environmental leadership (as mentioned in Chapter 2). Nevertheless,
some commentators state that there is a propensity for Japan to pay ‘lip service to
international concerns by joining international conventions and other arrangements
that require a departure from past domestic practices, then simply failing to
implement newly enacted national laws or to propagandize the new regime’
(Feinerman and Fujikura 1998:253).
It is argued that Japan tends to adopt an industrial policy regulatory approach that
works well for tackling the implementation of some international treaty goals such as
ozone protection but performs poorly in areas such as CITES (Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) or with respect
to the compliance conditions of the London Convention on Ocean Dumping. Perhaps

reflecting upon the changes taking place in Japan in the late 1990s, international
environmental lawyers remark that:
Japan is facing the need to change traditional regulatory approaches. Japan

may resort to a more active use of law and legal means to implement
international and national environmental policy objectives more effectively,
calling for more citizen participation and greater involvement of local
government.
(Feinerman and Fujikura 1998:290)
MoFA has played a key role in helping to project an image of Japan realigning its
regulatory approach to one better designed to tackle national and global
environmental problems. Two main measures have been implemented for this
purpose. The first is through the application of Official Development Assistance
(ODA) and the second relates to the skilful negotiation of Japan’s position in several
multilateral environmental agreements. The 2002 White Paper on ODA issued by
MoFA presents an overview of some of the main issues and the response measures
from Japan (MoFA 2003). The first point to note is that, almost in an identical pattern
to general domestic public expenditure on major infrastructure projects, Japan’s ODA
peaked twice in the 1990s. The first time was in 1995 when it reached US$14.4
billion, well above any other major industrialized country. The second time was in
1999 when it climbed to US$15.3 billion. In the intervening periods the ODA
declined to nearer US$9 billion, and in 2001 the United States’ ODA overtook that of
Japan for the first time since 1990. These fluctuations may be indicative of a general
degree of uncertainty on the future direction of Japanese ODA and reflect growing
concerns for more strategically targeted, participatory, transparent, efficient and
visible aid (Hirata 2002). From a strategic perspective, Japan is focusing on
supporting economic growth in Asia in order to reduce poverty and increase human
security, in line with the Millennium Development Goals. Within this framework,
Japan announced the Environmental Conservation Initiative for Sustainable
Development in August 2002 and the Clean Water for People Initiative at the WSSD
in September 2002.
Greater efforts are being made to increase collaboration between ODA related
ministries and transparency through the Council of Overseas Economic Cooperation
Related Ministers, as well as to increase the autonomy of the Japan International
Cooperation Agency (JICA) through reforms from October 2003 onwards.
Furthermore, efforts have been made to more fully involve civil society in the ODA
process and to build new modes of NGO-MoFA cooperation (Hirata 2002). Specific
examples include the launch of regular NGO-MoFA consultations in 2002 and the
creation of a Council on Comprehensive ODA Strategy in June of that year with
participation from NGOs, academics and business representatives. Another important
reform includes the April 2002 announcement from the Japan Bank for International
Cooperation (JBIC) of new guidelines for the confirmation of environmental and
social considerations of international financial operations and overseas economic
cooperation.15 The guidelines require that the project implementing agency should
solicit stakeholders’ participation in the project from the planning stage onwards. A
checklist has been developed by JBIC that includes social considerations pertaining
to resettlement, indigenous people and gender. Furthermore, the provisions for
information disclosure have been strengthened and JBIC is now required to
make public such items as the category classification of the project prior to loan
approval.
Taken together, these innovations represent an initial and concerted effort to
modernize Japan’s ODA programmes. They are a reaction to considerable problems
encountered with ODA in the past including the case of pesticide aid to Cambodia, as
well as examples of mishandled dam construction projects such as the Narmada Dam
(India) as highlighted by Hirata (2002:102–113) and Kotopanjang Dam (Indonesia)
(Japan Times, 14 August 2003). The changes in policy are indicative of a higher
degree of reflexivity in Japan with respect to overseas aid whereby NGOs (in Japan
and overseas) and politicians have been able (or willing to try) to influence
governmental decisions on major development projects in order to protect the
environment.
The second area where MoFA has played a key role has been in support of other
government ministries, mainly the MoE, in multilateral environmental negotiations,
particularly those related to climate change. Moreover, Japan’s participation in the
WSSD was at the highest level, with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi supported by
the Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoriko Kawaguchi and the Minister of the
Environment Hiroshi Ohki. The ‘Koizumi Initiative’ launched at the Summit
included measures on trade, energy, agriculture, ODA, Africa, climate change,
forestry, biological diversity and water. Some of these measures had been around for
a while (the Aichi Expo for example) while others were new and could prove very
significant (the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development from 2005 to
2015). Furthermore, 2002 was a busy year for Japan’s diplomatic arm with the
ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in June, and also ratification of the Stockholm
Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Following on from this, Japan also
ratified the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in November 2003 and at the Tenth
Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee expressed an interest in
ratifying the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain
Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade. All of the above are
indicative of the Japanese government taking a more proactive stance in international
negotiations. We will return to this topic with specific reference to climate change in
Chapter 9.
The greening of Japanese politics

The 1990s was a period of political turbulence in Japan which was characterized by
the fragmentation of parties and factions as well as the emergence of new opposition
parties, coalition governments and junior politicians ( seisaku shinjinrui ) with policy
expertise willing to challenge the bureaucrats (Neary 2002; Shiozaki 2002). In 1993,
the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost its majority in Parliament and has since had
to rely on its alliance with the New Komeito (NK) in order to pass legislation. The
Democratic Party (DPJ) has emerged as the main opposition party winning 177 seats
in the November 2003 Lower House Election compared with the LDP’s 237 seats.
Most of this growth, however, was at the expense of the other opposition parties—the
Japan Communist Party (JCP) and the Socialist Party of Japan. The DPJ contrasts
sharply with the LDP:
It is has a centre-left platform: ‘popular sovereignty’, ‘respect for fundamental

human rights and pacifism,’ free market principles should ‘permeate economic
life,’ but individuals should be guaranteed social security and safety, while
government should become more transparent and less centralized.
(Neary 2002:104)
While the LDP in the past has relied on its conservative stance promoting stability
and pork barrel politics, the DPJ is strongly opposed to the over-reliance on major
public works and favours radical restructuring of the public sector (Sasaki 2002).
Moreover, the LDP maintains strong ties with the bureaucracy while the DPJ
emphasizes its strong anti-bureaucratic stance (Sasaki 2002). The DPJ is much
clearer on its environmental policy stance than the LDP, supporting the possible
incorporation of environmental rights in the constitution, the enactment of a basic law
on global environmental preservation, and further engagement of Japan in
environment related diplomacy. Both parties seek to appeal to the ‘free floating’
voters through catch-all politics while maintaining their support base (rural, older
voters and the construction sector for the LDP and urban, young and public sector
unions for the DPJ). Consequently, some commentators believe that there has been
something of a blurring of their appeal with the LDP being criticized as standing for
nothing and the DPJ standing for everything (Kent Weaver 2002).
Efforts by the politicians to exert greater control over the bureaucracy, rather that
merely rubber-stamping legislation, also increased in the 1990s. The younger
parliamentarians seem more willing to take the policy initiative, although their
participation in the policy process is still somewhat limited and ad hoc, with the best
documented example being the passage of legislation in 1998 for revitalization of the
financial system, where junior LDP politicians amended proposals originally drawn
up by the Ministry of Finance (Curtis 2002; Shiozaki 2002). The other development
highlighted by some politicians in Japan is the use of private member bills
(accounting for around 10 per cent of legislative activity), and some recent examples,
such as the 2001 bill on stock-market reform, illustrate how it is possible for individual
Diet members to develop legislation in areas normally covered by government
sponsored bills (Nemoto 2002).
While acknowledging the significance of all of these changes and the reforms in the
1990s, some argue that:
At the turn of the century, the political world looks little changed. The LDP is
still in power, the government is spending vast sums on public works and a
geriatric elite seems more concerned about propping up a sclerotic system than
in achieving meaningful reform.
(Kingston 2001:35)
This ‘value persistence’ is an underlying factor influencing the behaviour of Japanese

political parties, regardless of their ideological hue (Peng-Er 1999). As a
consequence, unlike in many European countries, it has proven almost impossible in
Japan to establish a national Green party. Vosse (2000:274–282) explains that for
many years setting up a political party never seemed like a viable option for the
environmental movement in Japan mainly for structural reasons (high costs
associated with election campaigns, lack of leadership in the green movement, etc.).
Others provide some additional insights as to why a Green party did not emerge,
arguing that the electoral system based on multi-member constituencies employing a
single transferable vote favours candidates with a high level of recognition and does
not foster ideological debate amongst parties (Schreurs 2002:25). New parties, when
they do emerge, are merely off-shoots from existing parties and are not formed in
response to ideological concerns. It may also be possible that the creation of a Green
party is not considered a worthwhile endeavour by social movements who recognize
the general lack of trust within Japanese society for the established parties and
elected politicians and the general frustration at the lack of party alternation, due to
perennial LDP rule (Broadbent 2002a). For instance, a 1998 survey by the Asahi
Shimbun revealed that 75 per cent of respondents consider most politicians to be
dishonest (compares with 30 per cent in the United States) (Yoshida 2002). Only
when domestic or international pressures threaten electoral or economic loss to the
pro-growth coalition (LDP, economic bureaucracies and big business) does the
government make major changes in environmental policy. For instance, control of
the powerful House of Representatives (Shugiin) by the opposition parties allowed
Japan Environment Agency proposals to shape the 1993 Environment Basic Law
(Broadbent 2002a).
While lacking a national Green party, there has been some progress in the greening
of politics at the local level from the 1980s onwards through the Network Movement
(NET), formed in 1987 and supported by the Seikatsu Club, an association of 22
consumer cooperatives active in 15 prefectures of Japan, with 250,000 members,
most of whom are women (Peng-Er 1999). The Seikatsu Club is extensively involved
in environment related activities including recent campaigns against genetically
modified foods and environmental hormones.16
The club uses NET as a means to participate in and reform local politics and as of
2001 there are 141 NET representatives in local assemblies, up from 123 in 1996 (36
in different local governments in Kanagawa Prefecture alone). According to Peng-Er,
NET displays many of the characteristics of the European Green parties such as
egalitarian organization, female leadership, emphasis on green issues, clean politics
and the adoption of policies reflecting NET’s constituency rather than vote
maximizing potential (Peng-Er 1999:122). While recognizing that NET has many
limitations it is argued that the party has made a considerable contribution through:
‘The enhancement of women’s participation in politics, offering a Green option to
voters, the injection of New Politics issues in policy formulation, and the formation of
Red-Green ruling coalitions in local government’ (Peng-Er 1999:155).
The party has enlivened local politics by increasing choice and competition for
votes in the metropolitan areas and through the introduction of new issues to the
political agenda such as Local Agenda 21, recycling, water safety and the use of
environmentally friendly products (see Chapter 4).
From 1998 onwards there has been another Green movement at the local level in
Japan under the name Niji to Midori (Rainbow and Green Party).17 With around 130
representatives in local government assemblies, the party promotes a predominately
green agenda focusing on locally relevant environmental policies, control of public
works programmes, gender equality, social welfare, education and safety. Niji to
Midori is somewhat different to NET in that it has close links with the
Environmental Political Party Green Assembly (Kankyosento Midori no Kaigi) which
began in 2002 and has one nationally elected politician—Atsuo Nakamura—and
describes itself as a preparatory step towards the creation of a Green party.18 It is
really too early to judge whether these recent developments mark a significant new
phase in Japanese environmental politics and the emergence of a Green party along
German lines. However, it is important to recall that in the 1980s, in around only
three to four years, the German Green Party jumped from 1.5 per cent to 5.6 per cent
of the federal vote and from 1.4 per cent to 7 per cent of the local council seats
(Schreurs 2002:86–87).
Conclusions
The most recent round of administrative reforms reflects not only the current difficult
economic circumstances in Japan but bundled into these reforms has been a search for
a new environmental management regime which has been given a number of labels
including the ‘environmental protection style society’ (kankyo hozengata shakai) and
the recirculatory society (junkangatta shakai) promoting the need for systemic
thinking that goes beyond traditional policy responses. Recognizing that Japan may
currently be in the transition to a more decentralized and participatory approach to
environmental governance, it is nevertheless difficult to shift away from the
dominant view in the literature portraying Japanese policy-making as elitist and
closed, where policies are made by a centralized, strongly bureaucratic system with
little space for pluralist influences (Johnson 1995; McCormack 1998; Woo-
Cummings 1999). In McCormack’s critique of the Japanese economic miracle he
maintains that:
bureaucratic autonomy and privilege, and the exclusion of democratic

principles, may have been part of the formula of successful growth in the early
post-war decades, but vested bureaucratic interest now constitutes a major
blockage to the sorts of fundamental reform of which 21st Century Japan stands
in need.
(McCormack 1998:41)
This viewpoint appears to be well understood in Japan and hence the recent efforts to
bring about change. The main concern, however, is whether or not these changes are
more than superficial. Some commentators claim for instance that new structures
(such as the creation of the Central Environmental Council) are designed to solicit
broad input but end up retaining strong governmental control and function as
instruments of bureaucratic manipulation (Whittaker 1997). Others contend that the
environmental policy networks are relatively closed because of ministerial control of
participant selection and the tendency to exclude individuals and NGOs that might
criticize government actions (Schreurs 1996a). In the past, these practices of social
exclusion have worked to reduce the effectiveness of NGOs and to limit public
access to environmental information (OECD 1994). Nevertheless, in this chapter we
have identified some evidence that the developmental state model in Japan is being
transformed and is beginning to overcome the limitations of the communitarian elite
corporatist model, where policy-making occurs within a triumvirate of corporate
elites, politicians and bureaucrats (Broadbent 1998; Shiozaki 2002). We will examine
this issue further in Chapter 5, when we will look at the growing role of Japanese
civil society in shaping policy debates on key issues. We will explore environmental
policy networks and examine whether or not they are becoming more open and
participatory, with measures to increase transparency and foster the consensual
support of stakeholders, outside of the traditional elitist core of business, politicians
and bureaucrats.
Notes
1 It also potentially undermines the possibility of maintaining a critical public sphere

so important for strong ecological modernization (Dryzek et al. 2003:166).
2 The MoE encourages industrial participation via the ‘technical hearing system’
where relevant technical information from industry can be heard prior to legislation,
thus enabling regulators to set appropriate targets. State-industry relationships can
be described as highly cooperative, with some environmental regulation only
enacted after careful consideration of industry’s capacity to meet those standards
via trial and error voluntary initiatives.
3 Summarized from the Japan Environment Agency (1998) Quality of the
Environment in Japan, Tokyo: Government of Japan.
4 Regulation of air pollution at the national level began with the passage of the 1967
Basic Law for Environmental Pollution Control. Under this Act, standards were set
for five air pollutants: sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon
monoxide (GO), suspended particulate matter (SPM) and volatile organic
compounds (VOCs). The Air Pollution Control Law of 1968 set emission standards
for designated sources. These standards have been constantly revised and are now
some of the strictest in the world. Attainment of these standards was aided by
Japan’s excellent monitoring system. This system was put in place by the Air
Pollution Control Law of 1974 resulting in the establishment of an Area-Wide Total
Pollutant Load Control System.
5 On 2 October 1998, the National Diet enacted the Law for the Promotion of
Measures to Cope with Global Warming. The Act clarifies the role of all relevant
social actors, such as national government, local authorities, the private sector and
citizens in achieving the quantitative emission reduction target of greenhouse gases
(GHGs) as set out in the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on
Climate Change.
6 Japan has two environmental quality standards for water both established in 1970.
The first is designed to ensure the protection of human health by controlling the
concentrations of heavy metals and toxic substances. The second protects the
quality of the ‘living environment’ and deals specifically with the concentrations of
organic pollutants.
7 In 1998, the Japan Environment Agency launched a Strategic Programme on
Environmental Endocrine Disrupters (SPEED) to provide the basis for international
cooperation on this issue and to promote measures designed to increase relevant
scientific knowledge and data, as well as disseminate that information to the
public.
8 For instance, in 1994, the Agency had a budget of Yen 67 billion and
approximately 970 staff at the JEA, 275 at the National Environmental Research
Institute and 27 at the National Institute for Minamata Disease Research. In the
same year, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) had 58,000 staff, the
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) had 23,000, the Ministry
of International Trade and Industry (MITI) 9,000 and the Ministry of Transport
(MoT) 19,000.
9 The designation would have been more difficult without the direct support of the
former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who is also a senior adviser of Global
Environmental Action (GEA). This not for profit organization brings together three
former prime ministers, politicians and senior business officials and is supported by
most of the major government ministries. GEA was formerly constituted in 1995
and grew out of the International Eminent Persons’ Meeting set up by another former
prime minister, Noboru Takeshita, in 1991. In addition to organizing major
international conferences every two years, GEA functions as a forum for political
debate on environmental topics in Japan, a connection point between different
ministries and an indicator of the currency that environmental sustainability now
has within some political groupings in Japan.
10 For example, with the development of the National Strategy of Japan on Biological
Diversity, formulated in 1995.
11 In 2001, the MLIT employed around 68,000 civil servants, MAFF 42,000, METI
12,000 and MoFA 5,000.
12 MITI (now METI) for example, has an environmental section with approximately
180 staff and an affiliated Environmental Resource Technology Integrated
Research Centre with 290 staff.
13 See Japan for Sustainability web site—http://www.japanfs.org—item posted 22
Oct. 2003.
14 At the same time, MLIT argues that overall social security expenditure in Japan
climbed throughout the 1990s from Yen 11.5 trillion in 1990 to Yen 17.6 trillion in
2001.
15 Information on the guidelines which came into affect in October 2003 is accessible
via the JBIC web site—http://www.jbic.go.jp/english/environ/guide/finance/
index.php.
16 See the following web site for more details—http://www.seikatsuclub.coop/english/

top.html.
17 For information see the following web site—http://www.nijitomidori.org/ (in
Japanese only).
18 For information see the following web site—http://www.midorinokaigi.org/ (in
Japanese only).
48
4
Foundations of local environmental
governance
Brendan F.D.Barrett and Mikoto Usui
The role of local governments in environmental policy has been

important in enacting innovative policy and in pushing the central
authorities to change. Many national elements of current environmental
policy were first implemented by local government—and that process
continues today.
(Reich 1983b: 200)
Ecological modernization places considerable emphasis on the need for a strong state
and highlights the significant role that national sustainability strategies and
institutions play in environmental conservation (Mol and Buttel 2002; Dryzek et al.
2003). Limited attention, however, has been paid by ecological modernization
scholars to the various manifestations of local level experimentation and innovation
in the environmental field. Nevertheless, some commentators argue that changes at
both the macro-economic and micro-economic level have the potential to make
significant improvements in environmental performance and that it is at the ‘regional
or local level’ that detailed design of an integrated package of environmental policies
is more likely to be achieved (Gouldson and Roberts 2000:7).
One of the main strengths of ecological modernization relates to the way in which
it has been used to analyse various discourses surrounding the relationships between
industrialism and the environment (Hajer 1995). Discourse analysis has also been
applied at the local level in Norway within the context of Local Agenda 21 (LA21)
(Lindseth 2001a, 2001b). Lindseth argues that discourse coalitions gather around
certain arguments and the confrontations that take place assist in clarifying our
understanding of how change/innovation takes place. According to Lindseth (2001a),
LA21 is part of a common international regime that opens up debate within
communities and contributes in translating global problems into local action. Hence,
in this chapter, we will look at Japanese LA21 experience in order to explore the
emergence of various local discourse coalitions and make links to ecological
modernization. Similar studies undertaken in Europe argue that the spread of Local
Agenda 21 is an important innovative environmental policy tool that fits well into the
ecological modernization framework (Joas and Gronholm 2001).
This chapter evaluates recent advances in local environmental policy-making and
presents the findings of surveys undertaken by the MoE, the ICLEI Asia
50 LOCAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE
Pacific Secretariat (ICLEI-Japan), the Global Environment Forum (GEF) and the
Coalition of Local Governments for Environmental Initiatives (COLGEI).1 We
elucidate five key objectives2 tacitly underpinning local environmental governance
and which serve as a description of the internationally envisioned ideal-type of
participatory local environmental governance. These five objectives include the
promotion of (a) flexible, open decision-making structures allowing for pluralistic
inputs; (b) coalition discourses/stakeholder dialogues; (c) consensual knowledge base
building for local environmental management; (d) comprehensive framing of the
sustainability agenda; and (e) joint implementation through multi-sectoral
partnerships. Policy formulation by both central and local government in Japan has
conventionally relied heavily upon the use of advisory councils, composed of
government-picked experts, generally meeting behind closed doors and legitimizing
bureaucratically sponsored decisions (Nakano 1997). Although there has been a
marked increase in the number of environment NGOs since around 1997, as we will
argue in Chapter 5, few of them have managed to effectively penetrate the inner
circle of governmental policy-making. Accordingly, the distinctive manner of the
Japanese response to the requirements set out from both the Rio and Johannesburg
Summits may offer interesting insights on the potential for environmentally based
transformations at the local level.
Theoretical framework
According to Meadowcroft (1999), in recent years there have been some indications
of the emergence of a pattern of interactive decision-making underpinning successful
environmental management efforts. This has involved multi-sectoral participation in
defining and implementing solutions to specific environmental issues. Meadowcroft
uses the terms cooperative management regimes (CMR) or collaborative
environmental management to describe this phenomenon. He argues that changes
have taken place that support the shift towards CMR formation including increased
social attention devoted to environmental issues, growth in the range of organizations
incorporating an environmental perspective in their workings, and the increasing
internationalization of environmental policy approaches designed to integrate
environmental and economic decision-making. Meadowcroft contends that
ecological modernization functions as a key conceptual schema helping us to make
sense of the innovations in governmental approaches to environmental management.
Bearing this point in mind, we will apply the CMR theoretical framework to the
analysis of the effectiveness of local environmental management efforts in Japan and
to look at the recent shift toward the use of stakeholder dialogues such as LA21.
CMR is a very useful analytical tool since it focuses on the integrity of the process of
institutional innovation. The key features are summarized in Table 4.1.
Such regimes are not envisioned as replacements for traditional government, but as
a flexible mechanism that can be grafted on to existing policy-making such as laws,
regulations and sanctions, taxes, prices and markets. This model of environmental
governance has contemporary resonance (at least for industrialized countries) in the
context of the recognized complexity and interconnectedness of environmental
BRENDAN F.D.BARRETT AND MIKOTO USUI 51
Table 4.1 Main features of cooperative management regimes
problems and the hollowing out of the state. Some of the key characteristics that link
CMR to ecological modernization include the emphasis on pluralism and consensus
building, horizontal policy integration, knowledge consensualization, multiple issue
focus, networking and joint implementation by the stakeholders.
So we can see that CMR talks the language of reform and innovation—matters
very much at the heart of ecological modernization. Meadowcroft does offer words
of caution when analysing changing patterns of environmental policy and indicates
that care must be taken to differentiate practical outcomes from expressed intentions
and in clarifying where new initiatives have not replaced old, established ways of
doing things but have been merely incorporated as layered new concerns. This
chapter continues with a brief discussion of the emergence of local environmental
policies in Japan before exploring the recent trends in the formation of local
environmental management regimes.
Historical perspective
The local government system3 in Japan dates from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and
was conceived as a means of unifying and penetrating society with public
administration (Steiner 1965; Abe et al. 1994). There is a general lack of English
material on the role of local government in environmental management in Japan. The
most relevant publications include Gresser et al. (1981); McKean (1981); Samuels
(1983); Reed (1986); Imura (1989); Jain (1989); Mori (1993); Barrett (1994, 1995)
and Barrett and Usui (2002). Reed (1986), for instance, focused on pollution control,
housing and welfare policy-making in three prefectures (Saga, Chiba and Saitama) in
the 1976–1977 period. Samuels (1983) examined the politics of regional policy in
Japan, and Jain (1989) shows how progressive local authorities in the 1970s and
1980s used pollution issues to gain political leverage. Local authority
pollution control in the post-war era has been described as one outstanding exception
to the central government’s domination of local government (Gresser et al. 1981;
Reed 1986; Jain 1989). Dramatic changes in the late 1950s forced local governments
to shift from merely obediently following national targets for economic growth and
industrial expansion to focus on pollution concerns. This came as a result of the
severe environmental strains associated with exceptionally rapid urbanization and
industrialization. These strains shaped local attitudes towards pollution, encouraged
citizen protest and helped to radicalize many local governments (Gresser et al 1981;
McKean 1981).
In terms of environmental policy, local governments in Japan led central
government in the 1960s and 1970s (Jain 1989). Interestingly, from 1969 onwards,
the demand for more effective pollution control became identified with the issue of
local autonomy. The trend towards the decentralization of pollution control
accelerated to the point where by 1975 all 47 prefectures had passed some form of
pollution control ordinance (Gresser et al 1981). Local authorities, in this period,
were very innovative with regard to environmental policy-making and examples
include the establishment of pollution control agreements from 1964 onwards based
on the model developed by Yokohama Municipal Government (Mori 1993) and the
enactment of a compensation system for pollution related health victims based on the
work of Yokkaichi Municipal Government in 1965 (Reich 1983b). The majority of
these local initiatives were subsequently adopted by the national administration and
by the early 1970s Japan possessed one of the most complete statutory frameworks
for environmental policy in the world (Reich 1983a).
In the early 1970s, the need to look beyond mere pollution control to the wider
issues affecting the environment was recognized and regional environmental
management systems were introduced.4 These systems brought together a whole
range of tools including environmental monitoring and information procedures,
environmental assessment and pollution control (Barrett 1994, 1995). Another area
where local authorities led national government was with respect to mandatory EIA
through the enactment of local ordinances (see Chapter 7).5 Moreover, local
authorities have played a fundamentally important role in fostering greater public
participation in policy-making. Some, such as Kanagawa Prefecture, made efforts to
increase public access to information through the enactment of freedom of
information ordinances from the early 1980s (Reich 1983a).
Local authorities in Japan have direct control over a wide range of environmental
management responsibilities and in the past have put considerable pressure on business
to conform to voluntary agreements by withholding permits or economic incentives
(OECD 1994). Many policymakers and industrialists viewed local government as
driving environmental policy through the imposition of tough voluntary standards
and they had a reputation for listening to industry and taking technical considerations
into account, which promoted a flexible, participatory approach to standard setting
(Wallace 1995). Local authorities have been given the role of implementers of
national government policy through delegated and assigned functions.6 In this
context, numerous policy instruments have been developed to enable them to respond
to environmental problems. For instance, there is a long tradition of environmental
planning and, from 1973 to 1991 (i.e. one year before the Rio Earth Summit), a total
of 34 environmental management plans were prepared at the prefecture level. These
plans involved the collation and analysis of data on a wide range of environmental
issues and included predictions of future pollution trends. Specialist external expert
committees were normally set up to oversee plan preparation and representatives of
the main divisions and subdivisions within local government organized their work
through internal steering committees.7
One major weakness with these plans was the failure to deal effectively with
qualitative environmental issues such as scenic value, amenity, heritage and nature
conservation. These qualitative issues are not easily covered by environmental
standards. In order to overcome these limitations, and to obtain a broader
understanding of the state of the environment, some Japanese local authorities began
experimenting with public opinion surveys.8 Hence, it is evident that Japan already
had a comprehensive system of local environmental planning prior to the arrival of
Local Agenda 21 which contrasts significantly with the lack of such systems in, for
instance, many European nations. If we look at the other ecologically modern nations,
we can note that prior to 1992 only the local authorities in the Netherlands were well
placed to respond to the introduction of LA21. Both Norway and Germany got off to
a relatively slow start and for Sweden this was a new challenge that nevertheless
fostered a dynamic response with basically all 289 local authorities adopting LA21
by 1996 (Lafferty and Eckerberg 1998). As a point of information, the second
international survey of LA21 undertaken by the International Council for Local
Environmental Initiatives revealed 54 per cent of Norwegian, 16 per cent of all Dutch
and over 12 per cent of German local authorities had begun working on LA21
(ICLEI 2002).
Progress with LA21 in Japan

The implementation of LA21 in Japan begins in December 1993 when the national
government and ICLEI-Japan established an LA21 Steering Committee, composed of
academics, local government officials and representatives from various economic
sectors. Their initial report published in June 1994 explained possible options that
local authorities might wish to consider when developing LA21 (Japan Environment
Agency 1994a). The report, however, failed to expatiate on the entire range of
alternatives available for community participation. Rather, emphasis was placed on
informal hearings, ad hoc gatherings, written submissions from the public and
occasional questionnaire surveys. This stance was adopted apparently on the grounds
that public opinion should be reflected in policies but not given too critical a weight
in the decision-taking. When reviewing experience in other countries, many of the
committee members tended to align themselves with the view that citizens are not
particularly interested in participation but prefer to act as passive recipients of
information. This view is reminiscent of the information deficit model which
generally assumes that citizens when better informed about the environmental
consequences of their actions will adopt more environmentally benign options over
those that are environmentally destructive (Burgess et al. 1998).9
It is interesting to note that the LA21 Steering Committee’s second report of June
1995 encouraged local authorities to establish forums and working groups to ensure
wider public representation in LA21 (Global Environment Forum 1995). Some local
authorities moved quickly to prepare their own LA21 strategies. These included
Kanagawa Prefecture with its report entitled Agenda 21 Kanagawa published in
February 1993, Hiroshima Prefecture with Econet 21 Hiroshima published in August
of the same year and the Aichi Agenda 21 published by Aichi Prefecture in December
1994. In subsequent years, the national administration has annually monitored local
authority progress with the development of LA21 and Environment Basic Plans
(EBP): two parallel forms of environmental planning in Japan. The 1994
Environment Basic Plan (EBP) at the national level required that local government
take responsibility for the formulation of their own action plans concordant with
specific locally determined needs and priorities (Japan Environment Agency 1994b;
Utsunomiya 1999). Data from the 1997 survey showed that 38 prefectures and 11
designated cities had prepared such plans (Global Environment Forum 1999). This
represents 83 per cent of all upper-tier local authorities. Two years later, the 1999
survey results revealed an increase in activity with 45 prefectures and 71 designated
cities and larger municipal authorities having prepared either an LA21 or EBP. Data
available for May 2000 indicates a total of 45 prefectures, 12 designated cities and
125 municipalities have produced either LA2110 or EBP. This latter figure for
municipalities increased to 184 by February 2002 (MoE 2002b) and then to 318 in
March 2003 (MoE 2003a).
Information on the development of LA21 in the lower-tier municipalities (671
cities, 23 special wards in Tokyo, 1,990 towns and 568 villages) is more limited. A
survey undertaken by the COLGEI in 1998 covering 1,394 municipalities revealed
that 175 (12.6 per cent) had actually prepared an LA21 and/or EBP (COLGEI 1999).
Taking the above data into consideration, it is possible to conservatively conclude
that around 13 per cent of all Japanese local authorities had produced an LA21 or EBP
by May 1999. It is likely that this proportion could increase to a maximum of 30 per
cent in the future, bearing in mind the severe resource and expertise limitations that
most of the smaller local authorities face in Japan. For instance, the average local
authority population size in Japan is very small at around 38,000 and few are in a
position to orchestrate the type of cross-departmental coordination that LA21
requires.
Barriers to participatory local environmental management

Since 1992, Japanese local authorities have made slow but steady progress in the
adoption of more deliberative forms of local environmental policy-making. This has
been achieved in the face of significant institutional, political and societal barriers,
including major government reform, shifts in demographic structures (emergence of
an aging society—see Kingston 2001), on-going economic recession, as well as new
demands stemming from the impact of information technology. While in the 1970s
local government led the national administration in the development of environmental
legislation, in more recent years national interference in local environmental affairs
has been very significant (Broadbent 1998; Tsuru 1999). This may reflect the
increasingly complex and interconnected nature of sustainable development issues
confronting local authorities, requiring national guidance and coordination. At the

same time, this situation has been compounded by the growing frustration in many
sectors of society with established regulatory mechanisms. This led the national
politicians and the administration to the search for new models (e.g. national
government restructuring and decentralization reforms) and created an interesting and
challenging milieu for the realization of more participatory forms of local
environmental governance. For instance, Japanese local governments recently
entered a period of institutional innovation set off by the 1995 Decentralization
Promotion Act that includes provisions for the transfer of authority from central to
local government and from prefectures to municipalities but also with significant
implications for local environmental regulation in the longer term (Isobe 1999).
However, as yet this has not impacted on the actual structuring of environmental
responsibilities within and between local governments. Moreover, there is
considerable overlap in relation to the environmental control functions between, and
within, the two tiers of local government.11 Radical reform and innovation at the local
government level has not proven possible to date but may form part of the next round
of institutional change.
One of the biggest issues for local environmental officials in the 1990s was how to
balance the competing approaches specified under LA21 and EBP (Japan
Environment Agency 1994a; Global Environment Forum 1995; Takahashi 2000a).
EBP is a nationally driven, environment-focused, mandatory initiative calling on
local authorities to develop environmental management plans in consultation with
local stakeholders (Utsunomiya 1999). LA21, on the other hand, is an internationally
driven initiative, with a multiple issue-based approach focused on sustainability. It is
voluntary and promotes participatory/partnership forms of public engagement in
local policy formulation (Global Environment Forum 1999). Official guidance on
how to differentiate between these two initiatives has been limited (Kitamura 1997).
Generally, the national government and ICLEI-Japan contend that LA21 and EBP are
the same (Japan Environment Agency 1994a; ICLEI—Japan 2001). However, if
properly implemented, LA21 ought to represent a significant departure from the
traditional model of Japanese local environmental governance. In contrast, the EBP is
firmly based on conventional practices with advisory councils, strong business
involvement, and the reliance on public opinion surveys rather than public
participation. The dilemma for many local authorities is such that: if they want to
conform to national programmes they should develop an EBP; but if they want to be
innovative, they should develop an LA21. In many cases, local authorities have done
both, designating the EBP as an administrative plan and LA21 as a community or a
globally inspired local action plan. This generates concerns about duplication, wasted
effort and loss of credibility (Takahashi 2000b).
Nevertheless, the advent of both LA21 and EBP has impacted on the previously
compartmentalized and closed approach to policy formulation in Japan.12 Most of the
early attempts to promote deliberative models, however, tended to remain rather
firmly within the existing bureaucratic framework with administrators taking the lead
in the process. In many instances, this initially resulted in local bureaucrats simply
renaming an existing environmental management plan as an LA21 or an existing
advisory group as an Environmental Forum. It was only in the late 1990s that new
models of local deliberative environmental governance became apparent. Four early
adopters of this approach include the cases of EBP development in the cities of Iida,
Shiki and Hino, and of LA21 implementation in Toyonaka. In each case significant
emphasis was placed on public-private partnerships, with local community actors, on
occasion, directing the process.
The first example, Iida City in Nagano Prefecture, has a population of just over
100,000 and began developing its most recent environmental plan in 1992 in a
participatory manner through the involvement of environmental investigators
recruited from the local community and in collaboration with local environmental
NGOs. The plan was completed in 1996 and contains a set of numerical targets. The
plan’s performance is assessed every five years. Iida City has been very effective in
establishing other major environmental initiatives and was designated as an Eco-Town
area by METI in July 1997 and three years later, in April 2000, established an Eco-
Industrial Park designed to promote recycling activities. The second example, Shiki
City (with a population of 64,000) is located in Saitama Prefecture, roughly 25
kilometres from Tokyo. Shiki City has experienced a local NPO-led environmental
planning process in which citizens play a central role with emphasis on building a
permanent mechanism, called Eco-Community Forum, to facilitate local
environmental and welfare activities. The forum was composed of 26 citizens from
different parts of the city acting in parallel with the officers’ group responsible for
coordinating activities within the local authority.
In the third example, Hino City (population of 170,000 and located in Tokyo), the
successful interface between the municipal government’s EBP and the citizen
sponsored Green Master Plan represents a break from the tendency of Japanese local
authorities to hold stakeholder dialogues post facto and generally behind closed
doors, only to legitimate officially sponsored decisions and pacify critics within the
community. In the case of Hino City, 109 citizens were recruited for one year by the
Public Relations Department to participate in a working group composed of five sub-
committees on air, water, greenery, recycling and the living environment. This
innovative leap forward in the promotion of more inclusive forms of civic
engagement is largely attributable to personal enthusiasm and resilient leadership on
the part of particular city officials charged with the task. Nevertheless, it seems to
have set an important precedent for other local authorities and has brought about some
significant results. For instance, in October 2000, Hino City implemented a set of
waste control measures (called the ‘Waste Revolution’) in collaboration with citizens
that resulted in a waste reduction of approximately 48 per cent over two years, and a
tripling of resource recovery.13 With respect to the fourth case, Toyonaka City
(located in Osaka Prefecture and with a population of 400,000) may be considered as
by far the most ‘successful’ LA21 development process in Japan tackling an
ambitious range of local environmental issues as shown in Table 4.2. The Toyonaka
Citizens Environment Forum was launched in May 1996 and given responsibility to
develop an LA21 for the locality. A total of 150 groups were represented in the
Forum including industrial associations, the local chamber of commerce, research
institutes, welfare groups and women’s associations. Subsequently, in September
1997, four working groups were established, composed of 30 members, and held
meetings once each month. In addition, working group members were actively
involved in various campaigns to promote environmental action such as ‘Stop Engine
Idling’. The Toyonaka Agenda 21 was published in March 1999, at the same time as
the municipal EBP, setting a new course for the development of genuine community
engagement in Japan.
Evaluation of recent innovative practices

Prior to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, ICLEI—Japan undertook a
survey of 181 local authorities in January 2001 (ICLEI—Japan 2001). A total of 129
local authorities (i.e. 72 per cent) returned completed questionnaires. The questions
asked are set out in the global survey of local authorities and can be viewed on the
ICLEI web site (http://www.iclei.org). In evaluating the significance of social
innovations designed to create new forms of participatory environmental governance
in Japan, it may be worth while recalling that a frame-work for such local systems
was expounded in Chapter 28 of Agenda 21. This has been further elaborated in
subsequent years (Agyeman and Evans 1994; Selman 1996; Buckingham-Hatfield
and Percy 1999) and was clearly set out in the main criteria used in the ICLEI 2001
survey to evaluate LA21 performance (ICLEI—Japan 2001). Using the above as a
basis, we have identified a set of five objectives that comply with an ideal-type
description of LA21 processes.
The focus of the evaluation is essentially on the integrity of the process of
institutional innovation being triggered by LA21 and not the outcome (which should
be uniquely local). Indeed, a more challenging issue would be whether this process,
in its current design, is delivering results in terms of local environmental
improvements. Interestingly, studies referring to experience elsewhere point to the
lack of success of LA21 in this respect (Selman 1998; Blake 1999) and we recognize
the need for similar research to be undertaken in Japan. Let us now proceed with an
evaluation of the performance with LA21 in the context of five objectives:
Table 4.2 Environmental planning experience in four localities
• Promoting pluralistic approaches: Essentially this can be understood as the

democratization of policy-making which is tied into the themes of subsidiarity,
decentralization, partnership, citizen participation and empowerment (Agyeman
and Evans 1994). LA21 can thus be seen as a means to democratize the
predominately bureaucratic systems of environmental management. However, the
focus of this objective is not on the matter of ideology but specifically on the
diversity of stakeholders allowed to provide inputs into local policy processes. It
is clear from the ICLEI—Japan survey that Japanese local authorities have made
limited inroads in this area and so far the groups in society that are traditionally
poorly represented (youth, women, unemployed, etc.), remain so despite the
increasing emphasis placed on the issues of social inclusion in LA21s (mirrored
by experience in the UK—see Young 1998). For instance, although 12 per cent of
the responding local authorities indicate that local women’s groups are formal
partners in the LA21 process, only 2 per cent indicate that women’s issues are
priorities for action. In designing participatory mechanisms or stakeholder
dialogues to support pluralistic inputs into the policy process, care needs to be
exercised by the local authority in order not to fall into the trap of establishing just
another bureaucratic device. In Japan and elsewhere local authorities pursuing
deliberative environmental policy approaches need to balance the maintenance of
some form of ‘structured informality’ in order to keep relationships with partners
loose and unrestricting (Reinicke and Deng 2000), while at the same time
ensuring long-term involvement and commitment. Creating and sustaining these
participatory forums and dialogues is proving to be tremendously time-consuming
and demanding.
• Discourse coalitions: The reported successes with LA21 development in Japan
and elsewhere relate largely to the phase of listening to and learning from local
citizens and business groups in the planning process (Macnaghten et al. 1995;
Buckingham-Hatfield and Percy 1999; Takahashi 2000b). Wider experience in
Japan highlights the initial difficulties faced by local authorities in effectively
engaging their communities (even at the planning phase, let alone the subsequent
phases of implementation and monitoring). Although 79 per cent of respondents
to the ICLEI-Japan survey indicate that there is multi-stakeholder engagement in
the visioning process and 63 per cent indicate that there is consultation with
community partners in the creation of a shared vision, there is a significant drop to
40 per cent for those indicating that monitoring and reporting procedures are in
place to allow participants to be held accountable. Moreover, only 4 per cent of
the respondents state that the local stakeholder group is responsible for the
environmental policy process and manages the budget while another 34 per cent
answered that no formal group exists. The majority (51 per cent) indicates that a
stakeholder group provides input to the process and most (66 per cent) made it
clear that the local authority manages almost all aspects of the deliberations.
Nevertheless, these results may be indicative of a modest opening up of the
previously closed policy formulation practices. There are also some signs that
LA21 has proved successful in promoting greater integration within local
authorities (although not between local authorities): 21 per cent indicate that a
process is in place to integrate LA21 into the entire municipal system and
38 per cent state that LA21 helps to improve inter-departmental cooperation.
However, in response to the question on the activities under way in relation to
various LA21 issues, only 4 per cent indicate tourism related activities, 5 per cent
economic development, 7 per cent culture and 8 per cent health. It may well be
that local environmental officials recognize the need for a more integrated
approach and yet remain devoid of authority to influence the practice in upstream
industries and social activities that fall under the jurisdiction of other departments.
Supporting this view, 32 per cent of the respondents answered that insufficient
inter-departmental cooperation is a major impediment to the execution of LA21.
Shared knowledge base: The generation and consensualization of a local
knowledge base for environmental management is a central component in the
pursuit of long-term local sustainability (Grove-White 1996; Fischer 2000).
However, experience in Japan illustrates the persistence of participation methods
that allow only a narrow flow of information between the local authority and
community, rather than widespread engagement, deliberation and negotiation.
Over 50 per cent of all respondents indicated that questionnaire surveys were the
most common method of participation followed by public meetings (29 per cent).
Participatory workshops have been used by a number of local authorities (21 per
cent) but their links to the policy process are unclear.14 Interestingly, when asked
about major constraints to LA21 development, lack of community interest is seen
as the most significant (39 per cent of all respondents). Equally significant is the
lack of funds. Other constraints such as lack of information, lack of expertise and
insufficient community consensus are only viewed as significant by around 16 to
18 per cent of respondents. In part the lack of community interest may reflect the
persistence of a clear and as yet unbridgeable perception gap between local
government officials and the public. LA21 experience in Japan reveals that local
government officials working with expert scientific advisers and specialists often
tend to dominate stakeholder dialogues. It is evident that effective community
engagement will not occur in Japan without considerably more effort to develop
deliberative models of policy formulation which place emphasis on the role of the
expert in facilitating the discourse between community and local authority
(Fischer 2000). Local scientific expertise needs to be combined with more
deliberative forms of communication rather than occasional public explanatory
meetings and issuance of information brochures (Burgess et al. 1998). In essence,
this implies a gradual transition to more extensive forms of community
engagement through the adoption of measures to circumvent existing weaknesses
in the Japanese advocacy model (e.g. asking tough questions about who sets the
agenda and how consensus is reached) including the development of, and support
for, local policy oriented epistemic communities (Haas 1989, 1990; Fischer
2000).15
• Comprehensiveness: Both the results from the ICLEI-Japan survey and the
findings from the case studies presented above imply that LA21 in Japan is having
a modest, yet positive, impact on the evolution of flexible organizational
arrangements and networks to further social learning about sustainable
development. This is a particularly significant and very recent (in the past two to
three years) advancement in Japan. The membership of grassroots NGOs, at
present, is small and unstable, but they are growing and spreading across local
authority boundaries and becoming more closely involved in many of the
innovative LA21 exercises. However, despite the significant contribution made by
these NGOs, the sustainability agenda in Japan, while evolving, remains
significantly narrower than that found elsewhere, with areas such as poverty
alleviation, women and youth issues, unemployment, safety, culture and
recreation excluded. As could be expected, 71 per cent of the respondents to the
ICLEI-Japan survey indicate that LA21 focuses on ‘environmental protection with
consideration of economic and social concerns’. Only 13 per cent felt that it had
something to do with ‘equity and justice’, a mere 19 per cent considered
‘ecological limits’ to be an important facet and only 37 per cent considered
‘transparency’ (i.e. all information related to the process is easily available to the
public) as a formal component.
• Joint implementation: This places emphasis on issue management and the need
for commitment to problem-solving action. In this context, LA21s can be
conceived, not just as talking shops for interest articulation, but from a more
proactive perspective as a means to engage the community in assessing
information, promoting solutions and implementing them. Unfortunately, data on
the actual implementation of problem-specific tasks agreed upon through the
LA21 process is still very sparse in Japan. While respondents to the ICLEI-Japan
survey tended to highlight the impact of LA21 implementation with respect to
waste reduction, energy conservation, greenhouse gas reduction and citizen
environmental awareness, there are few examples where concrete resources have
been pledged for LA21 implementation by the industrial and social sectors. Most
success stories about the consultation and negotiation phases leave a certain
degree of apprehension regarding the availability of an effective framework for
future review of the original agreements (Nakaguchi 1999; Takahashi 2000b).
Conclusions
The empirical evidence suggests recent significant changes in structures and local
policy processes in a very limited number of smaller local authorities in Japan. First,
the examples presented confirm that local environmental deliberations have been
utilized as a conduit for civic engagement that complements, rather than distracts
from, the traditional processes as found with the use of Environment Basic Plans.
Experience in locations such as Iida, Hino, Shiki and Toyonaka has taken local
communities a step closer toward democratic engagement in effective environmental
governance. Second, new environmental policy practices have contributed to greater
inter-departmental cooperation (although this remains a major constraint in many
local authorities) and have created new modes of policy dialogues through a variety
of discourse coalitions such as local forums or working groups. Third, a very small
number of local authorities have begun to relinquish control over the environmental
agenda to other stakeholders in the locality, which in turn may have profound
long-term implications for the future of Japanese local environmental governance.
Nevertheless, the ICLEI-Japan survey results also highlight widespread and
significant problems such as a narrowly focused environmental agenda, the
prevalence of local authorities retaining control over the process and budget, the lack
of inter-departmental cooperation, limited experimentation with different forms of
community engagement and the difficulty of ensuring commitment to action from
other local stakeholders. There is, it appears, much confusion in Japan surrounding
conceptual groundwork for sustainable development at the local level. In
commenting on the findings of the ICLEI-Japan survey, Takahiro Nakaguchi,
Director of COLGEI, explained the difficulty faced by many respondents in
completing the questionnaire due to lack of understanding of the questions and
terminology used, such as ecological limits, equity, participatory assessment and so
on. For many local officials, the main objective is to develop an ‘environmental
management plan’ in a consultative manner (something they are very good at)—not a
process to create a vision of a sustainable future requiring long-term and intimate
community engagement.
Most Local Agenda 21s prepared to date in Japan are still in the initial phase of
development. Their quality has not been comprehensively assessed and most local
authorities have yet to evaluate the changes in practical performance in the context of
their initial strategy. Lacking concrete information on the implementation impacts, it
is difficult to evaluate the true significance of the changes in local environmental
policy in other than procedural terms. Indeed, in the longer term, it may well be that
new processes prove to be no better than the traditional approaches to environmental
management in terms of delivering solutions to pressing local and global
environmental problems. In Japan, the initial impression, after examining the
functions of local authorities in the area of environmental management, is that they
actually function as local environment agencies. However, upon closer examination
certain clear weaknesses become apparent, the most noticeable of which are the
constraints imposed by the national administration and the pro-development lobby. In
particular, the vulnerability of Japan’s approach to nature conservation has been
exposed (OECD 1994). The environmental activities of Japan’s local government
appear relatively well coordinated. However, the degree to which the Local Agenda
21 process will continue to make in-roads into the relatively stable local
environmental management bureaucratic practices is also unclear.
Notes
1 At the time of writing, ICLEI-Japan enjoys membership from some 46 Japanese

local authorities. The Coalition of Local Governments for Environmental
Initiatives (COLGEI) is an informal nation-wide network that provides
opportunities for exchange of experience on LA21 and related environmental
initiatives particularly among lower-tier local autonomies. Although COLGEI’s
membership has not yet exceeded 50 local authorities, participation at the annual
three-day Local Government Environment Conference often includes over 1,000

local officials.
2 These objectives happen to be largely (though not entirely) comparable to James
Meadowcroft’s conceptual delineation of ‘cooperative management regimes’
(Meadowcroft 1999). There are a few other analytical frameworks of possible
relevance for evaluating LA21 related activities, such as the information deficit
model (Burgess et al. 1998), the policy epistemic model (Fischer 2000) or the civic/
deliberative model (Owens 2000), but these would seem more useful when
addressing the issues of engagement in case-specific analyses than when the focus
is on the integrity of the process of institutional innovation.
3 Japan has a two-tier system of local government composed of municipalities (of
which there were 3,229 as of April 2000) and 47 prefectures and 12 designated
cities (population over 0.5 million and powers equivalent to those of the
prefectures). The second tier is made up of smaller cities, towns and villages. The
organization of the first tier is generally uniform, with two exceptions: (1) the
prefecture and municipalities in Tokyo are combined into a single organization and
administered under special provisions; and (2) Tokyo contains special wards (ku)
which are described as a third level of government. In general, with the exception of
the designated cities, prefectures are superior to the municipalities, and all
communications between central government and the municipalities must pass
through the prefectures. The prefectures deal with region-wide issues and ensure
the coordination of activities across municipalities. With the exception of Tokyo,
all prefectures have identical functions. There is, however, considerable variation
amongst the municipalities.
4 It is important to recall that in Japan the concept of environmental management
was introduced through the 1973 White Paper on the Environment. Moreover,
much of the early strategic thinking behind Japan’s efforts to develop local and
regional environmental management was undertaken by the Central Council for
Environmental Pollution Control. In 1972, the Council published an interim report
that called for programmes to (a) realize the environmentally sound utilization of
land, (b) re-evaluate the current relationship between environmental management
and development in existing programmes, and (c) examine ways to secure
environmental control in an integrated way. Subsequently in September 1973,
Osaka Prefectural Government published Japan’s first local environmental
management plan, which in line with CCEPC recommendations sought to develop
an integrated pollution control policy.
5 A number of local authorities beginning with Kawasaki Municipal Government in
1976 passed their own local EIA ordinances (Barrett and Therivel 1991).
6 The environmental administration has been delegated to local government with
respect to environmental sanitation, pollution control and preservation of cultural
property. However, the enforcement of measures in relation to mining, electricity
(including nuclear power and radioactivity), gas, transport and water resources
remains under centralized control. Regulation of air and water pollution in Japan
remains in local authority control primarily at the prefecture and designated city
level. The municipal authorities have control over noise, vibration and offensive
odours.
7 Nagoya City, for example, set up an external committee composed of 26 delegates

drawn from anti-pollution specialists, professional groups (lawyers, doctors,
academics, etc.) and registered voters (selected by lottery).
8 Tokyo Metropolitan Government surveyed the opinion of 3,664 people in 1991
asking their views on the cleanness of local air and water, urban amenity and their
interaction with the natural environment.
9 The information deficit model, however, has been challenged as too simplistic in
the international literature on local sustainability (Macnaghten et al. 1995; Burgess
et al. 1998; Blake 1999; Owens 2000). Rather, it is argued that public deliberation
is essential in framing environmental problems (Smith 2003). Government’s role is
to support meaningful action in the community, although it appears that few have
faith in the ability of local government to achieve this (Macnaghten and Jacobs
1997; Burgess et al. 1998; Selman 1998; Blake 1999). Consequently, there are
increasing calls for a new civic deliberation model that is designed to avoid the
pitfalls of older forms of public participation and takes account of the important
influence of cultural rules and social networks (Selman and Parker 1997; Smith
et al 1999; Owens 2000; Takahashi 2000a).
10 Thirty-five of them specifically mention LA21 in the title.
11 In the 1970s and 1980s, many local authorities set up new divisions to handle
environment related issues. As a result, a rather complex picture exists at the local
level in Japan whereby around 30 per cent of all local authorities have well-
established and resourced environmental management systems, while the remaining
70 per cent rely almost completely on the upper-tier prefectural authorities
(Nakaguchi et al 1999). In Osaka Prefecture, for instance, located in central Japan,
mutually unconnected LA21 strategies have been developed by Osaka City in
March 1995, by Osaka Prefectural Government in June 1996 and subsequently by
Toyonaka City in March 1999.
12 Similar problems associated with the introduction of participatory policy
formulation initiatives are cited in studies of experience in other countries
(Macnaghten and Jacobs 1997; Marvin and Guy 1997; Lafferty and Eckerberg
1998).
13 Waste reduction performance data can be found at this web site—http://
www.city.hino.tokyo.jp/info/gomi/27.htm (in Japanese only).
14 The results of questionnaire surveys can be incorporated directly into an
environmental plan, usually in a technical annex. However, it is more difficult to
highlight the outcomes from participatory workshops and their influence on the
policy outcomes.
15 This term is most commonly applied to international negotiations and refers to
groups of individuals engaged in policy innovation through issue framing, interest
redefinition and standard setting in conjunction with agenda-specific forums.
5
The transformation of social movements
and civil society
Jeffrey Broadbent and Brendan F.D.Barrett
Whereas environmental NGOs and even Green Parties have been central
players in environmental policy formation in the West, in Japan large
environmental NGOs failed to become institutionalized…
(Schreurs 1996a: 1)
In this chapter we define civil society as being constituted by autonomous

associations formed voluntarily by citizens to further common social interests
(Putnam 1993). Using this definition as a guide we explore whether Japanese society
is becoming more pluralistic and diverse. We look at the extent to which Japanese
civil society is actually built upon self-directed forms of association, in the original
theoretical sense, or whether the term community organizational sector remains a
more accurate description. What do we mean by this? Simply that in the past
Japanese community organizations were part of an inclusive social corporatism
controlled by elites. However, over the past three decades we consider that this
situation has been gradually changing with environmental movements playing an
important role in this transformation. Hence, we will analyse this shift: its pattern,
process and extent, and the implications for Japan’s ecological modernization.
Our basic argument is that societal changes and emerging social needs, matched by
shifting popular values and structural changes in the political system, have provided
additional leverage for the growth of a diverse range of groups in Japanese society
(Curtis 2002:8; Furukawa and Menju 2003). The developmental, corporatist and
activist Japanese state is slowly being transformed, some would use the term
‘crumbling’, and seeking a more equitable affiliation with a wider range of civil
society representatives. Advisory councils (shingikai) to the government, for instance,
formerly the preserve of representatives from business or conservative academia, are
starting to include more people from a variety of citizens’ associations (Hirata 2002:
1). Moreover, a recent network analysis of NGO participation in Japanese
environmental decision-making finds that some domestic Japanese environmental
NGOs are attaining fuller participation, even though the government still tends to
exclude international NGOs such as Greenpeace or WWF (Broadbent and Devitt
2001). These tendencies imply that the very nature of the associations in the civil
sector is changing and the main point of contention may be over the degree of
transformation rather than the direction.
68 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND CIVIL SOCIETY
In the past, most traditional village or neighbourhood organizations had close

‘Vertical’ ties to political patrons who steered them in conservative directions. Even
environmental protest movements during the 1960s and 1970s, to be successful, had
to gain support from local notables while at the same time putting themselves at risk
from ‘co-option’ (Broadbent 2003). Now, however, new forms of association,
growing from ordinary citizens voluntarily drawn together by their mutual interests,
are starting to arise. In contrast to the older-style community organizations, these new
ones are composed of individuals who are willing to develop personal ties and trust-
based relationships with strangers (i.e. persons outside their immediate social circle).
Such individual networks are foreign to traditional Japan’s commitment-forming,
group-based structures (Schwartz 2003:7).
This social transformation has supporters within the ruling elite who see the
potential to politically and socially reinvigorate Japan as being fundamentally linked
to the existence of an energetic civil society (Schwartz 2003:14). Consequently, there
has been a gradual reduction in the communication barriers between the traditional
elites (bureaucrats, politicians and business leaders) and civil society. The former
increasingly see NGOs as providers of resources, expertise and alternative
perspectives regarding possible development paths (Hirata 2002; Schreurs 2002:
258). In this chapter, we will explore the degree to which a more active civil society
is emerging in Japan, with special focus on the contribution of environmental
organizations, and examine the kinds of institutional changes and causal factors that
have made this possible. The focus of our analysis will be the degree to which
Japanese civil society is moving toward fulfilling the theoretical definition noted
above. In other words, we will be considering the basic question, how voluntary and
autonomous are Japan’s community organizations becoming, and why?
Transformation of environmental movements and civil society

Although Japan has a long-established tradition of civic engagement, traceable back
to the feudal era, Japanese civil society has struggled to assert the levels of influence
found by its counterparts in Europe and North America (Katoh 2002; Garon 2003).
The imposition of more democratic institutions and social class structures after the
Second World War strengthened the potential for civil (as distinct from strictly
student, political or economic) society in Japan. Its growth, however, has followed a
distinctly indigenous path—an explosion and decline of locally based groups in the
1960s and 1970s, a slow growth of voluntary associations until the 1990s, and then a
more rapid expansion. In Chapter 2 we discussed the evolution of environmental
issues in Japan. In many respects, the fortunes of the environmental movements have
followed a similar trajectory. Local anti-pollution groups (jumin undo) and citizen
groups (shimin undo) were very effective at the time of the pollution crisis in the
1950s and 1960s (McKean 1981; Vosse 2000; Hirata 2002).1 A wave of local
environmental protests swept Japan, peaking in the early 1970s when membership
numbered as many as 6 million (Schreurs 1994). This wave of protest galvanized
widespread media and public support. Individual environmental protest groups
exerted political pressure by employing a variety of techniques: the blockade and
JEFFREY BROADBENT AND BRENDAN F.D.BARRETT 69
rejection of government sponsored industrial projects, successful electoral support

for opposition candidates, litigation, media campaigns, lobbying of local government
and mobilizing opposition party politicians to raise criticisms in the Diet. In
response, as it became ever more difficult to push through industrial projects and
faced with possible electoral loss, the national growth coalition, led by the LDP,
decided to compromise (Broadbent 1998:98–112). In a historic change, the 1970
Pollution Diet enacted a range of important environmental legislation2 (Barrett and
Therivel 1991; Hirata 2002:16).
Unfortunately, while the grievance-based environmental protest movements had a
lasting effect upon government pollution control policy, they generally did not
survive as organizations or mature into a more stable form; they mostly dissolved by
the 1980s (Vosse 2000:187; Schreurs 2002:71). Several factors contributed to the
environmental movements’ pattern of rapid growth and rapid decline. The very
success of their campaign, evidenced by dramatically decreasing air and water
pollution, took away the sting of immediacy for many local issues. The 1973 ‘Oil
Shock’ (rapid oil price rise) put the country into recession, turning people’s attention
to economic issues. At the same time, the growth coalition staged a quiet campaign to
weaken protest movements. The conservative elites wanted to prevent the
institutionalization of movements into permanent legitimate fixtures of the political
landscape (Schreurs 1996a; Broadbent 1998). This campaign played out through a
number of factors on a number of levels. Through its national patron-client machine,
LDP politicians activated their local representatives to cajole, bribe and wheedle their
neighbours not to join, or to desist from, environmental groups. At the same time,
traditional constraints continued: bureaucrats refused to give out information on their
plans or about environmental conditions, hampering the movements’ efforts to resist.
The bureaucracies also continued their refusal to grant tax-exempt status or the right
to incorporate to movements, further hampering them.3 In place of citizen-initiative
groups, the government set up ‘third sector groups’ (GONGOs—government
organized NGOs), sponsored by corporations and led by retired ministers. These
ersatz NGOs filled the space of ‘civil society’, giving the illusion of strong grassroots
influence when in reality it did not exist.
As a result the most effective social movements tended to be those pursuing
community benefits, with the best example, as mentioned in Chapter 3, being the
Cooperative Association (Seikatsu Club). With the growth of the urban middle class,
the consumer movements have been very active on the local political front and have
constantly struggled to get political representation for consumer interests, to inform
citizens of their consumer rights and to raise awareness of environmental issues
(Peng-Er 1999; Maclachlan 2003). Only in the past decade have Japan’s new social
movements and NGOs begun to vigorously pursue issues of a more general benefit
for society, such as the reduction of global warming. In this, they signify a
transformation and internationalization of Japan’s community organizational sector
toward the Western theoretical definitions of civil society and the public sphere.
Fieldwork in Japan supports this generalization. In the late 1970s and early 1980s,
Broadbent conducted fieldwork research (in small-town and medium-city Oita
prefecture) on a number of the NIMBY-style movements (Broadbent 1998). These
movements were concerned with the removal of industrial pollution related threats
from their immediate neighborhoods. More recently, in autumn 2002, Broadbent
conducted fieldwork research on environmental movements in urban Sendai and
found that they were concerned primarily with global warming and other global
pollution problems. These two types of movements, from the 1970s and from the
early 2000s, seem typical of the most active movements in their respective historical
eras.
As Table 5.1 shows, these two types of movements differ in many significant
ways, not all attributable simply to their rural-urban locations. Table 5.1 uses
analytical categories derived from social movement theory to present the ‘ideal-type’
summary of some important qualities of each type of movement.4 These two ‘ideal-
type’ models reveal great differences in goals, membership, ideologies (or values),
organization, tactics, strategies, the types of obstacles and the societal circumstances
they draw upon, operate within and seek to change.
What factors have been significant in bringing about these changes? One possible
explanation could be the emergence of new risks in the 1990s that affected all
Japanese rather than individual communities. For instance, in the mid-1990s public
concern about toxic chemicals swelled and reached crisis proportions. Dioxin, PCBs
and other toxins were identified as ‘environmental hormones’ (kankyo horumon,
endocrine disrupters) (Japan Times 1998; Yomiuri 1998; Yoshida and Iguchi 1998).5
Scientists attributed increasing rates of human foetal deformity, cancer and skin
disease, as well as fish deformities, to these sources (Hasegawa 1998; Kawana 1998;
Nagayama 1998:76; Ueda 1998:76; Risaikuru, n.d.). Fish caught near Japan exhibited
extremely high dioxin concentrations (Nagayama 1998:65). Between 1967 and 1987,
skin allergy diseases (atopii) attributable to toxic pollution increased sevenfold
(Nagayama 1998:23). The smoke from 1,854 local refuse incinerators, the most in
any country in the world, was identified as one reason for the spread of dioxin in
surrounding communities (Asahi Newspaper, 22 May 1997; Nagayama 1998:
124–130; Ueda 1998:43–50). Moreover, accidents at several nuclear plants
intensified public fears about the safety of these facilities. These included the leakage
of two to three tons of liquid sodium coolant from the Monju prototype fast-breeder
reactor in Fukui Prefecture in December 1995 and the explosion at a PNC
Bituminization Demonstration Facility at the Tokai Works in March 1997 (Sawai
1998; IEA 1999).
These conditions, worsened by government inaction, set off a new wave of
environmental protest (Kajiyama 1995; Asahi Newspaper, 7 and 13 July 1997).
Between 1990 and 1997, 717 distinct groups conducted 944 protests against nuclear
and toxic pollution (Taguchi 1998:242). Furthermore, in addition to protests, irate
citizens sought to employ plebiscites as a tool to influence local political decisions on
environmentally hazardous projects. In August 1996, the village of Maki in Niigata
Prefecture, using Japan’s first binding local referendum, rejected a nuclear plant.
Roughly 88 per cent of the voters turned out for the referendum, and nearly
61 per cent voted against construction of a reactor by Tohoku Electric Power
Company, with 39 per cent in favour (Takubo 1997). Although strictly speaking the
results of referendums are not binding and under most circumstances local
Table 5.1 Chronological comparison of environmental movements in Japan

governments do not have power to reject government sponsored projects such as

nuclear power plants, referendums are effective as a means of demonstrating public
concern. In the Maki case, the municipal government owned the site of the reactor
and could refuse to sell. Aware of this, citizen groups convinced the mayor to allow
the referendum and to follow its decision. One year later, in June 1997, the first local
referendum on the question of whether or not to construct an industrial waste
disposal facility was held in the town of Mitake, Gifu Prefecture. The referendum
result showed that those against greatly exceeded those in favour (80 per cent to 19
per cent). Another referendum in November the same year led to the rejection of an
industrial waste facility in the city of Kobayashi, Miyazaki Prefecture. This was
followed by referendums in February, June and August 1998 in the town of
Yoshinaga, Okayama Prefecture, the city of Shiroishi, Miyazaki Prefecture and the
town of Unakami, Chiba Prefecture, respectively. In all these cases, the opposition
votes exceeded 90 per cent.
The government reacted to this wave of protest and referendums with new laws
and standards for waste disposal, including marine disposal (see Chapter 8). In 1997,
the Upper House, ruled by an opposition party coalition, finally passed a weakened
version of the long-sought EIA law (see Chapter 7). The implementation of this law
may in part explain the success of environmental protest groups opposed to the Aichi
Expo 2005, and the reclamation of Fujimae Tidal Flats (Nagoya) and of the Sanbanze
Tidal Flats (Chiba). However, it is important to recognize that in the 1990s
environmental groups lost far more disputes than they won. Wilhelm Vosse, in his
detailed study of environmental movements in contemporary Japan, estimates that in
the 1990s there were between 50 and 100 single-issue protest movements in Japan
including the Nagara River Dam, reclamation projects in Isahaya Bay and Shinji
Lake, second runways at the Narita and Kansai Airports, new airports in Kobe and
Okinawa and numerous landfill projects such as that found in Hinode-machi (Tokyo)
(Vosse 2000:76). In exploring the environmental protests at the Nagara Dam and in
Hinode-machi, Vosse shows how the movements in both cases failed to stop the
developments. He argues, though, that the endurance and strength of the Anti-Nagara
Dam movement may have proved inspirational for other movements including those
that succeeded in blocking the dam on the Yoshino River (Vosse 2000:110). When
commenting on experience in Hinode-machi, Vosse states that it is a classic example
of Japanese protest movements that make use of:
a broad variety of social, political, and legal means in order to achieve their
objective, but finally lost their battle because certain decisions…had been
made by government offices long before the residents were aware of it, and
involved large amounts of financial incentives for the locality.
(Vosse 2000:150)
In examining the activities of the Nature Conservation Society of Japan (NACSJ),

one of the biggest environmental groups in Japan, Vosse argues that it has had some
success in recent years in convincing government bodies to reconsider policies (on
biodiversity) but as yet had failed to meet its full potential and continues to pursue
rather modest goals and objectives (Vosse 2000:150). NACS-J is an example of a
nationally organized NGO and it has recently sought to increase its effectiveness by
working in coalition with other groups. A good example is the attempt to promote
legislation to coordinate government nature conservation policy, currently spread
across ten laws. NACS-J was part of the large coalition of NGOs that entered into
negotiations with the House of Representatives Legislative Bureau on a draft bill on
this topic in 2003 (Japan Times, 4 May 2003). NACS-J has also been very active
with respect to its opposition to construction of wind farms in the national parks
(such as Muroo-Akame-Aoyama National Park in Mie Prefecture). Following
NACS-J lobbying, the MoE temporarily postponed its decision to ease regulations on
the construction of wind farms in national parks (Japan Times, 30 April 2003).6
At the end of the 1980s and in the very early 1990s, it was possible to argue that—
contrary to what might have been expected of a state designated by some as
ecologically modern—social movements in Japan were very much on the periphery of
institutional power, under-funded, under-supported and disenfranchised (Danaher
2002a; Revell 2003). Today, in the early years of the twenty-first century, social
movements, even genuinely voluntary ones, are slowly moving toward a more
legitimate status within the political process akin to their counterparts in North
America and Europe. As such, they are starting to constitute a more theoretically
justified form of civil society.
Theoretical perspectives
The patterns of change in Japan’s civil society can be explained with reference to
four distinct but perhaps complementary theoretical perspectives—the traditional
culturalist view in a modern, more dynamic version, and the more recent institutional
statism, social pluralism and social hegemony views. Each of these perspectives
implies the existence of a unique transformative dynamic, as well as different sets of
barriers, opportunities and growth patterns in relation to Japan’s community
organizational sector. To these, we can also add an important environmental
dimension, which brings into view causal factors beyond those strictly within society
and culture. Environmental theories posit that environmental changes per se, such as
increases in the level of environmental damage or risk, may spur reflexive actions in
society. Both ecological modernization and risk society perspectives anticipate that
environmental damage and risk will heighten the degree of social concern, bringing
about a general societal response. However, conflict oriented environmental theories
assume that entrenched business and political interests would resist this response,
leaving problems unsolved (Schnaiberg and Gould 1994). In the absence of an
adequate governmental response, citizens may try to organize themselves and
undertake activities designed to raise awareness of and promote actions to tackle
environmental concerns. A combination of these social, cultural and environmental
theoretical perspectives provides us with good guidance in looking for key factors
that explain changes in Japan’s civil society, including its social movements, public
sphere, and public attitudes toward the environment.
The qualities of Japanese culture have long been debated (Lebra 1976; Befu
2001). As the result of centuries of state conditioning, some culturalists argue, the
Japanese hesitate to articulate personal interests. Japanese culture emphasizes
conformity and obedience to authority; these values make it difficult for social
movements to recruit members from the general public or to obtain the finances
needed to exist for a sustained period of time (Mitsuda 1997; Kerr 2001). These cultural
traits may in part explain how local communities can become highly concerned about
environmental issues and act accordingly, but, once having solved the problem, then
deactivate. By this logic, the environmental movements of the 1960s and 1970s
remained NIMBY (not in my back yard) and loco-centric (Funabashi 1992). Cultural
qualities also affect how a population ‘frames’ a given issue, both in terms of its
degree of concern and in determining the need for personal action. As the above
indicates, traditional Japanese culture would seem to run counter to the idea of
individual efficacy. The theory of cultural politics, however, approaches culture as
mutable, as subject to change through conflict, debate and dialogue. In this case,
culture is not ‘essentialist’, but still at any given time can hamper or support some
emerging new social pattern, such as an active civil society. Culture becomes an
element in the dynamic.
The institutional statist view (Schwartz 2003) looks at how a strong interventionist
state creates a strict regulatory environment with respect to civil society and how
segments of a socially penetrative public administration (say for instance individual
ministries like the MoE or METI) mobilize certain public interest organizations to
compensate for their weak jurisdictional powers (see Chapter 3). This view implies
that a withdrawal of state intervention should precede and stimulate growth in the
number of genuinely autonomous community associations. The social pluralist
perspective, on the other hand, sees a host of more genuinely citizen-based
associations emerging within the public sector in the 1990s. The new NGOs and their
activities, this view argues, represent evidence of social modernization. This implies
that the ‘number of interest groups, voluntary citizen groups, and other citizen-
initiated social actors is thought to be directly proportional to a society’s level of
modernity, industrialization and affluence’ (Tsujinaka 2003:84). This view argues
directly that the growth of autonomous citizen associations will be proportional to the
society’s level of industrialization and affluence, irrespective of state attempts at
intervention. The social hegemony view (Broadbent 1998, 2003), in contrast, while
recognizing good points in the preceding views, argues that, at least until recently,
most Japanese community organizations have not been autonomous associations in
the sense used by the Western definition of civil society. Rather, Japanese
community organizations have been embedded within external and internal vertical
social relationships preventing their emergence as associations in the original sense.
The social hegemony view derives from earlier work by ethnographers of Japan
(Nakane 1970; Murakami 1984) as well as more recent ethnographic fieldwork
(Broadbent 1998; Broadbent and Shinohara 2003). From this perspective it is argued
that Japanese communities tend to be dominated by vertical clientelistic ties to
conservative patrons. Analogously, Japanese organizations are dominated by senior
members. Hence, though association-like organizations may exist in the Japanese
community, they only rarely function as associations in the Western sense. In the
Western ideal, the term association comes from the verb ‘associate’, meaning that
individuals come together around common interests and decide group governance
through frank, egalitarian discussion and debate. Japanese community-based
organizations and decision-making processes are generally much more concerned
with the avoidance of inter-personal rancour and rather seek ‘harmony’ by intuiting
and following the will of the senior member. Thus, Japanese organizations and
communities are not the breeding-grounds of individualistic democracy implied by
social theory.
The social hegemony view implies that the emergence of civil society in the
Western sense of autonomous associations will depend most directly upon the
transformation of community social patterns away from the dominance of
vertical relationships. Growth in the sheer number of community organizations, the
main indicator of the social pluralist view, may not correlate directly with this
emergence. Neither will the withdrawal of state intervention, or conversely the
passage of more supportive legislation, directly support this emergence. One
potentially influential change, however, considering national factors, is the recent
decline of the LDP patron-client machine that has the potential to reduce the flow of
resources (money, jobs and projects) into communities which in the past has
supported the conservative vertical social relationships. At the same time, changes in
the local social structures, such as the growth of an educated prosperous middle class
randomly brought together in new urban neighbourhoods, may also reduce the power
of these traditional vertical relationships.
Another potentially influential factor from an environmental perspective is the
emergence of a risk society in Japan in the 1990s. The concept of a risk society
implies public sensitivity to potential environmental dangers associated with high
levels of industrialization, including those from distant sources (Beck 1994:5).
Environmental risk causes a popular loss of certitude in the benefits of unrestricted
industrial modernization, reduces public trust in the official experts/administrators
and calls for greater opening up to the decision-making and policy-making processes
(Beck 1994:29). Multiple, less controllable, potential risks pervade contemporary
high-technology societies like Japan, including nuclear power, global warming and
toxic pollution of groundwater. In what Beck calls ‘reflexive modernization’, these
risks require that old political habits be questioned and call for new kinds of citizen
response, not only concerned with immediate local pollution but also more proactive
about ‘distant’ sources of risk. Application of risk society theory would suggest that a
new type of popular social movement in Japan, different from the old NIMBY style
of the 1960s, would appear in the 1990s.
A new political landscape for civil society

In 1989, opposition parties won unprecedented control of the Upper House of the
Diet. Then in 1993, shattering the LDP’s almost 50-year rule, a coalition of
opposition parties won control of the powerful Lower House. This electoral loss
marked the end of LDP dominance in Japan and shocked the whole ruling triad (the
LDP, economic ministries and big business), as it challenged their institutionalized
control of the state. Once in power, the opposition party coalition started important
new environmental and civil initiatives. In November 1993, the opposition party
ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa passed a revised Basic
Environmental Law. This was given further substance by the passage of the 1994
Basic Environmental Plan, which called for a ‘network’ style of environmental
governance, based on the joint efforts of government, citizens, NGOs and business.7
These political victories set in train a diverse array of liberalizing trends throughout
the society, including an upsurge of voluntary associations and activities (Takeuchi
1998; Schwartz and Pharr 2003). In 1994, the LDP regained control of the Lower
House, but at an odd price—a coalition government with its old enemy, the Japan
Socialist Party. To cement the coalition, the LDP gave the prime minister’s position
to the leader of the Japan Socialist Party, Tomiichi Murayama (1994–1996), but
retained most of the rest of the cabinet positions.
What brought about this political earthquake? The end of the Cold War around
1990 reshaped the international arena and sent shock waves through Japanese
domestic politics. In the same period Japan, having reached the intoxicating peak of
its drive for prosperity, suddenly suffered the collapse of this ‘bubble’ economy.
Then followed over a decade of economic stagnation, financial crisis, corporate

bankruptcies and growing unemployment (Kingston 2001; Maswood et al. 2003).
The result was an opening up of political space for the emergence of new non-
socialist opposition parties, a host of which multiplied in the political arena.
Meanwhile, the government proved unable to make the ‘structural’ reforms
demanded by Western economists—for instance by letting banks owning huge bad
debts go bankrupt. Such a move would have undercut the very foundations of the
Japanese economic system of mutual dependency (Kingston 2001). Instead, the LDP
(actually influential factions within it), in conjunction with some powerful ministries
and construction companies, embarked upon a massive programme of deficit
spending in hopes of stimulating the economy. Much of this spending went into the
construction of huge public works projects, such as new roads, harbours, dams and
tunnels. Other monies went to subsidize the construction of new hotels and office
buildings. In this way, after a few years, the Japanese government acquired the
highest levels of national deficit (relative to GNP) among the OECD nations. If
invested productively, this debt may have been justifiable. Unfortunately, many of
these projects, being contracted at exorbitant rates due to a corrupt bidding system,
and in any case mainly intended to keep companies and workers employed for the
short term, had only marginal public utility (see Chapter 7 for further discussion).
In the mid-1990s, a number of factors converged to spur further popular opposition
to the dominant triad. As the economic recession continued so the fortunes of the
LDP continued to diminish (Katz 2001; Kingston 2001). In addition, faced with the
onslaught of new public projects of dubious worth, citizens began to increasingly
voice concerns about why it was necessary for their natural surroundings to be
sacrificed at such a rate (see Chapter 7). Then in 1995, a huge earthquake levelled
large sections of Kobe, one of Japan’s major cities, killing thousands of people and
rendering tens of thousands homeless. The government failed to deliver the needed
help in a timely manner, fumbling its rescue response for the victims. Instead, the
earthquake victims had to rely on the services of the many volunteers who poured in
to help. This stark contrast in aid greatly strengthened popular support for and
legitimacy of non-governmental, non-profit volunteer organizations (Yamaoka 1998;
Yamauchi 1998; Bestor 1999). Moreover, from the mid-1990s on, the results of the
‘ticking time bomb’ of buried and seeping toxic waste, inadequately covered in the
1970s pollution reforms, began to show up publicly. Public anxiety about toxic waste,
including radioactive waste, continued to grow, and the government’s response did
not inspire public confidence (Broadbent 2002a: 331; Danaher 2002a).
In response, as mentioned above, Japan witnessed a new surge of protest
movements and civil society activism in the 1990s. The national government, even if
dominated by an LDP-led coalition, felt a new sense of vulnerability (due to the
LDP’s loss of power in 1993). So, the government responded with major policy
initiatives, some of which favoured the growth of civil society. These included the
decision to host the 1997 Kyoto Conference on global warming, the 1998 Special
Non-profit Activities Law or NPO Law (Pekkanen 2000) and the 2001 Information
Disclosure Law, working to increase the political effectiveness of the non-
governmental sector (Danaher 2002a; Hirata 2002:1; Maclachlan 2003: 230–231;
Schwartz and Pharr 2003; Tsujinaka 2003:84). The NPO law, while not measurably
improving NGOs’ opportunity for tax-exempt status (Deguchi 1998), allowed them
to incorporate with reduced bureaucratic oversight. In this way, the NPO law
weakened the barriers facing civil society in Japan. With these new favourable
conditions, the few existing small special-issue-based environmental groups started
to expand and others appeared. These included groups such as the Nature
Conservation Society of Japan (NACS-J), the Wild Bird Society of Japan (WBSJ)
and WWF Japan, supported by a few thousand members and led by dedicated
environmentalists. These groups successfully kept up a ferment of concern and
critique, particularly with regard to major development projects (Danaher 2002a). In
the 1990s, they and many of the internationally oriented NGOs achieved a number of
significant environmental victories8 and were also successful in raising public
awareness of several serious risk-based environmental problems. As a result, these
NGOs have slowly attained greater legitimacy in Japan and built stronger
communication links with government and business-based environmental
organizations. They have also become more effective at campaigning on issues of
concern through the use of the media and by bringing in academic expertise (Vosse
2000).
The interplay of institutions, culture and hegemonic

relationships
The recent transformative processes in Japanese civil society deserve careful
consideration. From one perspective, Pharr (2003:320–321) argues that certain
features have characterized the post-war development of civil society in Japan. These
include the fact that producer groups tend to dominate, that the sphere outside of the
state and market is very narrow (but growing) and that consumer and labour groups
are weaker in Japan than those found in other industrialized countries. In addition,
political advocacy groups are under-represented and the media establishment works
with the political core (the ruling triad) vis-à-vis the political periphery (everyone
else). While grassroots social movements have been prominent in many areas
including the environment, few have advanced to become professional public interest
groups and the number of international NGOs is surprisingly small. Above all, the
symbiotic relationship between an activist state and civil society has worked to
mould (but not suppress) virtually all activities of the generally passive NGO
community (Pekkanen 2003).
While agreeing with Pharr’s analysis, we would like to highlight a number of
points worthy of further consideration. First, the institutional statist view assumes that
to a large extent the basic political power resides within the ministerial
bureaucracies. However, if we examine the significant changes in policy orientation
that occurred in the brief 1993 interregnum when the LDP was totally out of power,
we could conclude that such changes may not have been possible otherwise. Hence
from the converse perspective this may be indicative of the fact that the interests of
the ruling political party (when in power) may be the key determinant of much of the
policy output of the bureaucracy. Second, Pharr’s claim that the media always work
with the political core against the social periphery may need to be more naunced.
This characterization may arise from an exclusive focus on the press clubs. Certainly,
major Japanese newspapers do little investigative reporting on governmental
problems. However, research has shown that, concerning social issues such as
pollution, the media often send reporters directly to the people and the events
(Kabashima and Broadbent 1986). In these cases, the media do not simply parrot the
government line. To the contrary, the media may act as a mouthpiece and amplifier
for genuine citizen concerns, even in opposition to the interests of the political core.
As a result, as demonstrated later in this chapter, the media have sometimes been a
crucial resource for the success of protest movements in Japan.
The impediments to movement institutionalization are not entirely of the
aforementioned structural or institutional statist variety. In some accounts, culture
and hegemonic social relations also play important roles. The culturalist view,
described above, argues that the internalized values of the Japanese tend to make
them refrain from movement activism and, if they do mobilize, to focus on local
problems. This loco-centrism and pragmatism result in ordinary people distrusting
organizations that claim to serve abstract or idealistic causes, whether domestic or
international.9 The social hegemony view, however, places the motivational onus for
this loco-centrism less on culture (as internalized motivations) and more on
hegemonic vertical social relations (Broadbent 2003). In his fieldwork, Broadbent
found oppositional consciousness aplenty among ordinary village folk. Indeed,
villagers carried alternative sub-cultures harking back to and romanticizing farmers’
protests during the Meiji or earlier times. The research showed that people’s
participation in protest movements was restrained by the negative sanctions imposed
upon them through their personal networks, from relatives or friends themselves
influenced by or tied to the conservative political machine. This finding casts doubt
on the preceding culturalist argument—that internalized values determine behaviour
and in the Japanese case strongly inhibit criticism and protest. Plenty of criticism of
the government exists around the dinner table (kotatsu). It just has trouble
manifesting itself within the public sphere as a new collective identity.
The vertical social networks in Japanese communities organize around kinship
hierarchies that tend to conform to and convey sanctions from the conservative
patron—client political machine. This hierarchy is so powerful in villages, and even
in traditional urban neighbourhoods, that it controls much of the public discussion
and activity. Faced with disapproval and sanction, people with contrary ideas tend to
shut up or only talk with a few friends or immediate family. These vertical networks
continue to ‘gnaw away’ (nashikuzushi) at any movement that manages to mobilize,
eventually bringing many of them down (Broadbent 1998). To use Japanese terms, this
social hegemony has produced an attitude of ‘giving up’ (as the Japanese call it,
akirame or shikataganai). Akirame indicates that, despite wanting to change things,
one has no realistic option but to give up—except perhaps in times of extreme crisis
or widespread protest. Since akirame also includes the (frustrated) desire to change
things, it indicates that oppositional ‘embers’ still smoulder in many hearts. Thus the
potential for resistance, and hence for genuine citizen-based voluntary associations,
remains quite strong, able to burst into flame should vertical hegemonic ties weaken
and grievances intensify. Social hegemony, then, indicates a transformational

dynamic, including identity issues, quite different from those suggested by social
pluralism, culturalism or institutional statism.
The dynamic of social hegemony, coupled with institutional statist and culturalist
factors, has produced until recently a ‘truncated’ civil society and public sphere in
Japan—giving citizens relatively little opportunity to express the discontent in their
hearts publicly, and through public discourse to fashion new collective identities and
purposes in the public arena. However, the rise of an urban, well-educated and
prosperous middle class has gradually, in a turnabout, begun to ‘gnaw away’ at the
popular support base for vertically dominated community organizations and power
hierarchies, such as the dominant LDP and its patronage machine. This social change
has made it easier for genuine voluntary associations to emerge. As the institutional
statism view predicts, the decline of formal barriers has helped the growth and
establishment of movements into NGOs. But even without that, by the 1990s, the
growth of the urban middle class and its rejection of the traditional machine provided
conducive social conditions for the formation of many new types of movements and
NGOs. The new movements are receiving ever more professional talent and scientific
backing, which strengthens their hand. They have been fairly successful and have
worked to sensitize public opinion on various issues (including the anti-nuclear
movement), to increase the scope of government policy-making and to offer
alternatives to decision-makers (Kanazawa 1996). Their activities have also begun to
attract more sustained support from both the media and academia, particular in areas
related to global environmental conservation.
Media and academics in the growth of civil society

Japan has some of the highest newspaper daily circulation rates in the world at
around 8–10 million (World Media Handbook 1995; Wong 2001). As mentioned
above, a dominant view of journalists in Japan is that they are closely tied into the
interest of the ruling triad and that few are concerned with environmental problems
(Barrett and Therivel 1991). This situation is compounded by structural problems in
the industry related to the role of the press clubs and also advertising. With respect to
the former, these clubs have privileged access to government information sources and
do not wish to jeopardize this situation by writing critically about environmental
issues where the government is involved. On the latter, the big corporations
extensively use the media for advertising. Hence, the environmental coverage in the
media tends to be self-censoring to avoid controversial issues that could negatively
impact on advertising revenues (Hoffman 1996). Bearing in mind these structural
constraints, it is important to recognize that, with respect to the coverage of
environmental issues, the media have played a decisive role in raising public
awareness. In the 1970s:
it seemed that every day the national press trumpeted new pollution incidents,
protest movements, and court suits. The media generated a collective
awareness of the problem throughout the nation. It helped local groups know
that they were not alone in their concerns.
(Broadbent 1998:162)
For instance, the average space devoted to environmental issues in newspapers grew
from 0.4 per cent in 1960 to 2.8 per cent in 1972. News coverage on television
quadrupled between 1960 and 1970 (Barrett and Therivel 1991). This comprehensive
media coverage of environmental issues had the effect of shifting public opinion from
one of resistance to the recognition of the dangers of pollution to a situation where it
became acceptable to overtly protest. In the 1980s, domestic pollution issues per se
seemed to attract less media attention but from 1988–1989 onwards there was
increasing coverage of global environmental issues in most major magazines and
newspapers. Data from 1984 to 1998 on articles on environmental movements shows
a climax in 1992, at the time of UNCED, when there was something like 30 to 40
articles a month.
Similar patterns occurred with respect to reporting on general and global
environmental issues. For instance, in the Nikkei newspaper alone there were 1,539
articles on the environment and 1,321 on global environmental issues in 1992,
compared with 112 and 21 for the same topics respectively in 1988 (Wong 2001:
78). There was then a fall in coverage in the period 1993–1996, followed by renewed
media attention focusing on dioxin issues related to waste incinerators and pollution
related lawsuits (Vosse 2000:236–237). Increased media coverage continued and a
1998 survey by the Prime Minister’s Office on Global Environmental Issues and
Lifestyles revealed that nearly 90 per cent of respondents obtained information on
environmental issues from the television, 75 per cent from the newspapers,
14.6 per cent from the radio and 24.3 per cent from books.10 It is clear that the media
are playing an important role in increasing awareness and changing public attitudes
in relation to the environment.
The Japanese academic community is, and could be more, influential in shaping
public attitudes on the environment. Academics undertake scientific research on
environmental issues and participate in the policy-making process at all levels
through advisory councils (a privilege not permitted to most environmental groups
until recently). Nevertheless, up through the 1980s, on the whole they were:
bound by a network of loyalties and obligations. Controversial fields of

research are frowned upon, so they often remain conformist. Many academics
are funded by and have links with industry or government research institutes.
As a consequence, independence of thought and inquiry are limited.
(Barrett and Therivel 1991:3)
Furthermore, it has been argued that Japanese academics have no real or independent
position in national or international environmental policy-making, with many
preferring to live in the proverbial ivory tower (Wong 2001:74). These factors limit
the potentially effective role that academia could play in Japan in popularizing
environmental issues and their solutions. There have been many exceptions,
however. Foremost among them in the environmental field stands Professor Jun Ui.
While a professor of engineering at the University of Tokyo from 1970 to 1986,
Professor Ui hosted his famous monthly ‘Free Forum’ (Jishu Koza). The Forum
allowed academics, government officals, movement activists, foreign specialists and
many others to present reports on environmental problems and politics in Japan.
During this period, other academics played less-visible supporting roles, sometimes
as technical experts for local governments or environmental movements (Broadbent
1998).
During the 1990s, academic involvement continued and probably increased. The
Japan Land and Water Academy, the Japan Ichthyology Association and the Japan
Ecological Society, for instance, challenged the MoC with respect to the Nagara Dam
(Vosse 2000:99). Academics joined and became advisers for the new environmental
NGOs. Also, at international level academics such as Kazuo Sumi from Niigata
University and Yoshinori Murai of Sofia University have sought to challenge the
Japanese government in relation to major overseas aid projects (Hirata 2002:104).
The growing legitimacy of NGOs from the late 1990s increased the likelihood of
academic and professional involvement as members and advocates, as evidence in
this chapter indicates. All of the above suggest that the total configuration of factors
affecting civil society has changed significantly over the past decade.
Ecological modernization as cultural politics in Japan

Environmental movements and NGOs, to be effective, need to transform not only
government policies, but also the environmental ‘common sense’ or field of
discourse of a society. Transforming common sense requires, in essence, powerful
cultural change, sometimes affecting deep values. That is a form of cultural
politics—the clash between coalitions supporting different values and visions about
issues such as the environment (Hajer 1995; Rinkevicius 2000b). Through the
emergence of new ideas and dialogues, often carried by social movements and
NGOs, a transformation occurs. As movements turn into NGOs, and conflicts turn
into negotiations, tensions go down and inter-coalition learning can occur. In this
way, society can learn new collective goals through less conflictual means
(Rinkevicius 2000b: 174). Ecological modernization, if we extend it by the
application of neo-institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell 1991), suggests that
discursive changes in how people frame the concept of the environment can be an
important causal factor in itself. As a new common sense frame emerges, that is, as
protecting the environment becomes more taken for granted, environmental
protection can often proceed ‘behind the scenes’, within corporate boardrooms and
government bureaucracies, without overt protests or public clashes of interests. While
in democratic societies we often think of environmental politics as the ‘hard ball’
clash of clearly opposed interests, cultural politics can involve these more subtle
processes as well.
Often, in the process of cultural politics, leaders and activists struggle over the
definition of issues and the setting of agendas long before they reach widespread
public awareness. In the Japanese case, the transformation of general environmental
consciousness, preferences and habits in the 1990s is indicative of a new phase of

cultural politics. Up until the 1990s, the general strategy of the ruling triad was to
satisfy the public with growing material prosperity while minimizing their active
concern about political issues at home and abroad. Local political campaigns by the
LDP, for instance, involved mainly going around greeting (aisatsu) local people,
reminding them of local benefits brought by the politician, but not taking any stands
on national political issues (Thayer 1969; Broadbent 1998).
Despite the many barriers to an active and consequential public sphere, however,
new framings of problems do sweep through the media and gradually transform
public attitudes. For instance, the common conceptualization of ecological problems
in Japan has shifted from a focus on ‘public harm’ (kogai) to the ‘environment’
(kankyo), a much wider, systemic perspective (see Chapter 2). Analysis of keywords
used in the Asahi Newspaper, for instance, reveals increasing mention of terms such
as ‘sustainability’ (Broadbent and Shinohara 2003). Government policy statements,
such as the new Environment Basic Law of 1993, also increasingly use such words as
‘sustainability’ when presenting major policy goals. Ecological modernization theory
holds that over time the emergence of ideologies and new discourses within public
and political arenas will place increasing emphasis on environmental concerns (Hajer
1995; Dryzek 1997). In support of this, some studies have revealed a growing
environmental ethic amongst the Japanese public, with the focus of concern shifting
from mainly local environmental issues to national and global ones (see Chapter 6).
Mitsuda (1997) describes the Japanese public as having high levels of concern about
and responsibility towards the local environment. Dunlap et al.’s 1992 Gallup poll
found that, while 64 per cent of the Japanese public were highly aware of local
environmental problems, their concern for global environmental issues was the
lowest amongst developed nations. Only 44 per cent saw global environmental
problems as serious (compared with 57 per cent in the US and 64 per cent in the UK)
(Dunlap et al. 1992). Mitsuda concludes that: ‘the Japanese environmental attitude is
very different from that of citizens in other advanced societies’ (Mitsuda 1997:450).
However, more recent polls show a shift toward greater national and global concern
in the Japanese public (Chapter 6).
These changes fit well with the theory of post-materialism (Inglehart 1997) which
argues that, as societies become more prosperous and middle-class, their citizens will
place more emphasis on ‘non-material’ values such as generalized environmental
preservation. In the World Values Survey conducted by Inglehart, post-materalism is
correlated with respondent preferences for environmentalism and participatory
politics, as compared to economic growth and state leadership. Figure 5.1 shows that
the Japanese public have gradually become more post-material in their value
orientations (Broadbent and Shinohara 2003). This change in underlying attitudes
mirrors the emergence of a stronger civil society in Japan. The findings in Figure 5.1
are corroborated by other surveys, depicting a steady drop in support for ‘material
prosperity’ (mono no yutakasa) and rise to predominance in preference for ‘spiritual
prosperity’ (kokoro no yutakasa)—a parallel indicator of post-materialism.11
In addition, Imura (1997) claims that, particularly in the last decade, industry has
also changed its discursive practices toward ‘corporate citizenship’ and
Figure 5.1 Increase in post-materialist values in Japan 1981–1997 (source: World Values
Survey).
environmental responsibility.12 These trends interact with the intensifying concerns

over environmental risks to shape the contemporary environmental discourse. To be
maximally politically effective, of course, these broad new preferences have to
become political priorities and produce votes for environmental politicians. As
mentioned in Chapter 3, this is not happening as yet at the national level.13 However,
a new wave of electing environmentally friendly governors has begun, including
Governor Yasuo Tanaka of Nagano Prefecture, Governor Akiko Domoto in Chiba
Prefecture and Governor Hiroya Masuda in Iwate Prefecture (see Chapter 4).
Conclusions
From the 1960s onwards, environmentalism in Japan has been characterized by the
environmental movement’s mistrust of and constant antagonistic interaction with
Japan’s dominant ruling triad and its local branches, as well as the associated
dominant social values and structures. Over time, these relationships, and indeed the
entire society, have been in gradual transformation. At key stages, such as in 1970,
the wave of environmental protest movements proved to be a crucial stimulus to the
enactment of innovative environmental legislation. In contrast, throughout the 1980s,
no strong national civil society emerged around environmental issues. Coupled with
‘communitarian elite corporatism’ at the top, this societal structure worked to limit the
range of government environmental policies. However, in the past decade, the ruling
triad’s strategy of resolving crises through compromises, while rigorously excluding
citizen involvement, appears less effective. The reasons are threefold. First, as we
have argued, environmental problems and environmental discourses in advanced

industrial societies like Japan are becoming increasingly complex. Second, solutions
to complex problems increasingly require strong citizen involvement which links to
people being capable of organizing (NPO and NGO boom) and being properly
informed (freedom of information). Third, long-term economic recession has
impacted on the previously tightly knit institutional patterns (undermining the
legitimacy of the ruling triad) and created space for civil society with positive
implications for participatory environmental governance and Japan’s democracy in
general.
In the 1990s, public concern moved from the typical NIMBY ‘villagism’ of the
1960s and 1970s to urban-based cosmopolitan and more professional movements
voicing strong concerns about the global environment and how Japan can help. In
both cases, movements carry and amplify the presence of new ideas and values into
broader society. In response to this recent activism, the government and business
have gradually become more accommodating (compared to the 1970s)—sometimes
supporting and funding the activities of Japanese NGOs—and we begin to notice
informal and formal networks emerging between environmentalists, business,
academia and government. These patterns of environment related change are part of a
bigger process in Japan, that of internationalization and globalization of the entire
society. In this process, influenced by the insistent cries of movements and NGOs
about sustainability, even Japanese national and local governments and businesses
seem to be moving toward somewhat more positive practices concerning their
ecological responsibilities.
The analysis presented in this chapter has shown that each of the theoretical
perspectives on the growth of civil society in Japan—on the societal side, institutional
statism, social pluralism and social hegemony, on the environmental side, ecological
modernization, risk society and conflict theory—provide only partial explanations.
The institutional statist helps to explain how political openings were possible for
civil society associated with the LDP’s loss of power and with the 1990s challenges
to the legitimacy of the bureaucratic elite. The social pluralism perspective offers
interesting insights on the emergence of new values in Japan but the links between
industrialization/prosperity and the emergence of strong civil society is somewhat
tenuous in the Japanese context (i.e. the lag between the commencement of
industrialization and the emergence of new values is difficult to explain). The social
hegemony view that civil society is blossoming in the cities among the educated and
professional new middle classes is also very illuminating and implies that the
traditional hegemonic patterns are breaking down, providing new opportunities for
social activism. The risk society thesis offers insights on the influence of public
protest against toxic and radioactive pollutants and, beyond that, a new concern
about the global environment. Finally, the ecological modernization view on the
spread of a new ecological common sense through all classes and sectors is also
rather persuasive. All of the above represent important pointers towards the need for
more research and detailed investigation on the factors influencing the recent
development of Japanese civil society.
Let us end here with a very important question. Are the social movements and
environmental groups less marginalized now vis-à-vis the policy-making processes
than they were in the past? Vosse (2000:187) argues that most protest movements
remain ‘virtually excluded from the political decision-making process and from the
government and administrative internal information flow’. Other researchers support
this contention:
Government mechanisms still do not allow environmental NGOs to play a

genuine partnership role in achieving sustainable development and
environmental protection responsibly, effectively and fully. Specifically,
NGOs have very limited input into decision-making and policy-making and
feel that there is little meaningful dialogue between NGOs and government, at
the national level.
(Danaher 2002:159)
A number of reasons for this political alienation have been presented including the
lack of trust of citizen action on the part of the elite in Japanese society (elitist
superiority matched by citizens’ lack of efficacy), deficiencies on the part of the
environmental movements in formulating policy proposals, the movements’
tendencies to be too moderate and conservative, their lack of professionalism, and
psychological and attitudinal barriers that work against citizens becoming active and
environmentalists becoming political (Vosse 2000:294–298). On the other hand, it is
possible to argue as we have in this chapter that the 1990s was a watershed in the
development of civil society in Japan and that the levels of dialogue between
government, political parties and citizen groups on some issues have been
unprecedented (Schwartz 2003:14). Even though the Japanese state remains activist
and developmentalist, the new levels of permeability in the boundaries between state
and civil society create opportunities for potential partnership in areas such as the
environment.
Notes
1 There tend to be five main types of environmental protest groups—pollution victims,

pressure groups (e.g. neighbourhood associations, housewives associations, labour
unions), conservation groups (wildlife protection, cultural preservation), pollution
export protest groups and ad hoc militant groups (compensation seeking or anti-
development) (Iijima 1995). For insights on the links between feminism and
environmentalism see Danaher (2003).
2 The new environmental policies of the 1970s had some important positive effects
that have lasted to the present day (e.g. tough environmental quality standards).
3 Those that managed to gain non-profit status often had to accept a ministerial
retiree on to the board of directors (amakudari—descent from heaven).
4 The concept of ideal type is used here in the technical sociological sense, as
developed by Max Weber (Kalberg 1994). The ideal type classifies the main
tendencies of a set of observed actual social phenomena, but any single case within
the actual set can differ in some particulars. In this sense, the ideal type is a fuzzy
category.
5 A 1998 survey by the Japan Environment Agency found 11 suspected endocrine
disrupters in varying levels at 122 of 130 sites. Endocrine disrupters can impair
sexual development and immune functions, and cause malignant tumours. They
include chemicals used in detergents, resins and plastics. Nonylphenol, found in
76 per cent of the sites, is used in detergents and polystyrene plastic and inhibits
testicle growth in fish. The survey also found bisphenol at 68 per cent of sites and
iethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), which causes cancer in lab animals and is used to
soften plastics, at 55 per cent of the sites (Japan Times 1998).
6 The MoE advisory panel decided on 15 December 2003 to support the installation
of wind power plants in national and quasi-national parks, but only when their
impact on landscape and the ecosystem is minimal and the public benefits are
particularly significant. This a very interesting example of an environment versus
environment trade-off, indicative of how sophisticated the environmental discourse
has become in Japan.
7 The plan built on earlier forms of Japanese business-government cooperation with
the incorporation of greater civic participation. Industrial sector associations had
always negotiated the technical provisions of new regulations, including pollution
control, for their own industry. The rising levels of education and awareness among
Japanese citizens made such cooperation more likely to be effective than in less
developed countries.
8 Stopping Mitsubishi’s plans to build a salt plant in a Mexican bay used by grey
whales as a nursery; getting the Japanese government to withdraw its support for
World Bank funding for the Narmada Dam in India (Broadbent 2002a) and
preventing pesticide aid to Cambodia (Hirata 2002).
9 A study of environmental attitudes by Gallup affiliates in 24 countries found that
Japanese respondents had low levels of desire to participate in environmental
movements, with less than 5 per cent of the population belonging to environmental
groups (compared with 11 per cent in the US and 10 per cent in the UK) (Dunlap
et al 1992).
10 The survey was undertaken in November 1998 and covered 3,000 people over the
age of 20.
11 Survey by Sorifu, reported in Asahi Shimbun 31, Aug. 2002, available at the web
page: http://www8.cao.go.jp/survey/h 14/h 14-life/images/zu30.gif.
12 He does cite one study, however, that suggests economic growth and
environmental protection are not always viewed as potentially harmonious. A
survey of 2,754 companies conducted by the Japan Development Bank in 1992
reported that 64 per cent claim the costs of environmental protection have a large
(negative) effect on corporate earnings, while only 20 per cent perceive no cost
burdens due to the opportunities for growth in environmental markets. This
suggests that, at the beginning of the 1990s, there may have been a counter-
positioning of economic and environmental interests within the business
community, even if environmental protection is recognized as a necessary expense.
13 There is no national Green party, as in Germany, that gives a consistent political voice
to environmental concerns. Even pro-environment national politicians within the
LDP, such as Representative Takashi Kosugi, have been known to lose their seats.
88
6
Environmental values and ecological
modernization
Brendan F.D.Barrett
The mainstream conception of nature in Japan underwent three radical

shifts during the century…moving from the universal, hierarchical
concept of the Togukawa period, through to social Darwinian ideas of
competitive struggle and inevitable progress, to a celebration of a
uniquely harmonious, natural nationhood. To put it another way, that
conception metamorphosed from nature as place to nature as time to
nature as Japanese consciousness itself.
(Thomas 2001: x)
According to Cohen (2000), researchers involved in examining national

pre-paredness for ecological modernization tend to focus on institutional or economic
factors, with less attention paid to cultural and knowledge-based potentialities. Yet
all environmental action (international, national and local) depends critically upon an
underlying knowledge system coupled with strong pro-environmental values
exhibited by the citizenry. In this chapter, we apply a typology developed by Cohen
(2000) that identifies four environmental knowledge/value orientations (rational-
ecologism, Prometheanism, Arcadianism and ecocidal mysticism) to the mosaic of
contemporary environmental values in Japan drawn from the results of ten
international surveys undertaken between 1992 and 2000, perhaps one of the most
progressive periods of Japanese environmental policy development. We will attempt
to correlate levels of ecological consciousness with the existence of an ecological
modernization project in Japan. We will show how recent surveys of environmental
knowledge and attitudes tend to indicate that the majority of Japanese exhibit strong
ecological consciousness, although their knowledge of the causes and form of
environmental problems appears paradoxical. Interpretation of various survey results
using a bi-axial dimensional scale indicates that the environmental knowledge
orientation in Japan is clustered in a utopian, rustic categorization that is
characterized by strong ecological consciousness integrated with numinous-aesthetic
knowledge, combined with general pessimism about the role of science and
technology in solving environmental problems. This orientation appears to conform
to the viewpoint of Midori Aoyagi-Usui who describes Japanese environmental
values as falling within a traditional/altruistic category of environmentalism
(Aoyagi-Usui et al. 1999).
90 ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES
Conceptual framework
The conceptual framework applied in this chapter is based upon literature related to
the new environmental paradigm (NEP) and Inglehart’s post-materialism thesis
(Inglehart 1977, 1990). The notion of NEP, emerging as a replacement to the
contemporary ruling paradigm (human exceptionalism), was first proposed by
Pirages and Ehrlich (1974). This was further developed by Dunlap and Van Liere
(1978) and Milbraith (1984), who describe the dominant social paradigm as
involving belief in progress, technology, materialism, development and separation of
humans from nature. NEP, on the other hand, recognizes that humans are part of nature,
and that there are limits to physical growth and development. Similarly in 1976,
O’Riordan presented two ideological perspectives on environmentalism that differ not
only in their attitudes to nature but also in the morality that underlies their actions
(O’Riordan 1976). First, there is the ecocentric perspective preaching responsibility
for the environment, showing concern for values and ends, calling for low impact
technology (but is not anti-technological) and searching for stability through the
application of ecological principles (diversity and homeostasis) and natural laws.
Second, the technocentric perspective concentrates on technology, shows faith in
rationality and efficiency, and stresses the role of professionalism and expertise. The
technocentric perspective assumes that people are able to understand and control
events for their own purposes. This assurance extends to the exercise of science to
‘manage’ nature and the application of theories and models to manipulate and predict
changes in value systems and behaviour. Technocentrism focuses on the utilization
of management principles, since its optimism about the continued improvement of
the human condition allows it to be rather less troubled about the evaluative
significance of its achievements. Technocentrism can be seen as an extension of the
‘dominant social paradigm’ and ecocentrism as a reaction to it or more precisely part
of NEP. This essential dichotomy has since proven to be very influential in shaping
the early environmental discourses and interpretations of the interactions between the
societal and natural systems. Recent reviews of NEP show that it has played a key
role in promoting the incorporation of ecological perspectives into a range of social
theories (Dunlap 2002; Dunlap et al. 2000). Other researchers have explored the
relationship between environmental and other values. Of particular note is the work
by Paul Stern of the National Research Council and his colleagues who derive four
categories of environmental values defined as biospheric-altruistic, egoistic,
openness to change and traditional (conservation) which they find to be significantly
correlated with NEP (Stern et al 1993, 1995).
Within these frameworks, various survey techniques have been developed and
applied to measure the relative extent of the environmental transformation of society
(mainly in modern industrialized countries). In the United States, the most refined
version of these survey techniques has been applied when carrying out detailed
analysis of beliefs associated with NEP (Olsen et al. 1992; Dunlap et al. 2000).
Similar comparative studies have been undertaken on public knowledge and
environmental politics in Japan and the United States (Pierce et al. 1989). However,
the recent work by Cohen (2000) from the ecological modernization perspective
challenges the above-mentioned dichotomy by embedding (rather than polarizing)
optimism about science, technology and expertise within ecological consciousness.

Cohen’s work is interesting because it provides both latitudinal and longitudinal
scales along which to measure environmental knowledge variations. First, he argues
that people do not assimilate environmental data in a dispassionate manner but
instead are guided by their emotions, values and philosophies about life that can be
understood as their ‘ecological consciousness’. Levels of ecological consciousness
can vary from weak to strong depending upon the respondents’ willingness to make
trade-offs in order to protect the environment, their intellectual emphasis, loyalties,
affections and outcomes. Strong ecologically conscious individuals are very keen to
preserve the integrity of ecosystems and give precedence to lifestyles consistent with
responsible environmental stewardship. Second, ecological information is
unavoidably ambiguous and people absorb it in different ways depending upon the
specific interpretative filter they use to differentiate the consequential from the
inconsequential—what can be understood as their ‘epistemological commitment’.
While acknowledging that there are virtually limitless knowledge systems that act as
environmental information filters, Cohen identifies two broad categories. These are
rational-scientific and the numinous-aesthetic, representing a long-standing
dichotomy that has shaped human thought since the seventeenth-century scientific
revolution. Using these two axial dimensions, a new fourfold typology of
environmental knowledge orientations can be developed as shown in Figure 6.1.
This typology should not be accepted uncritically. Indeed, any typology brings
with it inherent problems on where to draw the boundaries and when explaining how
categories blend into each other. Quite clearly, individual typologies are usually an
eclectic mix of different ideas (see Pepper 1996). Nevertheless, bearing these
limitations in mind, we can understand Cohen’s work as an attempt to open new
ground on the comparative analysis of ecological modernization within the context of
a set of cultural and knowledge-based criteria. Cohen goes on to apply these
typologies to an assessment of the national character of the Netherlands in relation to
environmental knowledge. Utilizing a set of questions from the Eurobarometer
survey, he examines public perceptions in the Netherlands on the importance of
environmental protection, the beneficiaries of science and technology and the relative
deference to scientific expertise. Based on this preliminary analysis he concludes that
the Dutch display the following characteristics:
• robust confidence in the ability of science and technology to ameliorate

environmental concerns;
• resolute respect for science, tempered by reflexivity on the limits of rational
expertise;
• long-standing cultural conventions emphasizing tidiness, order and high sanitary
standards; and
• strong sense of righteousness.
Cohen concludes that the Dutch environmental knowledge orientation conforms quite
closely to rational-ecologism which is strongly consistent with ecological
modernization. Commenting on other similar studies, Cohen argues that the German
Figure 6.1 Typology of environmental knowledge orientations (Cohen 2000).
environmental knowledge orientation tends toward Arcadianism and the United States
shows a proclivity toward Prometheanism. He concludes by stating that more
detailed research would be required in order to substantiate these intuitive
observations. In this chapter, we will seek to apply Cohen’s approach to an analysis
of environmental values in Japan.
Changing values on the economy versus the environment

The Prime Minister’s Office regularly undertakes public opinion surveys on
environmental issues. For instance, in 1969 27.4 per cent of those surveyed agreed
with the statement, ‘Environmental pollution must absolutely not be allowed.’ By
1975, after the pollution debacle, this had increased to 51 per cent (Imura 2004).
Moreover, in a 1988 public opinion survey 25 per cent of respondents indicated that
global environmental issues were a serious concern. By 1990 this had risen to
42.4 per cent and by 1993 it was 55.6 per cent.1 In November 1998, from a survey of
3,000 people throughout Japan, nearly 80 per cent indicated that they are concerned
about the state of the global environment. A large number (around 50 per cent) also
consider that decline in the quality of the natural environment within Japan is one
explanation why the national situation is currently getting worse.2 These surveys are
very important in that they provide snapshots of the changing environmental values.
Table 6.1 International surveys on environmental attitudes in Japan
In this chapter, we will present results from ten major surveys listed in Table 6.1. While
the surveys show that the majority of Japanese are increasingly aware of the need to
protect the environment, the results are nuanced and hence careful interpretation is
required since contradictions are common, influenced by the temporal circumstances
and survey design.
One major source of information on environmental attitudes in Japan is the World
Values Survey (WVS) organized by Ronald Inglehart at the University of Michigan.
These surveys have been implemented in over 23 countries in 1981, 1990–1991,
1995–1996 and most recently in 2000–2001.3 Another major source of information
on environmental attitudes is the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP),
which has undertaken two rounds of survey (1993 and 2000) on public attitudes and
behaviour toward the environment in 19 countries.4 Before discussing these surveys,
however, let us begin by looking at the findings of a survey at the start of the global
environmental boom (as mentioned in Chapter 2) comparing public knowledge and
environmental politics in Japan and the United States (Pierce et al. 1989).5 The
findings from Japan are summarized in Tables 6.2 and 6.3. The results show that the
Japanese public is knowledgeable about environmental issues and support for the
NEP in Japan was high (higher than in the United States) at the end of the 1980s.
They show that support for the role of science and technology was lower in Japan
than in the United States. In explaining Japanese support for the NEP, it is argued that
some of the fundamental concepts it contains correspond to long-held fundamental/
traditional beliefs that underpin Japanese culture (perhaps associated with Shinto
religious beliefs). Another interesting survey was undertaken at about the same time
on Japanese perceptions of wildlife and its conservation (Kellert 1991). Results from
this survey reveal that Japanese appreciation of nature is very narrow and idealized,6
primarily focused on single species and individual aspects of the environment. The
researchers also argue that the ecological and ethical dimensions seem to be lacking
from the Japanese perspective.
Turning to the 1990–1991 WVS, Cohen (2000) argues that it provides a useful
tool for the analysis of ecological consciousness although narrowly based on the
respondents’ willingness to make abstract financial compromises. For instance, in the
1990–1991 survey 42.2 per cent of the Japanese respondents concurred with the
statement: ‘I would agree to an increase in taxes if the extra money were used to
Table 6.2 Percentage correct on knowledge of environmental science items among

various groups in Japan
Source: Pierce et al. (1989).
prevent environmental damage.’ As shown in Figure 6.2, similar and at times higher
responses are found in the ISSP 1992, WVS 1995 and 2000 surveys. These contrast
sharply with the findings from the 1997 Global Environment Survey (GOES) and the
ISSP 2000 which both show acceptance of higher taxes for environmental reasons
dropping well below the 40 per cent mark. Taking this further, Figure 6.3 presents an
indication of the willingness of the survey respondents to pay higher prices in order
to protect the environment. Clearly in both instances, the GOES survey respondents
proved less willing to accept personal costs associated with environmental
protection. One reason for this clear distinction relates to the wording of the
questions. In WVS 1995 and GOES 1997, for instance, specific mention is made of a
‘20 per cent increase in prices’, which compares with the ISSP wording of ‘much
higher’. Clearly, as the degree of abstraction decreases so too does the willingness to
pay. The wording with respect to taxation is similar in all of the surveys, which may
in part explain why the differences between the GOES and other surveys are not
significant on this topic. Nevertheless, we can note that, for the ISSP 1992 and 2000
responses, there is a significant fall in the willingness of the Japanese to pay higher
taxes for environmental protection purposes and this could reflect the impact of the
continued recession and a general concern that levels of taxation are already high
enough. While a total of 57.5 per cent of the respondents to the 1995 WVS indicated
a willingness to pay higher taxes in order to protect the environment (much higher
than the 1990–1991 WVS survey) and 28.1 per cent showed a propensity to pay up to
20 per cent more for environmentally friendly goods, in comparison to the other
countries the willingness of the Japanese is rather low for both tax and environmental
goods—placed seventeenth and twenty-third respectively.
Table 6.3 Distribution of Japanese public attitudes on items related to the NEP (in percentages)
Source: Pierce et al. (1989).

Figure 6.2 Willingness to accept tax increases for environmental protection purposes.
The 1992 ISSP survey also revealed a number of interesting insights on Japanese
attitudes toward the environment in comparison with predominantly European
countries.7 For instance, nearly 52 per cent of Japanese respondents indicated a
willingness to pay much higher prices in order to protect the environment (Japan
ranked fifth from 21 locations) and 43 per cent indicated that they would be willing
to pay much higher taxes (Japan ranked fourth). With respect to willingness to accept
a drop in their current standard of living in order to protect the environment,
44 per cent of the Japanese respondents indicated their willingness to do so (ranked
seventh). Little change occurred with respect to the willingness of the Japanese to
pay for environmental protection in the late 1990s. This view is reinforced by the fact
that the Dentsu International Values Surveys (DIVS) in 1997 and 1998 show a
marginal fall off from 56 per cent to 55.1 per cent in the response to the statement
that ‘it is acceptable for household expenses to increase about 10 per cent for the sake
for the environment’. The Japanese response in 1998 was lower than that of all of the
Asian countries surveyed (China 69 per cent, South Korea 75 per cent, Thailand 68
per cent, Singapore 66 per cent, Indonesia 67 per cent and India 85 per cent).
From a broader perspective, on the issue of economy versus environment the
results for the 1995 WVS8 provide some interesting perspectives on the
environmental attitudes of the respondents (Dentsu 1999). For instance, only
31.2 per cent of the respondents in Japan felt that ‘protecting the environment should
be given priority, even if it causes slower economic growth and some loss of jobs’.
This was lower than the other 22 nations covered in the 1995 WVS, with the
exception of South Africa.9 As shown in Figure 6.4, the desire to protect the
environment appears to have increased in other surveys undertaken in 1996 and
Figure 6.3 Willingness to accept price increases for environmental protection purposes.
1997, before falling off to around 34–36 per cent in the late 1990s, again reflecting
perhaps the impact of the on-going and deepening economic recession.
The crucial issue here, however, is the fact that, with the exception of the
GOES 1997 respondents, the majority of Japanese respondents (ranging from
42–53 per cent) are unable to choose between economic growth and environmental
protection. On the negative side, this may be indicative of feelings of uncertainty and
scepticism on environment-economy interactions while on the positive side it may be
representative of the recognition of the mutual embeddedness of these issues. The
findings presented in Figure 6.4 are not particularly illuminating in this respect but
may imply the public perception of a declining need for greater environmental
protection. The ISSP 2000 survey did, however, include an interesting question on
the relationship between economic progress and the environment. Respondents were
asked to indicate whether they felt that economic progress in Japan would slow down
unless measures were taken to better look after the environment. The positive
response to this question was high at 36.7 per cent and only 10.5 per cent disagreed.
Environmental values
According to the WVS 1995, 94.4 per cent of the respondents agree with the notion
that humans should coexist with nature (Japan was third in this ranking), 44 per cent
agree that we should emphasize tradition more than high technology (placing Japan
tenth under this ranking) and 24.9 per cent agree that humanity has a bright future
(placing Japan twentieth). Looking at the results from the ISSP 1992 as presented in
Figure 6.5, we also can note some interesting features of the Japanese perspective on
the environment, economy and science. The first is the generally negative view of the
Figure 6.4 Economy versus environment.

impact of economic development on the environment and second there is a clear
emphasis on the importance of respecting nature as well as the rights of animals.
Moreover, NHK Public Opinion Research Division’s analysis of the ISSP 1992
results indicate that the main distinctions with other countries are as follows:
• Japanese respondents rank second in the predominance of the perspective that

considers that human activity inevitably causes damage to the environment
(49.5 per cent).
• They rank last with regard to those that hold an optimistic view that scientific
progress can solve environmental problems (8 per cent), and highest in the
tendency to believe that animals should have the same moral rights as human
beings (74.1 per cent).
• With respect to knowledge of environmental problems, the Japanese have the most
accurate knowledge among the 21 locations surveyed.
• Japanese respondents tend to be more concerned about air pollution by
automobile exhaust fumes than respondents from other countries.
• Many Japanese answer in the affirmative, in principle, about bearing the costs of
protecting the environment to a certain extent, but only a few are willing to share
the expenses voluntarily.10
Figure 6.5 Japanese views on science, nature and the environment (ISSP 1992).
Comparison of the ISSP 1992 results with those for GOES 1997 and ISSP 2000
reveals considerable and unexpected consistency in most areas with one exception
concerning the potential for modern science to solve environmental problems, as
shown in Figure 6.6. A possible explanation for this is the fact that the GOES survey
used slightly different wording by asking if the respondents felt that modern
technology (no mention of science) will solve environmental problems reasonably
well.
NEP and ecological modernization

Results from the various international surveys clearly indicate that the majority of
Japanese citizens recognize the significance of environmental problems and the
necessity for ordinary citizens to act to protect the environment. Building upon this
survey work, Aoyagi-Usui (1999) presents a useful analysis of the ISSP data for
Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, the USA, Ireland and Italy in 1993 and
compares the results with a survey undertaken in Japan in 1995 by the National
Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES). Utilizing the NEP approach, Aoyagi-Usui
asked the respondents 14 questions and undertook a factor analysis of the results.
Figure 6.7 presents the findings from Aoyagi-Usui’s survey applying the
environmental knowledge orientations developed by Cohen (2000). Interestingly, the
results reinforce Cohen’s distribution of countries based upon intuitive observation
Figure 6.6 Comparison of the environmental values from the ISSP and GOES.
but it is unclear why countries like Italy and Ireland would fall within the ecocidal
mysticism quadrant (although both are strong Roman Catholic countries).
Interestingly, in commenting upon the environmental attitudes of the Japanese, based
on the findings of another comparative survey, this time for the Netherlands,
Thailand, the Philippines and Japan, Aoyagi-Usui states, as mentioned earlier, that in
Japan environmental values are linked ‘both to traditional and altruistic values’,
whereas values in the Netherlands are linked to altruistic values that are contrary to
traditional values or—perhaps put another way—that are ecologically modern
(Aoyagi-Usui et al. 1999). However, it is appreciated that more rigorous analysis
would be required before any firm conclusions can be made. With respect to the shift
within Japan towards a more post-materialistic type of society, Aoyagi-Usui analysed
returns from the GOES 1997 and classified the respondents as predominately post-
materialist (35 per cent) or mixed materialists/post-materialists (54 per cent) (Aoyagi-
Usui, unpublished) suggesting that Inglehart’s observed shift to a less material-based
society is well under way in Japan.
Japan compared to other ecologically modern states

It may be interesting to begin here by exploring the environmental value systems in
two ecologically modern societies—Japan and the Netherlands. Again, the GOES
1997 survey provides an excellent data source for this comparison and in this section
we draw on the work of Aoyagi-Usui et al. (1999) which compares the results of
surveys undertaken in Japan and the Netherlands between September 1997 and
February 1998 by NIES in Japan and the Institute of Social Research at Tilburg
University in the Netherlands. The survey included questions based on the ISSP 1992
Environment module, Inglehart’s post-materialist value system as well as from
Figure 6.7 Analysis of NIES data using Cohen’s environmental knowledge orientations.
Schwartz’s general value system. A regression analysis was undertaken of the results
in order to estimate the significance of variables for political activity, energy saving
and green consumerism in relation to values, education, gender and household
income. The results are presented in Table 6.4.
In this table, political activity refers to the signing of environmental petitions,
participating in environmental groups and demonstrations. Energy saving refers to
reductions in energy use for cooking, heating and cooling of households as well as
using public transport in preference to cars. Green consumerism relates to the choice
of products labelled as environmentally friendly, purchase of recycled materials and
so on. The analysis presented in Table 6.4 is very interesting and we can note that
only the notion of ‘progress’ as expressed through the environmental values (NEP)
items has a negative relationship in the Japanese responses reinforcing the results
from other surveys in this chapter identifying a slightly more pessimistic view from
Japanese respondents compared to other countries.
In analysing the findings, Aoyagi-Usui et al. (1999) argue that political activity in
the Netherlands has a very different, more individually oriented (egoistic) context
when compared to Japan. Moreover, they argue that the environmental movement in
the Netherlands appears to hold ‘counter-traditional’ values but that involvement in
green consumerism and energy saving (with their strong links to economic activity)
fits closely with traditional Dutch ways of living. Looking at the results for Japan,
Aoyagi-Usui et al. (1999) a’rgue that environmental values in Japan run contrary to
egoistic values (wealth and authority) as well as to the notions of progress in terms of
economic growth and technological development (closer to Cohen’s Arcadianism).
Another interesting comparative assessment of Japanese citizens’ interest and
concern about the environment was undertaken by Wilhelm Vosse from the
Table 6.4 Regression analysis of value and behaviour—Japan and the Netherlands
Source: Aoyagi et al (1999b).
Notes: + means positive significant (>10%) relationship and − means negative significant
(<10%) relationship. Logistic regression was used to estimate consumer behaviour and
elsewhere ordinary least squares estimates were used.
International University of Japan using ISSP 2000 Environment II survey raw data for
eight countries (Vosse 2002). Table 6.5 draws from this work and focuses on four
ecologically modern societies—Japan, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden. It is
clear that Japanese citizens share a comparable level of concern about the impact of
modernization on the environment to those in Germany and Sweden, and this is
significantly higher than the Dutch. However, all of the countries appear to reject to
the same degree the notion that people may be overly concerned about the impacts
of progress on the environment. On willingness to pay higher taxes, the Japanese and
the Dutch are very similar, while the Germans and Swedes appear less willing.
With regard to government action to protect the environment, it is clear that the
Japanese are highly dissatisfied with government performance when compared to the
other ecologically modern countries. Related to this, however, is a higher level of
distrust of government information on the environment when compared to the three
other countries and a comparatively lower trust in environmental organizations,
matched by the lowest participation in such groups. These results imply that Japan
remains unique amongst the ecologically modern societies with respect to the extent
Table 6.5 Comparison of ISSP 2000 results for ecologically modern states
of civic environmental advocacy and the relative degree of disaffection expressed by

citizens about their government.
Before concluding the analysis on the relationship between environmental values
in Japanese society and ecological modernization, let us briefly examine the values
of young Japanese citizens, the environmental activists of tomorrow.
Environmental values of young people in Japan

In the following sections the results of the surveys of Japanese youth are elaborated
and compared with the findings from similar surveys undertaken in Asia-Pacific
(Yencken et al 2000).11 To begin with, students in Japan (surveys were undertaken in
Iwate Prefecture and Tokyo) were asked their views on how to balance the hitherto
seemingly competing demands for economic growth and environmental protection.
By far the majority in both locations (83 per cent in Tokyo and 71 per cent in Iwate)
indicated that Japan should concentrate on protecting the environment even if it
means some reduction in economic growth.12 Likewise, students surveyed in the
Asia-Pacific region showed overwhelming support for environmental protection with

Tokyo and Iwate students in the top bracket and ranked first and fourth out of 12
responding locations. When asked whether economic growth must be at the expense
of the environment, 45–46 per cent of Japanese students indicated that they felt this
to be the case. These results were distinctly different from the rest of Asia with
Singapore giving the next highest response registering at 22 per cent agreement with
the above statement. This would suggest that Japanese students have a slightly more
pessimistic view than those from other countries regarding the prospects of
promoting both a prosperous economy and a healthy environment.13 This pessimism
is mirrored in surveys of adult views about the future with the DIVS 1996 to 2000
showing an increasingly pessimistic view held by the Japanese from around
36.6 per cent who felt the country would get better in 1996 to 31.4 per cent who felt
the same way in 2000. The proportion in 2000 who felt that the natural environment
in Japan would continue to deteriorate in DIVS was 47.9 per cent, ranked second to
the perceived general decline in morals and ethics.
The NEP approach was utilized in these surveys and, surprisingly for an advanced
technological society like Japan, only 15 per cent of students in Tokyo and
16 per cent in Iwate held beliefs consistent with the technological paradigm. By far
the majority supported the environmental paradigm though slightly more in Tokyo
(61 per cent) when compared with Iwate (58 per cent).14 These attitudes are in line
with those found elsewhere in Asia where most country responses were in the range
51–61 per cent indicating a pro-environmental belief. The survey also revealed that
Japanese students’ knowledge of environmental concepts and participation in
environmental activities in the past year were the lowest of all countries surveyed.
Moreover, the form of participation is essentially either litter collection or recycling.
This led the researchers to make the following comment:
The differences between beliefs, knowledge and behaviour of Japanese

students and other students are not…because Japanese students think that the
environment is less important than others do. The differences seem to stem
from norms about nature in Japanese society, youth culture in Japan, views
young people in Japan appear to have about their own society, and a possible
lack of exposure to or teaching about some aspects of ecology and
sustainability.
(Yencken et al. 2000:232)
This is a direct reference to the epistemological commitment of the Japanese students

and application of Cohen’s environmental knowledge orientations to the survey
results for the entire Asia-Pacific reveals that the students from all countries are
essentially located within the same quadrant. Figure 6.8 presents a simplistic analysis
of the survey results whereby the epistemological commitment is based upon student
attitudes towards science and technology as derived from the NEP questions. Their
ecological consciousness is based on the percentage of respondents placing priority
on environmental conservation over economic growth. While acknowledging that the
analysis is somewhat primitive in its current form, it is interesting to note that
Figure 6.8 Environmental knowledge orientations of youth in Asia-Pacific.
adopting this approach (with the arbitrary boundaries, i.e. less than or more than
50 per cent for each category) results in a cluster of most of the countries into the
Arcadianism knowledge orientation. This would tend to suggest that the
environmental orientation of young people in these countries was influenced by the
1960s—1970s brand of ecological consciousness reflected in the social movements
of that period (see Chapter 2). This is exemplified by strong scepticism related to
science and technology as well as Romantic reflections and nostalgic longing for
more traditional rural lifestyles: in other words, and perhaps not surprisingly,
utopianist yearnings that work to shape how young people interpret environmental
information. The only exception is Guangzhou in China which falls under the
rational-ecologism quadrant (i.e. ecologically conscious, optimistic and
technologically focused). In commenting on these results, it may be worth while
recalling Promethean and Arcadian knowledge orientations, as follows:
Prometheanism and Arcadianism have served as the warp and weft of

modernity. Public faith in science, technology, continual progress has regularly
been tempered by the critical scrutiny of more circumspect traditions…
Ecological modernization, the new voice of rational ecologicalism,
represents yet another attempt to merge our conflicting Promethean and
Arcadian tendencies.
(Cohen 2000:98)
Ecological modernization, as a policy programme, requires optimism in science and

technology, confidence in human resourcefulness and strong respect for expert
appraisal. Our analysis shows that these characteristics are relatively weak in the
youth of the Asia-Pacific region and particularly in the adults and young population
of Japan. Moreover, it is argued: ‘nations that have an environmental knowledge
orientation that privileges these notions in the interpretation of ecological information
will have a heightened capacity for pursuing initiatives that are consistent with this
pattern of reform’ (Cohen 2000:98). This would suggest, based on the simplistic
analysis presented above, that the current knowledge orientations in Japan are not yet
favourable to the widespread adoption (beyond the elite groups) of such a reformist
oriented programme as ecological modernization. Put more precisely, the 1990s
environmental orientation in Japan may be indicative of a general disposition to
assimilate ecological information in a manner that is not conducive to pursuit of
initiatives consistent with reforms attendant to ecological modernization. For
instance, the GOES 1997 indicates that only 46.3 per cent of the respondents
considered themselves to be well informed about environmental issues. Moreover,
WVS 1995 and 2000 indicate that 50–55 per cent have confidence in the
environmental movement, and ISSP 2000 shows that 40 per cent trust environmental
groups as a source of information on pollution. Conversely, results from most
surveys show clear political reticence on the part of the Japanese with regard to
participation in environmental group activities, with GOES 1997 revealing only
3.4 per cent of respondents had joined such a group with figures of 3.2 per cent for
WVS 2000 and 1.5 per cent for ISSP 2000. Looking at the levels of activism in Japan
and comparing them with those in the ecologically modern Netherlands, the ISSP and
GOES indicate that on average 20 per cent of Japanese are willing to sign petitions,
10 per cent are willing to give money and 2 per cent take part in environmental
demonstrations. This compares with 38 per cent, 68 per cent and 12 per cent
respectively in the Netherlands implying a very different form of environmental
activism. Partly explaining this situation, the results from some of the surveys show
that there remains a tendency for Japanese citizens to rely heavily on government
action in solving environmental problems. For instance, the DIVS 1996, 1997 and
1998 showed a gradual increase in the view that the government should tackle
pollution and environmental issues from 46.1 per cent to 57.5 per cent and
58.2 per cent respectively. This was higher than all other countries covered in the
surveys (i.e. China, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, India, the USA, the
UK, France, Germany and Sweden).
Effective solutions to contemporary environmental problems in Japan must start
from a sophisticated understanding of the issues as well as clear inputs from the
scientific community and as such the attainment of societal transformation along the
lines proposed under ecological modernization may necessitate new modes of social
learning that integrate various knowledge systems and opens up greater opportunities
for public engagement and action. Taking this argument forward could lead to the
supposition that failure to promote new forms of social learning and innovation could
lock Japan into an out-dated and antagonistic form of environmentalism that,
although effective in increasing awareness of environmental issues, falls far short of

creating the potentialities for their effective long-term amelioration.
Conclusions
Creating the shift to strong ecological modernization requires that greater
consideration be given to a ‘reflexive process of social learning, one that recognizes
the value inherent in scientific ways of interpreting the world, but simultaneously
maintains a critical scepticism about the virtues of abstruse forms of expertise’
(Cohen 2000). Evaluating the levels of ecological consciousness and behaviour is an
important contribution to our understanding of the relative potential in various
countries to embark on this societal transformation. The implications from the survey
results on Japanese environmental attitudes and behaviour are that the potential for
the widespread adoption of ecological modernization in Japan is currently low. A
remarkable aspect of contemporary values in Japan is the persistently pessimistic
outlook on the future of the nation, the natural and global environment combined
with an ambivalence towards the role of technology in driving forward social
progress and environmental change. Closely related to this is the manifest and
growing distrust of existing institutional structures. The results from the various
surveys imply that the potential to integrate environmental and economic concerns
more effectively is still not widely accepted (except by the youth) and appears to be
viewed in contradistinction by a large part of the population. Even more worrying is
the fact that the respondents across a range of surveys appear less willing to pay
higher prices and taxes for environmental purposes than ten years ago, although this
may be an expression of the current economic realities facing Japan. Nevertheless,
responses from both ISSP and DIVS do reveal a willingness of 30–40 per cent of
Japanese to accept cuts in their existing standard of living in order to protect the
environment. This, however, may relate to the more traditional value systems on
waste and frugality. Values surveys from both the Netherlands and Japan imply that
traditional values are a key to understanding environmental behaviour in the general
population. This becomes even more significant when we consider the fact that our
surveys of youth environmental values place them firmly within the Arcadianist view,
an orientation dismissed by Cohen as unsuitable for the propagation of the ecological
modernization project.
Notes
1 As discussed in Kanazawa (1996).

2 These findings are from the December 1997 survey of 5,100 persons undertaken by
the Prime Minister’s Office which showed that the poor economic situation was the
main explanation for concern about the current state of affairs with 72 per cent of
respondents indicating this factor. The second most important concern was the state
of public sector finances (58.5 per cent of respondents) followed by the
environment.
3 For more information see the World Values Survey web site at http://wvs.isr.umich.
edu/index.html. The 2000–2001 survey results were released to the public in 2003.
4 The 1992 and 2000 ISSP surveys of attitude and behaviour concerning the
environment were undertaken in Japan by the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research
Institute (Midooka and Onodera 1993; Aramaki 2001).
5 The survey in Japan was undertaken in Shizuoka Prefecture and had a sample size
of 1,500. A total of 694 completed responses were obtained.
6 The questionnaire survey was undertaken in 1986 and covered a random sample of
450 Japanese in Tokyo, Niigata, Iwate and Hokkaido.
7 These included Philippines, USA, Canada, Britain, Northern Ireland, West
Germany, East Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, Ireland, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Russia, Israel and New Zealand.
8 Coordinated by the Dentsu Institute for Human Studies.
9 The 23 countries included in the 1995 WVS were Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan,
Philippines, Australia, USA, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Peru,
Chile, Argentina, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Russia,
Slovenia, Croatia, Nigeria and South Africa.
10 The survey in Japan was undertaken in 1992 and covered 1,305 persons. Similar
surveys were undertaken in 20 other countries mainly in 1993 and are accessible
from the ISSP at the University of Cologne. The findings presented in this chapter
are taken from a summary report prepared by Kiyoshi Midooka and Noriko
Onodera of NHK.
11 In April 2000, we undertook a survey of 1,009 high school students (15–16 years
old) at 13 schools in Iwate Prefecture. The findings from the Iwate survey are
compared directly with those from a similar survey undertaken by Professor Satoshi
Ichikawa in 1996 at eight high schools in Tokyo covering the same age group. The
total number of students surveyed in Tokyo was 1,161. The Tokyo-Iwate
comparison is very interesting since it provides the opportunity to contrast urban
and non-urban environmental attitudes in Japan. Furthermore, comparisons are
made with the results of the Yencken et al. (2000) extensive study of young
people’s environmental attitudes in Asia-Pacific undertaken between 1996 and
1998 covering Brisbane and Melbourne in Australia, Bali, Brunei, China
(Guangzhou and Hong Kong), India, New Zealand, Singapore and Thailand.
12 These results are significantly higher than the corresponding results for adults from
WVS, DIVS and GOES surveys (only 31–53 per cent of Japanese adults felt the
same way).
13 In ISSP 1992, 56 per cent of Japanese adults agreed with the statement that
‘Economic growth always harms the environment’ and for ISSP 2000 the figure
was 44 per cent. This suggests even greater pessimism amongst the adult
population a decade ago than for the youth of Japan.
14 A survey of the environmental beliefs of adults in Shizuoka Prefecture was
undertaken in 1988 by Pierce et al (1989). The survey showed that 27 per cent were
pro-technological belief, 20 per cent neutral and 53 per cent pro-environmental
belief. The results from Tokyo and Iwate are roughly in line with this earlier study
and show a more pro-environmental belief on the part of the students.
Part 3
Issues and responses

110
7
Transformation of the development process
Brendan F.D.Barrett
It is difficult to find a more laboured attempt for legislative realization

than the case of environmental impact assessment in Japan which was
once given up in 1984 after more than 10 years of striving and then had
to wait a further 13 years before its final success in 1997.
(Tsuru 1999:150)
According to Hajer (1995:29), by accepting the existence of a common

environmental problem, ecological modernization seeks to bring an end to the
‘antagonistic debates between the state and the environmental movement that were
characteristic of the 1970s’. It acknowledges the role of new actors such as NGOs
and reflects upon the opening up of the policy-making process through important
tools such as Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). In this context, Japan entered
a new phase from June 1999 when the national EIA Law (enacted in 1997) came into
effect after two years of preparatory work. As the above quote clearly attests, the
history of EIA in Japan is long1 and efforts to legislate have been traumatic to say the
least.2 In the narrative encompassing the evolution of EIA in Japan, the main
proponents of legislation have included, amongst others, the Japan Environment
Agency (now MoE) and some of the more progressive local governments. The list of
those organizations that have fought against national, comprehensive, mandatory EIA
includes the Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren), policy-specialized
groups (zoku) within the LDP, the Ministry of Construction (now MLIT) and the
Ministry of International Trade and Industry (now METI) (Barrett and Therivel 1991:
96–99; Broadbent 1998:293–295).
In this chapter, we will look at the approach to development in Japan as
exemplified by the emphasis on major public works and examine the associated
environmental impacts. We briefly discuss some of the pressures for change in the
1990s and link this to the passage of the 1997 EIA Law. We will look at the actual
implementation of the legislation in the context of a number of recent decisions on
the EIA for major projects. Finally, the chapter addresses the question of why it was
not possible to incorporate requirements for Strategic Environmental Assessment
(including the appraisal of government policies and programmes) within one
integrated legislative package.
Importance of public works

Despite the emergence of new environmental discourses (Chapter 2), the reform of
national government structures (Chapter 3), the pressures for change from localities
(Chapter 4), the increasing effectiveness of environmental NGOs (Chapter 5) and the
spread of pro-environmental values (Chapter 6), the Japanese construction state is
alive and well. The traditional approach to development (over the past 50 years) has
been based on the formulation of Comprehensive National Development Plans (fifth
plan published in 1998 covering the period from 2002 to 2015 and entitled Grand
Design for the 21st Century) which function as a framework for the implementation
of sectoral plans for major public works covering airports, rail and road
developments, flood control, urban parks, sewerage, housing, ports, land
improvements and waste disposal facilities (Barrett and Therivel 1991; Maehara
2002). These include plans for the creation of a 14,000-kilometre arterial standard
highway network, two new bridges to link the islands of Shikoku, Kyushu and
Honsho (making five in total) and the development of the high-speed maglev train.
The costs of implementing the entire plan are said to be ‘incalculable’ (Maehara
2002). The development of major infrastructure projects has been central to Japanese
economic and political life for so long now that it has almost become a cultural trait
with its own vocabulary of doken kokka, kensetuzoku-gin and dango (Inoguchi and
Iwai 1987; Broadbent 2002a). The central aims were for Japan to ‘catch up’ with
other industrialized countries then to spread the benefits of economic growth across
the archipelago and more recently to ‘pump-prime’ the economy (Woodall 1996;
Igarashi 1999; Kerr 2001; Kingston 2001; McCormack 2001; Feldhoff 2002). While
appreciating that Japan maintains a lean government structure compared to other
countries in terms of expenditure (Jinno 1999), it has consistently maintained high
levels of investment in capital projects, even during the current economic recession
(6.6 per cent in 1990 and 7.8 per cent in 1997) and significantly higher than most
other industrialized countries (averaging around 2–3 per cent) (Kase 1999). There is
a geographic explanation for this high spending: ‘Compared to many Western
nations, Japan experiences far more natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods.
Also because Japan is extremely mountainous, construction costs for roads and
railways are high’ (Kase 1999:16).
There are around 560,000 construction companies employing around 6 million
people directly and 10 million more indirectly (Igarashi 1999; Feldhoff 2002). A
large part of the spending (around Yen 7 trillion—US$64 billion) on public works is
overseen by MLIT (Miyazaki 1999) and it is estimated that in 2000 the combined
public works spending of national and local government plus special corporations was
around Yen 34 trillion (US$300 billion) (Maehara 2002). Local communities in many
parts of Japan are dependent upon this expenditure that in turn is tied into the subsidy
system and the issuance of local bonds so that the local governments can cover their
costs. This, in turn, has resulted in major financial problems for many local
governments, and many cities including Osaka and Tokyo are on the verge of
bankruptcy (Jinno 1999; Igarashi 1999). Furthermore, the cumulative debts
for national and local government reached Yen 670 trillion in 2001
(US$ 6 trillion) (Feldhoff 2002; Maehara 2002). In its defence, MLIT argues that,
TRANSFORMATION OF THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS 113
throughout the 1990s, public works expenditure played an important role in

supporting the national economy and in creating employment opportunities during
the recession (MLIT 2002).
In the late 1990s, however, there was a significant shift in thinking in Japan with
considerable criticism levelled from various quarters about the efficacy of the
existing public works system (Igarashi 1999). Even the coalition government led by
the LDP began to raise concerns and a 2000 review3 of public works projects resulted
in the cancellation of over 200 projects (Maehara 2002). This change in attitude has
been influenced by increasing public dissatisfaction over the wasteful use of
taxpayers’ money, over the limited economic impact of public works expenditure, as
well as the questionable need based on under-estimated construction costs and over-
estimated demand (Maehara 2002),4 and over the need to balance capital investment
with equally important social welfare spending (Igarashi 1999). Increasing concerns
have been voiced with respect to the long-term implications of these large-scale
development projects wherein benefits to the local economy or in terms of
improvements in convenience and safety are off-set by the gradual decline of
traditional lifestyles, deterioration in the state of the environment, loss of cultural
assets and the general degeneration in quality of life (Kase 1999; Kerr 2001; Feldhoff
2002). In reaction, we witness the recent emergence of the ‘slow life’ movement in
Japan marked by the 2001 ‘Take-It-Easy Declaration’ (Gambaranai Sengen) made
by Governor Hiroya Masuda of Iwate Prefecture, and followed by around 20
municipalities from around the country embracing ‘Slow Life’ as their slogan in
August 2003 at a summit held in Gifu City (Japan for Sustainability 2004). It is also
associated with a significant increase in civic activism in the form of plebiscites on
such controversial issues as the construction nuclear power plants and major dams. In
Chapter 5, we introduced the role that local referendums play in enabling some
communities to reject projects that they considered to be environmentally unfriendly.
For instance, in January 2000, a local referendum was held in the city of Tokushima,
Tokushima Prefecture, to gauge local opinion on a plan by the Ministry of
Construction to construct a movable dam on Yoshino River. The result of the local
referendum, which asked whether voters were for or against the project, showed that
the turnout ratio reached 55 per cent, exceeding the 50 per cent necessary to make the
referendum stand, as stipulated by ordinance. Of the voters, an overwhelming
majority of 90 per cent voted against the project.5
Perhaps the most dramatic political result of this broad public resistance to the
‘construction state’ was the October 2000 election of Yasuo Tanaka as governor of
Nagano Prefecture. Tanaka ran on a platform of ‘no more dams’ (datsu damu) and
won the election. As governor, Tanaka quickly moved to cancel a large dam project
(Asahi. Newspaper, 16 November 2000) and opposed other dam projects. Governor
Tanaka, to demonstrate his openness to the public, moved his office to a ground floor
office fully open to public view. These policies won him great popular support,
surveyed at 70 per cent in 2001 (Asahi Newspaper, 24 March 2001). As a result, in
July of 2002, Governor Tanaka received a no-confidence vote from the LDP-
dominated prefectural legislature. A majority of prefectural citizens (61 per cent)
opposed the no-confidence vote (Asahi Newspaper, morning edn, 8 July 2002). He
resigned and ran for governor again. On 5 September 2002, Tanaka again won the
governorship with broad public support. The Nagano case illustrates significant
change of public opinion concerning the supposed benefits of construction projects
and a growing cynicism about the ‘construction state’ payoff politics driving many of
the projects. The dynamics of this growing wave of public rejection of major
development projects and protest resembles that of the 1960s: build-up of public
concern, official neglect and denial, accidents and health damage, intensifying citizen
protest and community political resistance. The main distinctions this time around
relate to the fact that this resistance is happening in a period of economic recession
and institutional reform. Nevertheless, the on-going transformation of the
development process, in order to make further headway, requires change in a large
number of areas including reform of the national planning system, amendment to the
supporting legislation, fiscal reform (i.e. of the subsidy system) and greater
decentralization of responsibilities and funding (Maehara 2002). According to some
commentators, ‘institutional changes appertaining to public works are thought to be a
pre-requisite to the political, economic, and ecological stability of the Japanese
system as a whole’ (Feldhoff 2002:41).
Signs of change on the ground

In Chapter 5, we mentioned a number of major projects that have been highly
contested and that have become identified with the new patterns of environmental
struggle in the 1990s (Vosse 2000; Broadbent 2002a; Danaher 2002a; Reimann
2003). These include the dam proposals on the Nagara (Aichi) and Yoshino Rivers
(Tokushima), the development of Expo 2005 (Aichi), construction on tidal flats at
Isahaya (Nagasaki), Sanbanze (Chiba) and Fujimae (Aichi), as well as the
reclamation of Lake Nakaumi (Shimane and Tottori). These projects share a great
deal in common in terms of the long lead times prior to initiation, the significant
economic and environmental costs involved and the extent of opposition from the
local communities and environmental groups (Choy 2000). For instance, the plan to
drain the Isahaya Tidal Flats was first conceived in 1952 (work started in 1986), the
Nagara River Dam was first proposed in 1960 and the Lake Nakaumi reclamation was
initiated in 1963. Experience with the unsuccessful protests against the Nagara Dam
and Isahaya Bay have been well documented (Choy 2000; Vosse 2000; Reimann
2003) and essentially focused on costs, economic benefits, need and environmental
impact (on fishing and local lifestyles, amongst others).6 The experience of these two
environmental campaigns is described as landmarks in the history of contemporary
movements in attracting media attention and widespread public support. The
outcomes have been interpreted as follows:
Although they ultimately failed in their ostensible objectives, the campaigns to

stop the construction of the Nagara River Estuary Dam and the Isahaya Bay
Land Reclamation Project succeeded in publicly calling into question
state policies that placed public works, construction projects and economic
development over environmental presentation and biodiversity. These
campaigns…paved the way for successes in other cases that came after them.
The unsuccessful fight against the Nagara dam, for instance, was followed by
the successful campaign to halt construction of a dam on the Yoshino River.
The failure to save the wetlands of Isahaya Bay led to more recent success of
similar campaigns to preserve the Fujimae wetlands in Nagoya Bay and
Sanbanze tidal flats in Tokyo Bay.
(Reimann and Forrest 2002)
The situation at Yoshino River is very interesting. The dam was proposed in 1982
and approved in 1998. At a cost of Yen 100 billion ($909 million), the project was
designed to replace the 250-year-old flood barrier (Choy 2000). Local opposition
claimed that the existing rock dam is sound and should be considered as an
archaeological treasure. They also argued that the new dam would harm fishing
grounds and wetlands in the area. As mentioned previously, a local plebiscite in
January 2000 rejected the project and it was cancelled in the review of public works
initiated by the national coalition government. The Lake Nakaumi reclamation project
followed a slightly different path in that it was halted in 1988 (with only about 40 per
cent of the work completed) due to declining demand for farmland and in response to
growing complaints from residents about the environmental impacts. Following
suspension, the local authorities were unable to reach consensus with local citizens
about the project’s fate and in the public works review this project was also cancelled.
From all of the projects covered in this section, only the experience at the Sanbanze
Tidal Flats can actually be described as a victory for the environmental movement (we
will discuss the outcomes at Fujimae and the Aichi Expo later). The protests against
development on the tidal flats at Sanbanze had been on-going for around 30 years
and had been successful in reducing the local government’s reclamation plans from
740 hectares in 1993 to 101 hectares in 2001 as well as extending the time required
for ecosystem studies. The groups were also very successful in attracting media
attention and when the then Minister of Environment Yoriko Kawaguchi inspected
Sanbanze in January 2001 she stated that ‘the project should be revisited from every
angle including curtailing the area of land to be reclaimed’ This proved to be a
significant milestone (Akaike 2002). Furthermore, the protest groups succeeded in
having their candidate, Akiko Domoto, elected Governor of Chiba Prefecture and in
September 2001 she announced in the prefectural assembly the abandonment of the
project on environmental grounds (Mainichi Shimbun, 26 September 2001).
Experience with these projects highlights a number of important lessons. First, it
has been noted that ‘the campaigns…revealed the need for the Japanese government
to increase participation, transparency of decision-making and accountability to the
public’ (Reimann 2003). The prolonged protests and their high visibility can be
linked to changes in national legislation (such as the amendments to the River Law in
1997 requiring public opinion to be taken into account when planning projects), to
1998 changes to the national administration’s approach to the auditing and evaluation
of major projects, and to shifts in the opinions of national politicians in all parties (but
mainly led by the opposition parties) on the wastefulness of many public works
projects and their negative impacts on the environment (Maehara 2002). They also
provide very strong evidence on the need to develop a more effective EIA system
where we find that: ‘In most cases, project plans are not tailored to address the
concerns of those who will feel the impact of construction…[and where] only in a
few cases have plans been suspended or abandoned’ (Miyazaki 1999:14). From 1984
to 1997, the Japanese EIA system was based on administrative guidance put in place
by the Cabinet Decision on the Implementation of EIA. However, the absence of a
national law did not impinge upon the practical implementation of impact assessment
and as of 1997 there were more than 60 EIA systems in Japan (Harashina 1998:309).
For instance, in the 1970s a large number of local authorities (starting with Kawasaki
City) began to develop their own EIA systems based on local ordinances and
guidelines (Barrett and Therivel 1991:101–106).
Need for a new EIA Law

The current round of EIA legislative activity began with the passage of the
Environment Basic Law in 1993, which was effectively Japan’s response to Agenda
21. Article 20 of EBL specified that the national administration should take
appropriate steps to ensure that projects with potentially significant environmental
impacts are subject to evaluation and that conservation measures are considered.
Accordingly, the subsequent Environment Basic Plan (EBP) of 1994 made four
related recommendations for the national administration, as follows:
1 Promote environmental appraisal for all government policies and programmes.

2 Ensure the assessment of projects at the planning stage.
3 Ensure the EIA of all physical projects that have significant environmental
effects.
4 Promote systematic research on EIA.
At the same time, OECD’s 1994 environmental performance review remarked upon
the fact that Japan was the only member country without a mandatory EIA system
and called on the Japanese government to make it a legal requirement for all major
public and private projects. Recognizing that international experience with EIA is
well developed with over 100 countries currently following some kind of EIA
procedures (UNEP 1996), the Japanese environmental administration was keen to
place Japan’s system on the same footing as those of other OECD countries
(Kurasaka 1999:78).7 Despite the lack of a national law prior to 1997, the number of
environmental statements produced annually in Japan is impressive. According to the
OECD, approximately 50 to 70 projects per year in Japan were subject to assessment
prior to 1984 (OECD 1993). From 1984 onwards, this increased to 100 to 200 per
annum. To get some idea of the scale of this activity, one estimate suggests that as
many as 3,000 impact assessments were undertaken between 1984 and 1997
(Harashina 1998:310). These statements were required under a variety of EIA
systems.8 The approach to EIA in Japan, however, was not without its critics who
called for national, mandatory EIA, the centralization of responsibilities in one
government agency and the assessment of policies as well as projects (Barrett and
Therivel 1991:231–234). Prior to 1997, the procedures for the implementation of an

impact assessment varied according to the applicable law or guideline for the project.
As such, it was possible for a project to be subject to different EIA procedures purely
on the basis of geographical location (i.e. the responsible local government) or by
project type (e.g. power station, road, bridge, airport, etc.). For example, the
developer of the Tokyo Bay Aqualine had to deal with three different EIA
procedures9 each with different provisions for public participation and expert review
(Barrett and Therivel 1991:218–220). Quite clearly, from the developer’s perspective,
there would be considerable merit in streamlining EIA procedures and creating a
uniform approach across the entire country. This could best be promoted through
legislative integration and the simplification of EIA procedures. In order to achieve
this goal, it would be essential for the Japan Environment Agency to tackle the thorny
issues of inter-ministerial coordination and jurisdictional infighting that had plagued
the early development of EIA in Japan.
There were, however, a number of additional reasons behind the Japan
Environment Agency’s efforts to legislate for EIA. First, although the quality of the
environmental assessments undertaken in Japan annually is generally high, there
have been significant cases of very low quality environmental statements. In these
instances, the developer’s approach to the EIA has generally been characterized by
unsystematic and incomplete assessment methods, surveys undertaken at
inappropriate times, models used but the assumptions not explained, restricted public
consultation and cases where authorship of the environmental statement is anonymous.
Second, some Japanese academics argue that EIA is simply a process of meeting
existing environmental standards not a process designed to protect the environment
(Shimizu 1987).10 Hence, in drafting legislation the Japan Environment Agency
needed to take into consideration how EIA could be most effectively utilized to
prevent negative environmental and social effects of development. Perhaps one of the
most effective ways to achieve this objective would be through a requirement that the
developer and decision-makers take into account various alternatives to proposed
projects including non-development. Third, EIA is about making ‘better decisions’
and fostering good design during project development by involving more parties in
the process in a democratically pragmatic manner in order to secure legitimacy of
those decisions (Dryzek 1997:86; Ootsuka 1998:29). Environmentally and human
friendly design is ensured through improved decision-making, inter-agency
coordination and public consultation/participation. Hence, the Japan Environment
Agency needed to take into consideration how to enhance the existing procedures for
public and relevant stakeholder participation in the EIA process. Taking the above
limitations into consideration, it is possible to argue that the pre-1997 EIA system in
Japan seemed to be fulfilling a valid, but not totally satisfactory, function of top-
down project level EIA coordination. Many of the problems with the system
stemmed from its narrow emphasis on pollution standards11 and also from the lack of
transparency (Harashina 1998:310). Those opposed to major projects tended to feel
that the decision-making process was unfair and that the impact assessment system was
merely a form of project justification (Barrett and Therivel 1991; Tsuru 1999). The
implementation of a nationally uniform, comprehensive and mandatory EIA system
can therefore be understood as a pre-requisite for the promotion of a shift in Japanese

environmental policy-making in order to move forward to the attainment of sustainable
development objectives and, perhaps, ecological modernization.
Development of the legislation

As shown in Table 7.1, in July 1994, six months prior to the publication of the EBP,
the Japan Environment Agency established an ad hoc research body called the
Comprehensive Research Group on Environmental Impact Assessment Systems
(CRG). This group was supported by a secretariat of government officials drawn from
ten ministries and agencies. After undertaking an examination of EIA systems in
Japan and abroad, the group published a report in June 1996. The report highlighted
numerous issues that needed to be addressed and urged the national government to
reconsider the current EIA system. Following the publication of this report, then
Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto asked the Central Environment Council (CEC) to
provide him with a report outlining an appropriate EIA system for Japan. The
Council held three national and six regional public hearings. In addition, over 500
people submitted their opinions by mail, facsimile and email. The negotiations were
far from smooth and at one point the dispute between the Japan Environment Agency
and MITI became politically charged. The Agency was keen to develop one
integrated piece of EIA legislation while MITI wanted to ensure that it retained
control over the EIA regulations related to power stations. Representatives from the
Agency argued that making exceptions for the power stations would undermine
public trust in the EIA system as a whole (Japan Times, 28 January 1997). However,
MITI was supported in its opposition to certain provisions in the EIA bill by other
ministries, as well as by the energy and construction sectors. In the end a compromise
agreement was made whereby MITI was required to support the bill and the
assessment of power stations would be covered by amendments to the Electricity
Utility Law. Moreover, separate provisions were incorporated in Articles 39 to 48
relating to the assessment of urban planning projects, ports and harbours in order to
satisfy the MoC. Prior to the submission of its report to the Prime Minister, the Japan
Environment Agency had ensured that there was basic ministerial agreement on what
elements would be included in the bill and what issues would be deferred to
guidelines that would be published following enactment.
Subsequently, a report outlining proposals for a new bill was handed to the Prime
Minister in February 1997 and a Cabinet Decision was made in March. The Japan
Environment Agency also ensured political support was in place for the bill (or
thatopposition would be limited) by holding special consultations with members of
the ruling government coalition. Moreover, key politicians from all political parties
were confidentially briefed on the bill and its implications. Shortly thereafter, the bill
was submitted to the national Diet where it was discussed in the Upper and Lower
Houses before enactment on 13 June 1997. Since the new law required amendments
to existing national and local regulations as well as the preparation of guidelines on a
wide range of issues, a two-year period of grace was allowed before the law would
take effect.12 During this period, additional consultations took place on the basic
Table 7.1 Chronology of the enactment and implementation of the EIA Law, 1994–1999
approach to EIA and in December 1998 the Japan Environment Agency published
guidelines that included provisions for (a) scientific comparison of the impact of
given projects with those of alternative proposals and (b) in instances when serious
impacts are anticipated, mitigation measures that should be taken to off-set the
environmental damage.
Characteristics of the EIA Law

The EIA Law can be considered as an important step in the transformation of the
development process toward a new, and potentially a more equitable, development
paradigm. In order to identify projects for which an assessment is required, the law
adopts a scaled list similar to the one used by the 1985 European Union Directive but
essentially closely based on the original EIA Cabinet Decision of 1984. The
emphasis of the legislation is on physical development projects with 14 project types
outlined including road construction, dam/river construction, railway developments,
construction of airports, construction of power plants, reclamation, waste disposal,
land readjustment, industrial complexes, development of new urban residential areas,
urban infrastructure development, the development of distribution complexes and any
other project of an equivalent nature to those listed. There are essentially two
categories of projects. Environmental assessment for Category 1 projects is
mandatory and thus screening is not required. Those projects that do not exceed
Category 1 thresholds but do exceed those set for Category 2 projects will be subject
to screening in order to enable the competent national or local authorities to
determine whether an EIS is required. The law also makes provisions for scoping
which ensures public involvement early on in the assessment process. A project
proponent is required to prepare a document describing how surveys, predictions and
the evaluation of environmental impacts will be undertaken, and to make this public
in order to obtain opinions from local government or those interested in
environmental conservation. By identifying the key issues that need assessment, it is
envisaged that considerable time-savings would ensue for the developer. The
proponent is also required to make the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)
publicly available. In a significant step forward, the local governments concerned and
anyone who is interested in environmental conservation may express their opinion.
This represents the realization of a much fairer system of public participation than
was possible in the past, by removing the earlier ‘regional limitation’ allowing only
local residents to express their opinions on the proposed project. Moreover, all
environmental conservation/mitigation measures need to be clearly specified.
Uncertainties with respect to the forecasts should be explained and the names of all
relevant parties involved in the EIA should be included in the EIS. In addition, non-
technical summaries must be prepared so that the general public can understand the
findings of the assessment. The final environmental statement is submitted to the
competent authority (a central government ministry) responsible for the consideration
of licences and the MoE may express its opinion, representing a potential centralizing
of EIA review procedures. The competent authority can require the proponent to
revise the final environmental statement if necessary. A monitoring procedure is
recommended in order to ensure re-evaluation of the projects once implementation

has commenced (Tsuru 1999:209).
Commentators on EIA in Japan have raised a number of concerns about the 1997
EIA Law. The first relates to the lack of provisions for policy appraisal and plan
assessment though Strategic Environmental Assessment. Although, the 1993 EBL
made specific provisions in Article 19 for consideration of environmental
conservation when formulating and implementing policies that are deemed to
influence the environment, such provisions were not incorporated in the EIA Law,
perhaps because of the perceived wider ramifications for development patterns in
Japan and also potential opposition from the pro-development ministries. Instead, a
new Comprehensive Research Group on SEA was established by the Agency and
included academics, local government officials and one journalist. The group met on
ten occasions between July 1998 and July 2000. An interim report on their
deliberations was published in July 1999 and a final report one year later in August
2000. A new round of deliberations of the research began in 2001. The MoE was
initially planning to propose a new SEA Law in 2001 that would include provisions
for a ‘watchdog’ to be established to ensure proper consideration of environmental
conservation issues. As yet, no legislation has been forthcoming. In the absence of a
national law, some local authorities are already studying the possibility of
introducing EIA for policy and plans including Tokyo Metropolitan Government and
Saitama Prefecture.
Related to SEA to some extent is the issue of how to consider alternatives to
specific development projects and the issue of whether or not a development is
needed. The 1997 EIA Law makes no reference to the requirement for the developer
to consider alternative designs and alignments (and even no development) or the
project need within the assessment process. While in the past some assessments have
considered alternatives (such as the Kansai International Airport), in others no
alternatives have been proposed during the EIA or in more extreme cases new
alternatives have been proposed after the rejection of the initial site as a result of
extensive public opposition, for example Ishigaki Island Airport (Barrett and
Therivel 1991). Both project need and the consideration of alternatives are the most
contentious issues of any assessment and, in legislating for EIA, the environmental
administration took the decision at some point to exclude these factors and to try to
incorporate them in subsequent guidelines and best practices.
Moreover, Tsuru (1999:209) remarks on the fact that EIA in Japan remains
effectively a form of self-assessment with the developer in the cases of major
public works projects also being the decision-maker on the results of the assessment.
While the MoE’s review role was somewhat strengthened, the potential for
independent review of some kind was not included. Although measures have been
taken to bring forward the stage, and to widen the scope, of public consultation, the
opportunity to further enhance this process, say through developer allocation of funds
for participation or through experimentation with new participation methods (citizen
juries, forums and so on), was missed. Even under the new procedures, public
consultation still takes place after the decision to proceed with the project has been
taken (i.e. included in sectoral plans) and the form of public consultation is limited
(i.e. public explanatory meetings). Here there is clearly a case of political inequity
within the EIA process and the MoE has only recently begun to address this issue
seriously through an initiative called ‘sankagata assess’ (participatory assessment)
designed to increase innovation with the use of public participation techniques,
although there is still a long way to go before reaching some of the more
sophisticated approaches found in other parts of the world (Fischer 2000).
On the actual impacts of given projects, the 1997 EIA Law is vague on how best to
consider the definition of impacts and also the local-global dimensions. This may,
however, be the subject of subsequent guidelines.13 Related to this is the need to
consider the cumulative and secondary impacts of development. Most EIAs to date in
Japan have tended to present each impact (air, water, noise, waste, etc.) in separate
chapters of the assessment and have failed to look at the interaction of these impacts.
While this has been remedied to some extent by the provision for ‘Comprehensive
Assessment’ within the EIA Law, it appears that practical experience with the
development of methods for cumulative assessment in contemporary Japanese EIAs
is somewhat limited but growing with each practical implementation.
Recent practical experience with EIA

In this section, we refer to the cancellation of one project and the alteration of
another as indicative of a new phase of development in Japan. The first project is the
Fujimae Tidal Flats Reclamation Project, located in the centre of Nagoya port area on
an internationally recognized wetland area providing an important habitat for
migratory birds. Initial planning for the Fujimae site began in July 1981 with the local
authority arguing that no alternative site was available and that in line with existing
good practice every effort should be taken to dispose of the waste within the
boundaries of the municipality. In July 1993, the Nagoya City Land Development
Corporation purchased the land, effectively committing the local authority to the
development of the site, and a project plan was developed in December 1993. Under
the plan, roughly 4 million cubic metres of waste was to be disposed of on-site,
including 0.5 million cubic metres of dredged mud. Construction of the protection
wall was to begin in 1999 with the disposal of waste beginning in 2001. The EIA
process, initiated in January 1994, was challenged by a group of local citizens called
the Save Fujimae Association with support from the Japan Wetlands Action
Network—JAWAN (Danaher 2002a). However, the local authority was determined
to proceed with the project and applied in August 1998 for permission to reclaim the
bay area under the Public Waters Reclamation Act. In December 1998, the Japan
Environment Agency intervened directly expressing great concern about the potential
negative implications of the proposed project and likely ineffectiveness of the
mitigation measures. The Ministry of Transportation (now MLIT) subsequently let it
be known that it would not approve the project if the Agency disapproved (Suzuki
1999). The local authority had no choice but to back down and in January 2000
announced the abandonment of the project. The unprecedented cancellation of the
project may represent a landmark event in the approach to EIA in Japan and the
strong stance adopted by the Japan Environment Agency may in part be explained by
the desire to ensure legitimacy of the new EIA legislation about to take effect in June
1999 (Tsuji 1999).
Another very important influence may have been the enactment of a new
legislative system to promote the creation of a recycling oriented society, providing
considerable legitimacy for Nagoya City Council to issue a ‘Declaration of a State of
Emergency for Waste Management’ in the city that called upon local citizens to fully
participate in the achievement of waste reduction measures. The original target for
waste reduction in 2000 was 258,000 tons. Data from the city authority for the 1999
and 2000 period indicate the successful implementation of these policies with waste
falling from 1,020,000 tons in 1998 to 920,000 tons in 1999 and 800,000 in 2000.
Subsequently, the waste levels fell again to 760,000 tons in 2001 (representing a
25 per cent decrease over three years). At the same time, the local authority
announced its intention to look for an alternative waste disposal site. In order to
maintain the momentum, in August 2000, the city enacted its own ‘Container/
Wrapping Recycling Ordinance’ and produced a steady stream of guidance for
citizens on measures to reduce waste. The search for a new disposal site continues.
The second example is the Aichi Expo 2005, also located in Nagoya. Aichi
Prefectural Government originally began preparing for an exposition after the failed
bid to host the 1988 Olympics. The Government of Japan informed the BIE
Secretariat in April 1996 of its desire to host EXPO 2005. This bid was backed by a
formal Cabinet Decision in December 1995, confirming that the exposition must be
preceded by an EIA. Nearly one year later, in November 1996, the 2005 World
Exposition Plan on the theme ‘Beyond Development: Rediscovering Nature’s
Wisdom’ was published. The plan identified a candidate site located in semi-natural
woodland southeast of Seto City. The Japan Association for the 2005 World
Exposition was established in 1997 and work commenced on the detailed
development of the plan for the exposition (taking place from March to September
2005—a period of 185 days). Although the proposed development does not require
assessment under the 1997 EIA Law, MITI issued a notification (tsutatsu) in March
1998 to the Association requesting that an EIA be undertaken according to
procedures similar to those under the EIA Law. In April 1998, the Association issued
an ‘Implementation Plan’ for the EIA that corresponded closely to the scoping report
as required under the new law. Under this plan, the proposed Expo site covered
around 540 hectares of land at the Kaisho area (near Seto City) divided into three
zones. It was estimated that the Expo would attract over 25 million visitors (roughly
275,000 per day).
There was considerable local public opposition to the project and a number of
leading conservation groups such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, Japan Wild
Birds Society and Nature Conservation Society of Japan began to take an active
interest in the outcome of the Expo EIA. The draft environmental statement for the
initial plan was issued in February 1999 and extensive consultations were undertaken
(see Figure 7.1). In addition, surveys in June-July 1999 revealed the presence of an
endangered species (goshawk) on the project site. The NGOs pointed out that their
earlier surveys had already highlighted the plight of the goshawk and other
endangered species, but that these surveys had been ignored and that under the Japan
Figure 7.1 Procedures for the Aichi Expo 2005 EIA.
Environment Agency’s own technical guidelines a two-year survey is required of the

goshawk in its habitat (WWF Japan 1999). Subsequently, revisions were made to the
project plan by the Expo Secretariat. The area utilized for development at Kaisho was
reduced and an extension was added with the inclusion of the Aichi Youth Park. At
this stage, however, no reductions in the number of visitors were envisaged. The EIS
for the Expo was then prepared and opened to the public in October 1999. The Japan
Environment Agency presented its opinion on the plan within 25 days and MITI
responded within 90 days. Again explanatory meetings were organized in the locality
and extensive public comments received. Nevertheless, significant concerns about
the potential negative environmental impacts from the development remained and the
BIE General Assembly in Paris, lobbied by international environmental NGOs, also
indicated that it was unhappy about the existing proposal. As a result, the Association
in consultation with local citizen groups worked to significantly revise the plan in
December 2000. The final version of the Expo plan significantly reduces the
development area in Kaisho to 15 hectares and in the Aichi Youth Park to 158
hectares, and revises the predicted number of visitors to 15 million (180,000
per day).
Although in some respects this is a major step forward for EIA in Japan involving
consideration of alternatives in the assessment process, with hindsight and as
experience in other countries shows, the Association could have handled the process
more systematically from the start through greater integration of Expo planning and
assessment (Harashina 2000). There are many weaknesses with the Expo assessment
compared to best practice internationally, but for Japan it could represent the
beginning of a transition towards a new form of development process that is more
participatory and sustainable. However, there are important lessons to be learnt from
this case and the question remains as to how effectively experience at the Expo 2005
can be transferred to other projects in Japan and enhanced through future
assessments. As one member of the International Impact Assessment Association
(Japan Branch) stated, the Expo assessment, if it did not try to reflect best
international practice, would hardly be representative as a ‘model for the 21st
century’ (Usami 2000).
Conclusions
According to Dryzek (1997:86), EIA is an important tool in the repertoire of
administrative rationalism. Throughout the world EIA systems have been designed to
enable decision-makers to consider environmental issues and scientific evidence that
might otherwise have been overlooked. While the procedures for public consultation
may in many instances be more symbolic than real and while the influence of the
information obtained via EIA on the final decision may be difficult to trace, the entire
process is important in altering the context in which project decisions are made. In
effect, EIA works to enhance the stakeholder dialogue surrounding project
determination in a way that makes environmental and democratic values more visible
than before (Dryzek 1997:87). Some might claim that the Japanese national
environmental administration showed renewed leadership in developing this
legislation and that it is a positive step, an endeavour worthy of support. There is
indeed considerable evidence to support this proposition. However, so much work lies
ahead and there is still so much to achieve with respect to the further enhancement of
EIA in Japan (and elsewhere). While welcoming this initiative, we must also be
careful to evaluate how well the EIA Law is delivering improved decisions and
ensuring a better-protected environment. We should also judge it in the context of the

state of the art globally.
There are two factors that we need to take into consideration. First, it appears that
the national environmental administration pushed for an EIA Law at all costs. This
meant weakening the original proposals with a view to making subsequent
amendments and with plans to provide additional guidance to further strengthen the
legislative basis for EIA in Japan. This is a very pragmatic and effective approach
that appears to have had some positive long-term effects by raising the bar on how
environmental conservation matters are dealt with. Second, the complex nature of the
innovation within the Japanese administrative system and the need for extensive and
time-consuming negotiations at the ministerial level explains why the national
environmental administration may have adopted a strategy of minimalist mandatory
change (i.e. the 1997 law was based on the lowest common denominator of existing
EIA legislation, rather than incorporating the best of some of the more ambitious
local systems that were also around at that time). There appears to be a sophisticated
and multifaceted milieu of interministerial relations in Japan that undermines and
stifles more ambitious reformist efforts. This is gradually breaking down but in its
contemporary form may in part explain why the environmental administration could
not develop a more advanced system of EIA and environmental management that
would be the envy of the world. Rather, the gradual improvement of EIA in Japan
will take place through an incremental process based on practical successes during
implementation, because ‘seeing is believing’.
Notes
1 Some commentators claim that EIA in Japan pre-dates the US National

Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) of 1969. They argue that the development
of EIA in Japan can be traced as far back as 1965 when MITI, motivated by the desire
to avoid pollution incidents like Yokkaichi and associated political disturbances,
began conducting EIAs in areas where industrial development was planned (see
Barrett and Therivel 1991:94).
2 Efforts to legislate for EIA began in 1972 with the passage of a Cabinet Decision
on ‘Environmental Conservation Measures Relating to Public Works’. In the period
to 1984, the Agency made seven attempts to introduce legislation, each of which
was countered by opponents’ claims about potentially negative economic
implications, the possibility of an ensuing development slowdown and fears of
increased litigation. The opponents argued that the time was not ‘ripe’ for an EIA
law and the social milieu not yet ‘mature’ enough for the associated public
participation requirements (Tsuru 1999: 154–155). The Agency finally gave up in
1984 and another Cabinet Decision was issued entitled ‘On Implementation of
EIA’.
3 The review used various criteria including the fact that the project had not
commenced within five years of approval; had not been completed within 20 years
of the planned completion date; or had been under construction for more than 20
years.
4 A good example is the Tokyo Bay Aqualine (as examined in Barrett and Therivel
1991) which had an initial price tag of Yen 900 billion, that grew to Yen
1.44 trillion, and with actual use running one-third below the projected level
(Maehara 2002).
5 The only referendum to buck the trend took place in July 1999 and concerned the
construction of a new quarry (or expansion of the existing quarry) near the town of
Konagai, Nagasaki Prefecture. The result of the referendum gave a majority of over
50 per cent to those for both the construction of a new quarry and expansion of the
existing quarry (Foreign Press Center 2000, Local Referendums Broaden Scope in
Japan, as found at: http://www.fpcj.Jp/e/shiryo/jb/0006.html).
6 At a cost of ¥en 150 billion ($1.4 billion), it is argued that ‘need arguments’ for the
Nagara Dam (based on the assumption that there would be demand for 9.1 million
tons of water per day) proved to be somewhat inflated (current consumption is
6.3 million tons per day). Moreover, the Nagara River Dam has saddled local
authorities with sizable debts (something like Yen 145 billion ($1.3 billion) shared
by three local entities). As for Isahaya, the MoC initially calculated that the
reclamation would generate Yen 103 (93.6 cents) in new economic activity for
every Yen 100 (90.9 cents) spent, and recently estimated that the project’s rate of
return has slid to a barely positive 101 Yen. Critics maintain, however, that the
payback has dropped into the negative range and will be just Yen 58 (52.7 cents)
for every Yen 100 (90.9 cents) spent (for more details see Choy 2000).
7 The US National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was enacted in 1969 and the
EU Environmental Assessment Directive was enacted in 1985 and came into effect
1988.
8 Under the 1984 Cabinet Decision on the Implementation of Environmental Impact
Assessment, the major national ministries established EIA guidelines. In addition,
some key national laws were amended in the early 1970s. These included the Port
and Harbour Law, Reclamation of Public Waters Law, City Planning Law and
Electricity Utility Law (Barrett and Therivel 1991). From 1984 to 1997, the total
number of projects assessed under requirements set out in the 1984 Cabinet
Decision was 384. The remaining 2,700 or so EIAs were prepared in accordance
with local systems or the national laws referred to above. As of December 1995, six
prefectural authorities (Hokkaido, Saitama, Gifu, Tokyo, Kanagawa and Hyogo)
and two designated cities (Kawasaki and Kobe) had enacted EIA ordinances.
Another 37 prefectures and seven designated cities had issued EIA guidelines
(Japan Environment Agency 1998).
9 The Kanagawa Prefectural Government’s EIA Ordinance, Chiba Prefectural
Government’s EIA Guidelines and Ministry of Construction Guidelines.
10 The verb for ‘meet’ in Japanese is awaseru and thus they refer to EIA as
‘Environmental Awasement’.
11 In Japan, the main concern of environmental policymakers in the past focused on
human health impacts and pollution control. Environmental issues that are difficult
to quantify, like the effects of pollutants on the ecosystem, were until recently
given less attention.
12 Similar to the three years allowed for implementation of the EU Directive on EIA.
13 Officials from the Agency could counter the above criticisms by stating that, in
view of the historical difficulties of legislating for EIA, the approach adopted had
to be somewhat strategic and a decision was taken to leave all of the controversial
issues to subsequent guidelines and ordinances. Thus in December 1997, the Japan
Environment Agency produced guidance on criteria for determining Category 2
projects, for the items to be covered in the assessment and the procedures for
scoping. The guidance proposed new items for assessment such as (a) amount of
contact between people and nature, (b) waste disposal volumes, (c) impact on
groundwater and geology, as well as (d) biodiversity. Moreover, emissions of CO2
need to be calculated and judged against emission targets set by central and local
government which is an important example of Japan’s response to the requirements
of the Kyoto Protocol as discussed in Chapter 9. Very interestingly, the developer
is required to ‘scientifically’ compare the impact of the project with those of
alternative projects including the possibility of alternative technologies and
techniques. This represents a significant move on the part of the Agency to
eliminate one of the biggest weaknesses of EIA and it would be interesting to
review practical experience with the implementation of this particular aspect of the
guideline. Finally, projects which are likely to have ‘significant effect’ on the
environment must off-set the anticipated damage with mitigation measures or
habitat/environment recreation. All of these measures are non-mandatory and were
reviewed after five years (i.e. by December 2002).
8
Ecologically modern industrialization
Brendan F.D.Barrett and Andrea Revell
A recycling oriented economic system is an economic system in which

measures for the environment and conservation of resources are built
into every aspect of industrial and economic activity, and in which the
social and behavioural standards that were accepted in conventional
economic society, which generally gave little thought to measures for
conservation of environment and resources, are converted into a society
in which the environment and the economy are integrated.
(METI, February 2002)
Recent statements like the one above imply that the most powerful industry oriented
governmental body, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), views the
integration of environmental and economic concerns as central to the future
development of Japan. As we mentioned in Chapter 1, some commentators consider
that environmental performance of Japanese industries has broadly followed a path
consistent with ecological modernization (see e.g. Jänicke et al 1996; Dryzek 1997;
Gouldson and Murphy 1997; Christoff 2000; Gille 2000; Gouldson 2000; Mol and
Sonnenfeld 2000; Fisher and Freudenburg 2001; Mol 2001b). In this chapter we will
explore some of the empirical evidence on eco-efficiencies1 in Japan’s industrial and
energy sectors. Policy measures to increase eco-efficiencies in the economy by
reducing material, water, land and energy intensities (as well as the demand for
transportation) are a central component of ecological modernization (Jänicke et al.
1996; Cohen 1997). In this chapter, we will begin with a discussion of trends in the
environmental performance of Japanese industry and then focus on the question of
eco-efficiencies mainly in relation to resource consumption patterns. This will be
followed by a discussion of the emergence of a recycling society and then we will
look at patterns of energy consumption as well as the growth of new energy sources.
We conclude with a discussion of the role of small and medium-sized enterprises in
the attainment of ecological modernization related goals for Japanese industry.
The following sections aim to develop the debate on Japan’s status as
environmental laggard or front-runner (see Chapter 1) by looking at the complex
relationships between environmental reforms, industrial environmental conservation
measures, eco-efficiencies, waste management, energy policy and the environmental
practices of Japanese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), a sector which
130 BRENDAN F.D.BARRETT AND ANDREA REVELL
comprises 99 per cent of Japanese industry (JSBRI 1999) yet which previous studies
on ecological modernization have curiously ignored.
Environmental trends in Japanese industry

The environmental performance of Japanese industry has been the subject of
considerable and contested debate (Ui 1992; Moore and Miller 1994; Fukasaka 1995;
Wallace 1995; Jänicke et al 1996; Imura 1997; Richards 1997; Rosenbluth and Theis
1999; Cruz et al. 2002; Yoshida 2002). For instance, it is argued that between 1970
and 1980 the Japanese steel industry cut air pollutant emissions by 30 to 80 per cent,
producing steel with 40 per cent less energy expenditure than the United States
(Moore and Miller 1994) and that:
By 1989, Japan had installed three times as many flue-gas cleaning systems as
the rest of the countries in the industrialized world combined. The number of
systems for removing sulphur dioxide rose from 323 in 1972 to 1,810 in 1988.
Selective catalytic reduction systems for NOx control jumped from 5 in 1972
to 379 in 1988.
(Moore and Miller 1994:42)
As a result, Japanese industries were emitting less SO2 and NOx pollutants per capita
by 1989 than any other industrial nation. Building on this work, it has been argued
that due to the efforts of Japanese industry between 1971 and 1996 ambient SO2
levels and carbon monoxide (GO) dropped by 85 per cent and 75 per cent
respectively (Cruz et al. 2002).2 Looking at other aspects of industrial performance,
Jänicke et al. (1996) compare the manufacturing sectors of Japan, Germany and
Sweden, and examine the trends in energy consumption and water consumption, as
well as environmental performance in different manufacturing sectors between 1971
and 1987 and find that some of the most significant industrial energy savings have
taken place in Japan. They conclude that ‘ecological modernization [in Japan] has
thus far mainly taken the form of increases in the efficiency of energy and water use
and in the extent of recycling’ (1996:17).
Contrary to common belief at the time such measures actually reduced production
costs and created new markets (Moore and Miller 1994; see also Schreurs 2002:3).3
The overall impression is that Japanese production practices became increasingly
resource efficient as a result of the government’s energy conservation and pollution
control policies, with certain industrial sectors (such as iron, chemicals, steel and
automobiles) being particularly effective in reducing energy intensities and pollution
emissions. Fukasaka (1995) supports this view, noting that strong GDP growth
(around 57 per cent) between 1980 and 1991 was accompanied by significant
reductions in SOx, NOx and CO2 as a result of the government’s energy
diversification policies and emission control standards. According to the OECD,
urban air quality in Japan continued to improve in the 1990s and the strong
decoupling of air emissions from GDP was reinforced (−5 per cent for SO2, NMVOCs
and CO between 1990 and 1999, while GDP rose by 13 per cent). Among OECD
ECOLOGICALLY MODERN INDUSTRIALIZATION 131
countries Japan has the third lowest emission intensity (kilogram/unit GDP) for SOx
and the lowest for NOx. Reductions have also been witnessed in relation to other
pollutants (−60 per cent for total dioxin emissions, −45 per cent for benzene, −43 per
cent for trichloroethylene and −50 per cent for tetrachloroethylene from 1995 to
1999) for major emitting industries (OECD 2002).
Effectively Japanese industry led the way internationally in the shift from end-of-
pipe solutions towards preventative technologies and life-cycle analysis models (Mol
and Sonnenfeld 2000). The Japanese approach to pollution prevention involves a
creative mix of command-and-control instruments (emission standards,
environmental quality standards and technology designations), market-based
mechanisms (compensation levies—polluter pays principle, emission taxes and
emission permit trading) and voluntary measures (Matsuno 2003). Perhaps most
striking has been the use of pollution control agreements between business and local
governments/communities which complement the local regulation and guidance with
measures designed to reflect industry-specific pollution prevention goals, the
condition of the local economy and the local social context. By the 1990s, over 30,
000 voluntary agreements between industry and local governments were in place
(Imura 1998). Most of the early agreements in the 1960s dealt with major industrial
facilities (over 1,000 employees), peaking at about 450 agreements per year in 1974,
after which there was a drop-off to nearly 200 a year in the 1980s, before a second
peak in the late 1980s/early 1990s in response to newly recognized threats such as
high-technology pollution.
Other studies, however, present contrasting evidence on the form and relative
impact of environmental innovation within Japanese industry. For instance, it is
argued that energy savings from the 1970s to early 1990s were less the outcome of
national policies and more an environmental gratis effect resulting from the fast
growing and highly flexible industrial structure (e.g. restructuring and the decline in
energy intensive industries) attempting to cope with rising energy prices and a heavy
dependency on imports (Jänicke et al. 1996). As mentioned in Chapter 1, there are
also those who claim that Japanese industry has ‘exported pollution’ to neighbouring
Asian countries as manufacturing plants have moved to nations with less stringent
environmental standards (Ui 1989c; Imura 1997; Taylor 1999). Moreover, others
argue that Japanese corporations have been able to avoid costly abatement measures
because political institutions are biased in favour of business interests and oppose any
serious, sustained effort to regulate environmental pollution (Rosenbluth and Theis
1999). As a result, highly visible and relatively easily regulated air pollution has been
curtailed but less visible and trickier water, toxic,4 soil and groundwater pollution
have been more difficult to tackle (Yoshida 2002). Regulations in these areas have
been slow in coming with the prevention of groundwater pollution delayed until
revisions to the Water Pollution Control Law were made in April 1997. Prevention of
soil contamination was not addressed until the May 2002 enactment of the Law
Concerning Countermeasures against Soil Pollution. Finally, the OECD states that,
whilst Japan has achieved a strong decoupling of economic growth from pesticide,
fertilizer, NOx and SOx emissions, environmental gains have been more than off-set
by additional impacts arising from an expansion of output. In the 1990s growth in
energy demand cancelled out energy efficiency gains, resulting in a 5 per cent
increase in the energy intensity of the economy and an increase in absolute CO2
emissions. Similarly, the growth in private consumption and waste generation has
cancelled out many material efficiency gains (OECD 2002). Let us discuss these
contrasting perspectives further within the context of the eco-efficiency debate.
Eco-efficiency in Japan
Perhaps the best discussion of the links between eco-efficiency and ecological
modernization can be found in Cohen’s work where the former is described as: ‘the
implementation of industrial practices that can improve corporate profitability by
redesigning manufacturing processes to reduce the production of wastes at the source
so as to avoid remedial treatment’ (Cohen 1997:1). One of the main promoters of the
eco-efficiency concept is the World Business Council for Sustainable Development
(as explained in DeSimone and Popoff 1997). Eco-efficiency has become a
consensus strategy amongst multinational corporations and has been embraced by a
number of governments including Japan,5 as exemplified by the 2002 White Paper on
the Environment published by the Ministry of the Environment (MoE 2002a).
Presenting data for the period from 1965 to 1999, the White Paper looks at, amongst
others, final energy consumption, CO2 emissions, domestic waste generation, NO2
and SO2 concentrations as well as energy eco-efficiencies. The entire period is sub-
divided into three stages. Stage one covers the period to 1973, the occurrence of the
first oil crisis. In this stage, as Japan experienced rapid economic growth, eco-
efficiencies generally declined for energy and waste but increased for NO2 and SO2
as regulations were implemented to control air pollution (see Figures 8.1 and 8.2).
The second stage covers the period to 1985 when the price for oil fell and here we
find that, as economic growth slowed, eco-efficiencies improved for all indicators
mainly due to the impact of energy and resource conservation measures. The final
stage covers the period from 1985 to 1999, where we see continued improvements in
eco-efficiencies for NO2, SO2 and waste contrasting with only minor improvements
for CO2 and energy. Overall, this data is supportive of the findings from the OECD
environmental performance review of Japan which argued that in the 1990s there
was a Very strong decoupling between conventional air pollutants from GDP’
at −82 per cent for SOx and −22 per cent for NOx (OECD 2002:23).
With respect to implementation of policy measures to promote eco-efficiency in
Japan most of the expertise lies with METI. In April 2002, the Ministry established a
new committee under the chairmanship of Professor Ryoichi Yamamoto dealing with
‘Factor Eight’ as a means of improving resource productivity (Bleischwitz 2002).
Professor Yamamoto of the University of Tokyo, in close collaboration with METI,
has undertaken much of the research on eco-efficiency in Japan. His work analyses
the improvements in eco-efficiency for LNG-fuelled combined cycle power
generation systems and for thermal storage type air conditioning systems. He also
looked at the performance of a number of eco-designed products and found
improvements ranging from factor 2 for the Toyota hybrid car to factor 10 for the
Sharp liquid crystal display (LCD) TV and factor 20 for Honda’s Intelligent
Figure 8.1 Changes in eco-efficiencies for final energy consumption, CO2 emissions and
domestic waste.
Note: Prepared by the Ministry of the Environment based on the ‘Annual Report on
National Accounts’ published by the Cabinet Office, ‘Comprehensive Energy Statistics’
published by the Agency of National Resources and Energy and ‘Emission of Domestic
Waste and Processing Status (Performance of 1999)’ published by the Ministry of the
Environment.
Community Vehicle System (ICVS) (Yamamoto 2000). Yamamoto concludes that
Japan is now in a new phase of promoting environmental protection through the
development of eco-efficient products and services, as well as green purchasing
(Yamamoto 2001). Another influential figure with respect to eco-efficiency and
green productivity is Professor Hiroshi Komiyama, also from Tokyo University and
chair of METI’s materials flow committee (Bleischwitz 2002). Professor Komiyama
has developed ‘Vision 2050’ designed to promote green productivity by increasing
energy efficiency threefold compared to today’s levels, creating recycling systems
and doubling the use of renewable energy sources (Bleischwitz 2002; Itochu 2002).
As a result of the work of these and other influential thinkers, the concept of eco-
efficiency has gained much ground in Japan in the past decade and has been
associated with the emergence of such concepts as zero emissions, green productivity
and factor four (Mitsuhashi 1998; Watanabe 1999; Yoshida 2002; Hotta 2004). A
large number of projects have been implemented across the country with direct
involvement from local government and business. Interesting examples include the
Fujisawa Eco-Industrial Park developed by Ebara Corporation (a manufacturer of
precision electronic devices and environmental equipment), the Kokubo Eco-
lndustrial Park in Yamanashi Prefecture promoting collaboration between a number
of firms including Panasonic, Fujitsu and Pioneer (Morikawa 2000) and the
Figure 8.2 Eco-efficiency rates for other air pollutants. Note: Prepared by the Ministry of
the Environment based on ‘Annual Report on National Accounts’ published by the
Cabinet Office and ‘Air Pollutions Status Report’ by the Ministry of the Environment.
Kitakyushu Eco-Industrial Park (Bleischwitz 2002). The latter is also referred to as

an Eco-Town project, initiated by METI in 1997 in order to encourage development
of environmentally sound community systems involving industrial and public
sectors. Initially, ten Eco-Towns were launched with METI financial support in the
prefectures of Hokkaido, Chiba, Gifu and Akita and in the cities of Sapporo, Iida,
Omuta, Uguiszawa, Kitakyushu and Kawasaki (Morikawa 2000). Other influential
initiatives relate to the formation of zero-emissions clusters with the best examples
being that of Yakushima Island (a model area for material recycling and the
development of renewable energy based on the zero-emissions concept) and
production of eco-cement by Taiheiyo Cement Corporation utilizing ashes from
municipal waste incineration and sewage sludge (Morikawa 2000; Kai et al. 2002).
These eco-industrial initiatives have been matched by the widespread adoption of
environmental management systems (EMS) within Japanese corporations. For
instance, Japan now boasts the highest number of ISO 14001 accreditations globally,
with over 13,800 entities obtaining certification by December 2003.6 Concerns have
been expressed however about the need to increase participation from the small and
medium-sized enterprises in EMS processes in order to promote vertical and

horizontal coordination amongst firms (Bleischwitz 2002). We will explore this
matter further later in this chapter.
All of the above illustrate how eco-efficiencies are improving in some areas
matched by performance enhancements with respect to eco-designed products up to
factor 20 in some cases. Many major eco-industrial community projects are under
way and represent the search for a new development model bringing together various
stakeholders including government, businesses and local communities. However,
these projects are still in their early days and analysis of their environmental impacts
is limited. Moreover, they tend to focus on solid waste management/technology issues
rather than on environmental management from a more holistic, industrial ecology
perspective (see Morikawa 2000). In this context, our main concern relates to the
potential for recent efficiency gains to be undermined by the return of economic
growth. In particular, it has been shown that, even during economic recession, energy
efficiencies have been weakened by the expansion of consumption in different
sectors, e.g. personal computers in the commercial sector, air conditioners in the
residential sector and large sports utility vehicles in the transportation sector (MoE
2002a). As with most industrialized countries, household size in Japan is declining,
from 3.22 persons per household in 1980 to 2.67 in 20007 and this is accompanied by
associated impacts on the environment.8 Further, of the 46 million households in
Japan in 2002, 86.4 per cent owned a car, 63.3 per cent owned personal computers
and 81.4 per cent owned video players. Moreover, whilst in 1970 around 10 out of
100 homes had an air conditioner and 25 out of every 100 homes had a colour TV, by
1999 this had increased to 208 and 226 respectively (Masuzoe 2001). These trends
imply that further greening of Japanese industry may be unlikely to bring about
significant environmental gains unless some kind of policy framework is in place to
respond to the environmental impacts associated with major consumption pressures.
Ecological modernization is less effective in providing explanatory sub-theories on
environment related consumption patterns and on how innovations might result in
environmental improvements (despite the efforts made by Spaargaren 2000a;
Spaargaren and van Vliet 2000). It appears, however, that the Japanese are
responding to this dilemma in their own unique way through the promotion of
something called the junkangatta shakai—recirculatory society.
Emergence of the recycling (recirculatory) society

The notion of the recycling society first began to take shape in Japan in 1991 with the
publication of a report by the Japan Environment Agency entitled ‘Towards a
Recycling Society in the 21st Century’ calling for the recovery, recycling and reuse of
materials and energy as well as the reduction of the nation’s environmental load
through measures to encourage the frugal use of resources and the selection of
environmentally benign resource options (Japan Environment Agency 1991b). At
this time, it was estimated that only 10 per cent of the 2 billion metric tons of
materials used each year by Japan were actually recycled (Gotoh 1997). By 2000,
Japan was responsible for the extraction of 1.84 billion tons of natural resources
(0.7 billion tons or 38 per cent from overseas) with 0.23 billion tons of recycled
materials, or roughly 11 per cent of the total resource inputs (MoE 2002a). Japan
generates around 450 million tons of waste each year (50 million tons of municipal
and 400 million tons of industrial waste) (Yoshida 2002). For municipal waste this
translates into per capita waste generation at around 410 kilograms per year (daily
rate of 1 kilogram of waste per capita), lower than Norway, Germany and the
Netherlands. Nevertheless, Japan faces a serious shortage of landfill capacity with
only 12.3 years of municipal landfill space remaining in 1999 and 3.7 years
remaining for industrial wastes (OECD 2002). As a result, unlike in other
industrialized nations, the primary method of disposing of general waste is
incineration (77 per cent of waste was incinerated in 2000) and this has led to
considerable public concerns over the associated dioxin emissions (Kerr 2001; OECD
2002:107; Yoshida 2002). Container and packaging wastes such as cans, PET bottles
and plastic/paper boxes account for about 60 per cent of the total municipal refuse.
The rate of waste recovery by municipalities and community groups stood at around
13 per cent in 1999. Recovery rates for individual wastes vary greatly. For instance,
in 2000, 84 per cent of steel cans, 80 per cent of aluminium cans, 78 per cent of glass
bottles, 57 per cent of used paper and 34 per cent of PET bottles were recovered
(MoE 2002a).
Effective waste management in Japan is complicated by three key factors. First.
Japan is dependent on the import of both natural resources and finished goods,
particularly consumer electronics. In 2000 alone, Japan imported 9.8 million
televisions, 2.5 million personal computers and 2.3 million video cameras. These
represented roughly 96 per cent, 14 per cent and 19 per cent respectively of domestic
sales (METI 2002). Second, in the 1990s there was a steady increase in the export of
used goods from Japan (including automobiles, air conditioners, televisions and
microwaves) and recyclable materials (e.g. plastics, paper, iron, aluminium and
copper scraps) to countries such as China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea
and Hong Kong. Third, domestic illegal dumping of industrial wastes is a major
problem, with some 1,027 cases in 2000, representing around 400,000 tonnes (MoE
2002a) and tens of thousands of unreported waste sites all over the country. Central
and local governments have been heavily criticized for supporting illegal dumping by
means of limited policing and coverups.9 Well-known examples include Teshima (Seto
Inland Sea),10 Mitake town (Gifu Prefecture) and Hinode town (Tokyo) (Yoshida
2002). The outcome at Teshima was instrumental in bringing about revisions to the
2002 Waste Management Law that now holds firms liable for dumping violations if
they are irresponsible enough to leave their waste in the hands of illicit contractors. All
of the above represent significant obstacles to the attainment of a ‘recirculatory
society’ in Japan.
In recognition of and response to the above problems, it is significant that nine laws
were recently enacted or revised at the national level. These include: 1) the Basic Law
for Promoting the Creation of a Recycling Oriented Society (enacted and enforced in
2000); 2) the Law for Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources (revised in
2000 and enforced in 2001); 3) the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law
(enacted in 1995 and enforced in 2000); 4) the Home Appliances Recycling Law
(enacted in 1998 and enforced in 2001); 5) the Food Recycling Law (enacted in 2000
and enforced in 2000); 6) the Construction Materials Recycling Law (enacted in 2000
and enforced in 2002); 7) the Green Purchasing Law (enacted in 2000 and enforced
in 2001); 8) the Revised Waste Management Law (revised in 2000 and enforced in
2001); and 9) the Automobile Recycling Law (enacted in 2002 and enforced from
2004). The new law on automobile recycling is noteworthy since it introduces for the
first time in Japan the concept of extended producer responsibility (EPR), and
specifically defines the roles and responsibilities of car manufacturers. A total of 72
million four-wheeled vehicles are registered in Japan, and 5 million are scrapped
every year. At present, more than 70 per cent of used cars are recycled, but the
Japanese government aims to raise the car-recycling ratio to 95 per cent by 2015.11
The enactment and revision of so many laws has led the national government to hint
at similarities between the 1970 Pollution Diet and the 2000 Recycling Diet as
indicative of a new age of environmentalism in Japan (METI 2002). The general
policy direction is the so-called 3-R approach; reduce (decrease wastes generated
during production), re-use (re-utilize parts of products) and recycle (convert wastes
into raw materials). A whole set of rules have been put in place to require businesses,
local governments and citizens to adopt this approach. The recycling guidelines have
been developed covering some 35 items of production and 18 types of business,
estimated at around 60 per cent of municipal wastes and 50 per cent of industrial
wastes. This is an impressive suite of new laws and according to Yasuo Tanabe,
Director, Recycling Promotion Division at METI:
industry is making progress in reduction, using less resources, extending product

life, and constraining the emergence of waste. In the product area, the volume
of resources used per unit for containers and computers has been pared back by
10 to 20 percent in recent years. Companies are competing fiercely to produce
smaller, lighter and slimmer products. Once scarcer than in US and Europe, the
number of repair businesses is also picking up. In plants and factories too,
efforts to reduce industrial waste toward the goal of zero emissions are making
rapid progress. In response to guidelines issued by the Industrial Structure
Council in June 2001, manufacturing majors and other players in 12 industries
have committed themselves to reducing the final volume of industrial waste by
20 to 60 percent by 2010.
(see: http://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/index_environment.html)
The MoE also plays a key role in waste management and in March 2003 published the
Basic Plan for Establishing a Recycling-based Society. The plan includes measures to
limit natural resource consumption and to increase recycling. Numerical targets are
included in the plan to boost resource productivity (GDP divided by natural resource
inputs) by 40 per cent, to reduce per capita daily waste generation by 20 per cent and
to halve the amount of waste going to landfills from 56 million tons in 2000 to
28 million tons by 2010 (MoE 2003c). It is still early days but clearly Japan has
embarked on a major process of institutional innovation related to waste management
that could be described as a prime example of ecological modernization.
Nevertheless, according to METI, a number of limitations need to be addressed

including the relative difficulty of treating different business wastes, associated costs,
the state of development of recycling facilities, and perhaps most importantly the
implications for performance of the Japanese economy globally and the potential
ramifications of the recycling society for imports and exports within the framework of
WTO rule-making (METI 2002:3). Interestingly, the promotion of a recirculatory
society also includes emphasis on ‘thermal recycling’ in Japan, or waste to heat
schemes, which brings us to the next topic of discussion.
Energy industry/energy consumption

As in many other countries, the Japanese economy made the shift from coal to
petroleum in the late 1950s only to be faced with the problems of the high sulphur
content in heavy oil and the need to stabilize supplies (Fukasaka 1995). The need to
respond to the associated environmental problems culminated in the formulation of a
whole new legislative and institutional framework in the 1970s (Gresser et al 1981;
Hoshino 1992; Tsuru 1999). Various fiscal measures were introduced at this time
including low interest government loans, preferential tax treatment and special
depreciating schemes for the industrial sector. The result was massive investment by
the industrial sector in technological innovation to ensure compliance with
environmental standards. Reductions in the levels of SOx were possible through the
introduction of desulphurization technologies (Ren 2000). However, it was the impact
of the 1973 oil shock that had the. greatest impact on Japan’s reliance on petroleum
products and its consumption (Barrett and Therivel 1991). A number of initiatives
were launched in the late 1970s to try to reduce Japan’s dependency on petroleum
including the search for alternative energy sources, diversification of energy sources,
promotion of energy conservation, and the implementation of research and
development on new energy sources. For instance, in 1979, the Energy Conservation
Law established standards for all energy-consuming sectors and called for an
increase in energy efficiency in consumer products. As a result the Japanese economy
was better placed than others to weather the second oil crisis of 1979 and it is argued
that the introduction of these energy policies in no way hindered the performance of
the Japanese economy (Fukasaka 1995).
An often-quoted statistic concerns Japan’s ability to reduce by 25 per cent the ratio
of energy consumption to GDP from 1979 to 1987 (OECD 1994). As a result, Japan
has one of the lowest ratios of energy consumed per unit of gross domestic product
(GDP), as well as one of the lowest energy intensity rates per capita (OECD 1994;
IEA 2003). However, we can note that more recently, between 1990 and 1999,
Japan’s total final energy consumption increased by 16 per cent, during a time of
economic recession, exceeding GDP growth by 2 per cent (OECD 2002: 222–223).
Moreover, while Japan’s overall electricity consumption increased by 24.6 per cent in
the 1990s, that of the residential/commercial sector increased by 42 per cent.12
Interestingly, the growth rate per capita of energy consumption was 13 per cent, close
to that of GDP growth for the same period. The explanation for these trends given by
the OECD is that Japan is witnessing a continuing shift towards a mass consumption
based economy, as mentioned above, with smaller households living in larger homes
with more electrical appliances and increased use of information and communication
technologies (OECD 2002). For instance, total energy consumption for all
households in Japan in 2001 was 193 billion kWh, of which 16 per cent was from
refrigerators, 10 per cent from air conditioners and 15.8 per cent from lighting
(ANRE 2003).
A number of initiatives were implemented in the 1990s in order to support the
attainment of Japan’s energy policy objectives. From May 1997 onwards, an Action
Programme for Economic Structure Reform began the process of deregulation
designed to restructure the supply side of the energy industry. Also in 1997, this time
in June, a new law was passed to promote the development and use of new energy
(not clean energy, since it also includes energy from waste). These two initiatives
have had the impact of allowing smaller entities (Independent Power Producers) to
construct energy facilities and sell their electricity to the ten main electricity utilities.
Associated with this has been a steady growth in different forms of electricity
production. According to the New Energy Foundation, the long-term impact of these
measures would be to increase new energy related employment to around 1.3 million
persons with a market size of Yen 7 trillion (US$ 8.3 billion) by 2010.13
In 2001, METI published the Long-Term Supply and Demand Outlook to 2010,
which forms the basis for government policy (Toichi 2002; ANRE 2003; IEA 2003).
Considering that approximately 90 per cent of CO2 produced in Japan is energy
related, the measures that Japan adopts to deal with growth in energy consumption
are particularly important (IEA 1999:7, 2003). Just like the 3Rs of the waste policy,
the energy policy of Japan is based on 3Es—economic growth (deregulation to cut
high energy costs), energy security (more nuclear and alternative energy sources) and
environmental protection (Toichi 2002). There are four central policies currently
being pursued under this framework. First, energy conservation activities are being
strengthened so as to restrict growth in primary energy demand to 0.1 per cent per
annum in the period 1999–2010 (compared with an anticipated GDP growth of
1.5 per cent per year). Second, new energy sources are being developed to try to
reach a target of 18 million TOE by 2010, about 3 per cent of the total primary
energy supply. This policy thrust is supported by various fiscal measures including
low interest loans for the establishment of new businesses, subsidies and loan
guarantees as well as by the supply of information/know-how. Third, plans for the
construction of nuclear power stations have been revised downward from 16–20 new
plants to 10–13 (Toichi 2002). This may in part explain the difficulties encountered
when siting these facilities (Hayden Lesbirel 1998) and public concerns over safety
related incidents in recent years (IEA 2003). At present there are 53 commercial
nuclear power plants in Japan, which when in operation provide roughly 35 per cent
of the national electricity supply (see http://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/english/energy/
index.html). This represented 12 per cent of the total primary energy supply in 1995,
estimated to increase to 17.4 per cent by 2010. Fourth, emphasis is placed on
increasing the use of natural gas from the current level where it represents around
13 per cent of total primary energy supply (ANRE 2003). With respect to the growth
of new energy sources, cumulative output of photovoltaic power generation systems
in 2000 was about 321 MW and the numerical target for 2010 is an increase to 4,820
MW (1,180 million oil equivalent litres—moel).
Turning now to renewable energy resources, with respect to wind power
generation there has been significant progress in recent years with about 284 units
built by September 2001, representing a total installed capacity of about 300 MW.
The national target for the installation of wind power generators by 2010 is 3,000
MW (1,340 moel) (ANRE 2003). Data is also available for power generation from
biomass showing this represented around 80 MW in 1999 and estimated to increase
to around 330 MW in 2010. As of the end of 2000, there were 5,603 cogeneration
plants in Japan with a combined power output of 5,480 MW (2.4 per cent of overall
power generation output and significantly lower than US and European countries).
The numerical target for the introduction of cogeneration (excluding steam turbine
system) by 2010 has been set to 10,020 MW (6,620 moel). Other renewable energy
resources with a longer, more established history in Japan include hydropower and
geothermal. The former, in 1997, accounted for 46,320 MW at around 1,800 sites in
Japan. With regard to the latter, there are 16 geothermal plants operating in 14
stations with a total potential output of 530 MW, or 0.2 per cent of Japanese power
capacity. However, there are no plans to increase the number of geothermal stations.
In contrast, waste to energy is viewed as an important source of electricity and there
were more than 1,900 municipal solid waste incineration facilities in Japan in 1999,
and only 189 had power generation equipment. The combined power output was 843
MW. The number of industrial waste incineration plants featuring power generation
equipment, on the other hand, stood at 53 with a combined power output of 136 MW.
Altogether, there were 242 waste incineration plants with power generation
equipment, and their combined installed capacity was 979 MW. The numerical target
for the introduction of waste incineration power generation by fiscal year 2010 has
been set to 4,170 MW (5.52 billion LOE). Taking all of the above into consideration,
with the addition of hydropower and geothermal, it is estimated that Japan’s
renewable and new energy supply will reach 7.5 per cent (i.e. 3 per cent for clean
energy) of the total in 2010, compared with 29 per cent for Denmark, 10.3 per cent
for Germany and 9.3 per cent for the United Kingdom for the same period (Iida
2003). One reason for this marked difference may relate to funding priorities. For
instance, research and development is a central component to the future of Japan’s
energy economy. The IEA has, however, pointed out several internal inconsistencies
with the current energy related R&D expenditure patterns (IEA 1999:145). For
instance, in the mid-1990s, government expenditure in Japan on energy R&D was
significantly higher than in other IEA member countries (e.g. US$4.7 billion
compared with US$2.9 billion for the United States). Within this context, less than
5 per cent of this R&D spending was committed to non-nuclear priorities—
photovoltaics, geothermal, storage technologies and so on.
Other problems have been identified in relation to institutional structures and the
policy formulation process. In particular, reference is made to the fact that the
existing monolithic energy supply structure is based on powerful central control
through METI and the ten electricity utilities (Iida 2000). Recent deregulation efforts
have had a positive impact and there are calls for the establishment of a regulatory
system that would be completely independent from METI (IEA 2003). Furthermore,
considerable progress in the promotion of renewable energy has been made on the
ground by new coalitions of business, local government and NGOs working to
develop renewable energy resources. These groups see renewable energy as a launch
pad for Japan’s sustainable energy future that would increase public participation in
energy policy formulation and overcome the deep divisions that currently surround
Japan’s nuclear power policy. At the same time, the previously closed policy process
has begun to open up (although METI remains the convenor). These changes appear
to indicate that with respect to green energy policy Japan has placed ‘one foot on the
threshold of ecological modernization’ (Iida 2000). It is a hesitant step forward
dependent on balancing the three Es. It lacks clarity on how best to make trade-offs
between liberalizing the utility sector, ensuring secure energy supplies and reducing
carbon dioxide emissions (IEA 2003). The contradictions between these policy goals
may in part explain why the Japanese government struggles to communicate its
position and timetable for utility restructuring and deregulation. The challenge that
Japan again faces is how to reduce energy consumption growth while at the same
time enabling the economy to grow. Efforts are being made to try to remedy this
situation and a set of detailed and specific measures designed to bring about greater
energy efficiencies in all sectors has been introduced through various programmes
(including the April 1997 Ministerial Council for Comprehensive Energy Measures
and the 2001 Long-Term Energy Supply and Demand Outlook). These include the
introduction of ‘quantitative targets’ to reduce energy consumption at all Japanese
factories. The target calls for an average annual reduction in energy intensity of more
than 1 per cent. At present, these targets are to be met through voluntary actions, for
example, through the Keidanren’s Voluntary Action Plan on the Environment (IEA
2003). The government is also promoting the adoption of energy codes and standards
for buildings and appliances to increase energy efficiency requirements and a Top
Runner methodology is being used specifically for appliance energy efficiency
standards (ANRE 2003).14 In April 2003, the Special Measures Law Concerning the
Use of New Energy by Electricity Utilities was enacted, functioning as a renewable
portfolio standard (RPS). This legislation sets the minimum percentage of electricity
generated from renewable sources in relation to the amount of electricity sold
(Nakakuji and Kudo 2003). Concerns have been expressed, however, about the need
to ensure consistency with existing policy measures (Nakakuji and Kudo 2003) and
perhaps more importantly on the potential to use the RPS to shift renewable energy
from a marginal concern to a central factor in Japan’s energy policy that could have
positive impacts with respect to the promotion of technological innovation and
possible rethinking of national nuclear energy policy (Iida 2000). So far we have
examined recent innovations related to waste and energy management. The success
of these measures is dependent on participation from all sectors including small and
medium-sized enterprises.
Japanese SMEs and ecological modernization

The degree to which small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are involved in
ecological restructuring is an important issue to explore if one is to gain any sense of
the extent to which ecological modernization is occurring within industry, given that
they are such a vast sector of the Japanese economy. In 1996, SMEs accounted for
99 per cent of all firms, 77 per cent of employment and 51.0 per cent of total
shipment value of the manufacturing sector. Data for 1994 show that they represent
61.4 per cent of the total amount of wholesale and 76.8 per cent of retail sales.15
However, fascination with Japan Inc.’ has meant that to date there has been little
research on the environmental behaviour and attitudes of smaller firms, and therefore
their part in METI’s vision of a ‘new age of environmentalism’ remains unclear.
From the small number of quantitative surveys conducted on the environmental
practices of SMEs in Japan (e.g. Japan Finance Corporation 1997; Sanwa Research
Institute and Consulting 1999; Asahi Bank 2000; Yoshida 2002) it appears that most
of the ecological restructuring occurring within the SME sector is focused on
reducing waste and energy usage, which certainly bodes well for the government’s
plans for a ‘recirculatory’ and ‘clean energy’ society. The primary motivation for
these practices is to reduce the cost of waste fees and energy bills. However, the
perception that other environmental improvements will impose a cost burden on
business is a barrier for many owner-managers. Lack of environmental awareness
and appropriate skills is also an obstacle to more proactive behaviour. The number of
small firms with environmental management systems is low due to the resources
required to embark on the accreditation process.
Yoshida’s (2002) quantitative study of over two thousand SMEs in Tokyo found
that 32 per cent claimed to be involved in industrial waste reduction, 21 per cent
claimed to be recycling or re-using products, 20 per cent claimed to be involved in
measures to cut noise, vibrations and offensive odours and 18 per cent claimed to be
involved in energy-saving measures. Only 2.3 per cent indicated they had acquired or
were in the process of acquiring environmental management systems. In terms of
size, larger SMEs were more likely to be engaged in environmental measures than
their smaller counterparts. Environmental measures were often viewed as either ‘not
necessary’ as owner-managers perceived their firm’s environmental impact to be
negligible, or as a cost burden which they were unwilling to bear. Another study of
1,590 SMEs in the Tokyo area (Asahi Bank 2000) found that 70 per cent of the
sample claimed to be taking measures to cope with environmental issues, mainly
minimizing waste disposal (such as cutting paper usage) and energy usage. However,
more proactive environmental measures such as recycling or installing energy-saving
equipment were rare. The main obstacles to making environmental improvements were
found to be a lack of environmental awareness, the cost of investing in
environmental equipment and a lack of technical know-how. The vast majority of
small firms claimed to be too busy trying to comply with environmental regulation to
consider voluntary initiatives.
Revell’s qualitative study of mechanical engineering and restaurant firms in Tokyo
used the analytical framework provided by ecological modernization theory to
explore the environmental practices of small firm owners (Revell 2002). Twenty
in-depth interviews were conducted with owner-managers of businesses with under

50 employees, augmented by interviews with ten ‘key informants’ from relevant
trade associations, industrial organizations, chambers of commerce and industry and
academia. The findings challenged three assumptions in ecological modernization
theory, namely the role of market dynamics in the ‘greening’ of industry, the
emergence of new ideologies such that business actors increasingly view
environmental and economic goals as compatible, and the increasingly participative
nature of environmental governance structures. The study found that, whilst some
environmental reform was occurring within the sample, market dynamics and
changing ideologies were not pushing this reform in the way that might have been
expected under ecological modernization. Firstly, there was little supply chain
pressure to ecologically restructure (for instance, mechanical engineers had not been
encouraged by suppliers to improve their environmental performance or invest in
environmental management systems, and restaurants similarly felt no pressure from
customers to take an interest in environmental concerns). Secondly, economic and
environmental goals were often perceived as conflicting, with many owner-managers
unwilling to invest the resources required for environmental management because of
the perception that it would be too costly. Thirdly, small firm owners felt
marginalized from policy networks that they perceived to be dominated by political,
bureaucratic and business elites. The study concluded by arguing that the
environment was not yet a core business concern for small firms as neither the state
nor the market had provided significant enough pressure on owner-managers to
reduce their environmental impacts. Moreover, a lack of participation in policy
networks was highlighted as a possible reason for small firm resistance to
environmental action, as firms had not been engaged in a consultative process aimed
at stimulating environmental management and therefore a context of consensual
support for policy strategies had not been created (Revell 2002).
Whilst it appears that large firms in Japan have widely adopted voluntary goals and
standards, these studies indicate that small and medium-sized enterprises are more
laggardly with regards to voluntarily embracing environmental best practice than
their corporate counterparts. The environmental performance gap between large and
small firms may in part be due to the sheer numbers of small firms which make them
more difficult to regulate than large firms, but it is also due to the traditional
emphasis on voluntarism within Japanese environmental policy. Voluntary
agreements, a favoured policy tool in Japan, have been very effective in encouraging
environmental management amongst large firms who are responsive to stakeholder
pressure to reduce environmental risk and who have the resources to invest in
environmental management systems and clean technology. However, voluntary
approaches are arguably less likely to be effective amongst resource-poor smaller
firms, particularly if market dynamics such as supply chain pressure and consumer
demand are doing little to drive environmental change. Owner-managers are likely to
resist voluntary action when they are concerned that making environmental
improvements might affect the competitiveness of their business.
Clearly, regulatory drivers are needed to ensure that the environment becomes a
top business priority for small firms. The introduction of the raft of new legislation
on waste and energy augurs well for reducing the environmental ‘footprint’ of the
SME sector, for when a level playing field’ is perceived small firms are more likely
to accept additional costs. Small firms have unique characteristics that distinguish
them from large firms and therefore attempts to include them in the ‘recirculatory’
and ‘clean energy’ society will necessarily entail the adoption of a size as well as
sectoral approach to policy-making in Japan. Moreover, it appears that policies such
as the Green Purchasing Law will be essential in encouraging the vertical and
horizontal coordination amongst firms that a Wuppertal Institute’s study identifies as
currently inadequate in Japan, yet which is so vital to the formation of a recirculatory
economy (Bleischwitz 2002).
Conclusions
Japan has gone through various phases of eco-efficiency since the 1960s. In the past,
Japan was able to reduce environmental impacts in some areas by applying its
technical prowess to find innovative solutions that allowed greater productivity to
occur without the need for more material and energy usage. However, it is apparent
that due to a continued expansion in output Japan has achieved only a relative
decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation. This has led to a
debate over whether Japan is an environmental laggard or leader, as absolute levels
of waste, energy usage and pollution continue to increase. In this chapter we have
discussed policymakers’ aspirations for a new age of environmentalism in Japan,
involving the creation of a ‘recirculatory’ and ‘clean energy’ society. This renewed
vigour in environmental policy indicates that Japan is hoping to reassert itself as an
‘ecological front-runner nation’. However, this new phase of ecological
modernization will not be without its challenges, for it requires a radical reordering
of many segments of industry and society.
In this chapter, we have shown that management of the environmental side effects
of industrialization goes beyond single industrial facilities (end-of-pipe) or entire
production processes (cleaner production) or even entire groups of industries (zero
emissions). It is apparent with respect to both waste management and energy in Japan
that we are now talking about the embedded nature of industrialism within society
such that, in order to green industry, we must also green the wider society. This will
inevitably involve challenging some of the existing values surrounding consumption.
In Japan, within the waste management sector, we note the use of the term
recirculatory or recycling society to describe a gradual process whereby waste
generation and depletion of capital stock is curtailed. This may be possible without
undue disincentives for economic growth but the challenge lies in the fact that it
intrinsically involves the creation of greater linkages and shared responsibilities
between producers and consumers, between large and small firms, as well as between
different sectors of the economy and society. The same is also true of the early
efforts we are witnessing as Japan attempts yet again to decouple primary energy
growth from GDP growth. The government has recognized that measures targeted at
industry have reached saturation in terms of their relative effectiveness and that
additional investments in this sector will have limited impact. The test is how to
curtail growth in the residential, commercial and transportation sectors where

decisions are made based on lifestyle choices rather than rational neoclassical
economics. The success depends to a large extent on whether society is willing to buy
into ecological modernization’s notions of ‘economizing ecology’ (Mol 1997),
whether the place for dialogue and consensus building around these notions actually
exists in Japanese society (outside of academic forums and government committees)
and whether a socially shared value structure is possible in order to facilitate this
process of change. One thing is clear. The current environmental dilemma in Japan
does not lend itself easily to command-and-control mechanisms that worked so
successfully in the past and may in part explain why the government has favoured
steering policies consistent with ecological modernization. The ‘recirculatory’ and
‘clean energy’ society is an ambitious policy platform based on radical social
change; if achieved Japan will have certainly earned its position as a global
environmental leader.
Notes
1 Defined as the implementation of industrial practices that improve corporate

profitably by redesigning manufacturing processes to reduce the production of
wastes at source (Cohen 1997:8).
2 Citing experience at the Nippon Steel Corporation, the Cruz et al. report argues
that this company was able to reduce SO2 emissions from its factories by
85 per cent between 1973 and 1997. Similar trends are found for NOx with the case
of the Tokyo Electric Power Company indicating that it reduced emissions by 85
per cent per kilowatt-hour (kWh) between 1973 and 1997 (Cruz et al 2002).
Unfortunately, these industry related reductions were offset by increases in NO2
emissions from vehicles and the associated gradual increase in road traffic.
3 Technical advances have yielded great successes in Japan, particularly in the areas
of pollution abatement and energy efficiency. In recent decades, Japanese
companies have spent as much as Yen 9.7 trillion (US$73.5 billion) on pollution
abatement (Taylor 1999). Research and development in clean technology has
resulted in such innovations as flue-gas desulphurization and denitrification,
computerized monitoring techniques and automobile exhaust gas control
technologies. The automobile industry has dramatically decreased pollutant levels
in passenger cars with such inventions as unleaded petrol, the catalytic converter
and the hybrid car.
4 Toxic waste regulations in Japan are described as ‘primitive’ by Kerr (2001), who
highlights that only a few dozen substances are regulated compared with over a
thousand chemicals in the US.
5 Some of the leading thinking on this topic in Europe has been undertaken in
Germany at the Wuppertal Institute and in Finland at the University of Tampere.
For instance, a paper from Jukka Hoffren at the University of Tampere includes a
comparison of material efficiencies for Finland, the Netherlands, the USA, Japan
and Germany (based on a calculation of GDP divided by the primary consumption
of natural resources) between 1975 and 1994 (Hoffren 2003). The results indicate
that, through the 1970s and 1980s, Japan and the Netherlands followed very similar
paths in terms of eco-efficiency only to diverge around 1990 as the Japanese

economy managed to make greater improvements up to 1993. Consequently,
efficiencies dropped off as a result of the sudden economic decline at the end of the
bubble economy (i.e. direct material inputs to the Japanese economy fell from over
2 billion tons per annum in 1990 to around 1.7 in 1993) (Adriaanse et al 1997).
6 For more recent data see http://www.ecology.or.jp/isoworld/english/analyl4k.htm.
7 See following web sites for access to these statistics—http://www.jinjapan.org/stat/
and http://www.stat.go.jp/english/index.htm.
8 It is very interesting to reflect upon the Japanese government’s efforts to look more
closely at the current environmental load created by the residential, commercial and
transportation sectors, particularly in the area of climate change. Similar activities
are under way in most industrialized countries with a recent study from the UK
being most interesting. The report by Dr Jan Koojiman published in June 2001
looked at the environmental impacts of households and came up with some
fascinating observations (INCPEN 2001). Firstly, he argues that declining
household size has implications for the associated environmental impacts (i.e. a
single person has double the impact of a person in a large household) and in the UK
the average household size dropped from 3.1 in 1961 to 2.3 in 2001, with
associated negative environmental impacts. Second, each household consumes
around 4,300 items of all kinds in a year (equivalent to 2.8 tonnes) and all 25
million households consume 100 billion goods per year. The choice for consumers
is ever increasing, with the average supermarket now offering around 20,000
products. Furthermore, most households now have all the necessary basic
commodities—car, fridge, washing machine, microwave, television and so on.
Dr Koojiman then applies life-cycle analysis to identify where the big
environmental impacts occur for individual households. His results show that the
production of food and goods accounts for 109 gigajoules of energy for each
household per year, home heating and water were next with 63 gigajoules followed
by transportation 39 giga-joules and the use of household appliances at 16
gigajoules. He then presented a comparative analysis of various possible
environmental conservation measures and showed that choosing a car that can
travel 40 miles to the gallon over one capable of only 20 saves in one year the
energy equivalent to the recycling by a household of all its glass bottles for 400
years.
9 According to Kerr (2001), of the industrial waste sites that are reported, more than
half are unprotected with no devices to prevent leaching.
10 The case of Teshima is possibly the best-known case. The story begins in 1975
when the Kagawa Prefectural Government received an application from a firm to
use a seven-hectare site on the island for a hazardous waste management business.
Within two years, the company modified the application to an intermediate
disposal and earthworm cultivation in the sludge (Yoshida 2002). The application
was granted in 1978 but, according to the Daily Yomiuri Newspaper (23 August
2003:9), from 1983 onwards, the company called Teshima Sogo Kanko Kaihatsu
began illegally dumping industrial waste and open burning. This continued until
1990 when the prefectural government began investigations. Two years later, the
national Environmental Disputes Coordination Committee was brought in to
mediate between the company and the local residents. The latter demanded the
removal of the waste and compensation. In 1996, the local court ruled in favour of
the local residents. An intermediate agreement was then reached in 1997 between
the local residents and the prefectural government whereby the latter admitted that
it had made a mistake. The local citizens then successfully took legal action against
the prefectural government. Subsequently, in June 2000, after something like 36
rounds of negotiation between community groups and the prefectural government,
the local authority formally admitted responsibility and promised to remove the
waste. The local area was subsequently designated as an Eco-Town and at a cost of
Yen 50 billion a new waste processing facility was constructed on the adjacent
Noashima and will operate for ten years until all of the waste is dealt with.
11 As reported on the Japan for Sustainability web site—http://www.japanfs.org.
12 Interestingly Masuzoe (2001) indicates that there are 2 million beverage vending
machines in Japan each using around 3,500 kWh of electricity annually.
13 See http://www.nef.or.jp/english/new/implement.html for more details.
14 Moreover, a similar approach is being implemented to compute fuel efficiency
standards for automobiles. If effectively implemented, the current Top Runner
standard will mandate significant improvements in automobile efficiency (on
average a 22.8 per cent improvement by 2010 over 1995 levels).
15 See the following web site for details: http://www.actetsme.org/japa/jap98.htm.
148
9
Japan in the greenhouse—the challenge of
addressing rising emissions
Miranda A.Schreurs
Japan’s decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and abide by its provisions
will create new challenges for the nation as we begin the 21st century.
The challenge is made more complicated by several important factors:
the decision of the United States to not ratify the protocol; Japan’s
current economic recession; and the nation’s already high energy
efficiency, a result of the implementation of technological advances. It is
important not to have an unduly pessimistic impression of the
socioeconomic consequences for Japan. Industrial and market changes
can, with suitable policy initiatives, form part of the nation’s response to
the protocol. These changes can generate new economic activity and
wealth.
(Tsuneyuki Morita, National Institute of Environmental Strategies,
2002)1
While Dryzek (1997) has argued that Japan is one of a handful of states that can be
considered ecologically modernized in terms of past energy efficiency improvements
and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2002) gave
Japan’s environmental performance a positive assessment, the real test for Japan’s
status as an environmental pioneer may well lie in how it responds to climate change.
Reducing Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions by the substantial degrees as
recommended by scientists in order to slow global warming will require changes to
Japanese industrial, agricultural and societal practices of an unprecedented scale.2
Even meeting the limited reductions called for by the Kyoto Protocol will be a real
challenge. Whether or not Japan’s governmental officials, scientists, industries and
civil society can work closely enough together to make possible the necessary cuts to
emissions domestically remains to be seen. Another uncertainty is the extent to which
Japan will succeed in finding international partners with which it can work to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions abroad.
As a global problem closely linked to the spread of the industrial revolution
through the nations of Europe, North America, East Asia and more recently Latin
America, Southeast Asia and parts of the Middle East, global warming will require
coordinated action and high levels of cooperation among states. Climate change is a
far more complex environmental problem than those nations have had to tackle in the
150 JAPAN IN THE GREENHOUSE
past (Langhelle 2000). It raises a whole array of challenges in terms of how nations
need to respond to the ecological interconnectedness of our world, the increasing
importance of political links between different parts of the world and on whether
these political links can be collaborative rather than conflicting. Global warming also
raises questions about the implications of globalization for environmental change and
the theoretical constructs used by sociologists to analyse the transformation of
modernity (Mol 2001b: 54–55). The difficulties of dealing with global warming
within the framework of ecological modernization have been presented by Mol and
Spaargaren (1993) and Murphy (2001a) and there have been calls for a new phase of
ecological modernization that focuses on high-consequence risks such as climate
change and on the distributive aspects of environmental policy (Mol 1996).
Since the early 1990s, the Japanese government has made environmental
protection an important element of its foreign policy (Yamamoto 1994; Broadbent
2002b; Schreurs 2005). Environmental protection has become one of the largest
budget items in Japan’s official development assistance and Japan has begun to play
a more visible role in international environmental protection efforts.3 Climate change
is a prominent component of Japan’s foreign environmental policy (Kameyama
2003). One important indication of this was Japan’s decision to host the 1997 United
Nations Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) where the Kyoto Protocol was formulated (Kawashima 2001). The Kyoto
Protocol is an international agreement mandating greenhouse gas emissions
reductions by the advanced industrialized nations of the world (Grubb et al 1999;
Oberthür and Ott 1999). Both Japan and the European Union (EU) have ratified the
agreement, but at the time of writing the agreement has yet to come into force
because of opposition to the agreement from the United States.4 Nevertheless, as a
result of commitments it made at the Kyoto Conference, the Japanese government
has implemented numerous changes to domestic laws and programmes in an effort to
slow the growth of domestic greenhouse gas emissions. It has introduced various
programmes to assist developing countries with improving energy efficiency and
reducing emissions that contribute to global warming. The government has also
become more open to non-governmental organizations’ involvement in climate
change policy formulation and implementation than was true in earlier decades
(Reimann 2001; Fisher 2004).
Yet, to date these efforts have done little to reverse the rising trend in Japan’s
greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, there is a certain degree of ill-ease in Japan
regarding the Kyoto Protocol. While many, and especially the Ministry of the
Environment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and environmental groups, are eager to
see the Kyoto Protocol become a legally binding agreement, there is concern
particularly among industries and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
(METI) that, as long as the US is not party to the agreement, then Japanese industrial
competitiveness will suffer if Japan is forced to take costly energy savings or
pollution control measures when the US is not. This may be why recent efforts to
pass a carbon tax have not succeeded and instead the Japanese government has
focused on technology innovation, some regulation, voluntary measures and
MIRANDA A.SCHREURS 151
international initiatives to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas
emissions.
This chapter examines the evolution of Japan’s response to international climate
change negotiations and its efforts to implement the Kyoto Protocol. It begins with a
brief overview of the history of the formation of the agreement and then provides a
more detailed look at Japan’s reaction to the US pull-out and its subsequent attempts
to find a way to bridge the very different positions of the US and European Union
(EU) on the agreement. As a consequence of the US withdrawal, Japan had
considerable influence over the shape the Kyoto Protocol’s implementation
mechanisms eventually took. The chapter then examines Japan’s efforts domestically
and overseas to introduce laws and programmes aimed at cutting back emissions. We
suggest that, while Japan has made some important regulatory changes and Japanese
industries have voluntarily introduced programmes to cut their own emissions,
greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Particularly problematic are emissions tied
to individual consumption. METI also has found it difficult to promote nuclear
energy, a solution the Ministry favours for meeting the nation’s energy needs and
portrays as a ‘clean energy’ because it does not contribute to greenhouse gas
emissions. This is largely because of growing domestic opposition to the construction
of new plants but also because of soaring costs for plant construction. Interestingly,
METI and industry have begun to take more seriously the development of renewable
energy sources, such as wind, solar and biomass, as mentioned in Chapter 8.
Nevertheless, the challenge for Japan to reduce emissions domestically is great.
There does not appear to be sufficient political will at this stage to introduce the more
painful measures, such as carbon taxes, that will be needed to make sharp cuts in
emissions. Various climate change mitigation programmes have been initiated, but
Japan cannot as of yet be labelled a greenhouse gas success story. There is also still
much work to be done in terms of building up international partnerships to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries.
The formation of the Kyoto Protocol

Japan entered the 1990s eager to improve its international standing by enhancing its
foreign contributions. Beleaguered by complaints that Japan was not doing enough
for the international community given its economic wealth, Japan’s political leaders
began to consider ways of strengthening the country’s international image (Pempel
1998:138–157). The end of the Cold War provided new opportunities for
international engagement (Inoguchi 1993). This was also a time when international
environmental problems such as acid rain, stratospheric ozone depletion, biodiversity
loss, ocean pollution and global climate change were rising on to the international
agenda (Porter and Brown 1995). Environmental protection was an area that Japan’s
political leaders seized upon as it was felt that Japan could draw upon its past
experiences with severe pollution and its relatively successful efforts to get domestic
pollution under control and use this know-how to help developing countries address
their growing pollution problems (MoFA 1992).
Moreover, despite Japan’s successes with air pollution control and energy
efficiency improvements domestically, Japan’s environmental image was
suffering. Ironically, in part this was because of the increase in Japanese Official
Development Assistance (ODA) to developing countries in Southeast Asia in the
1980s. Much of the ODA loans were for large infrastructure projects, such as dams,
power plants and roads. Critics complained that Japan was doing more harm than
good with ODA projects that may have been well intentioned, but proved to be
environmentally destructive, lined the pockets of corrupt officials or displaced large
numbers of people (Forrest 1989; Dauvergne 1997; Kerr 2001). Japan’s international
environmental image problems were also related to long-held cultural practices that
made use of parts of species, like ivory tusks, that were from threatened or
endangered species. Consumption levels of exotic species’ products had also grown
during Japan’s economic boom decade of the 1980s. Japan’s continuation of whaling
for ‘scientific purposes’ was also viewed with disdain in the West (Miyaoka 2004).5
Efforts to alter Japan’s international environmental image began seriously around
1990 just at the time of international efforts in preparation for the twentieth
anniversary of the 1972 United Nations Convention on the Human Environment (the
Stockholm Conference). Scientific warnings that an accumulation of anthropogenic
(man-made) greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could lead to a warming of the
planet and alter climatic systems began to gain political attention (Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change 2001a). In 1990 Japan joined several European countries
(e.g. the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway) in announcing a voluntary target
to stabilize its carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels by 2000. Two years later at
the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), Japan
announced that it would become a major contributor to international environmental
protection efforts. At the conference, Japan signed Agenda 21, which is a plan for
action for sustainable development; the Biodiversity Convention; the Forest
Principles; and the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC).
The FCCC states that global warming is a problem and that the developed countries
of the world (basically the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) countries) are responsible for the largest share of accumulated emissions.
The agreement was signed by 166 countries within one year and has since been
ratified by 188 countries including Japan, the EU and the US.6 The agreement,
however, did not spell out any specific measures to be taken or emissions reductions
to be required of parties. Instead, it left these questions to be worked out in the future
at annual Conferences of the Parties (COPs). The history of these negotiations has
been told in great detail elsewhere (Grubb et al. 1999; Oberthür and Ott 1999;
Schroder 2001).
For the purposes of this chapter, it is sufficient to note that in 1995 Japan
announced its interest in hosting the third COP where it had been agreed efforts to
hammer out an international agreement on climate change would occur. This decision
was made, apparently, because of an interest in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
elsewhere in the government in having the name of a Japanese city tied to what was
likely to become a major international agreement (Kawashima 2000). It is interesting
to speculate in hindsight if Japan’s leadership would have made the offer to host the
COP if they had known that the US would pull out of the agreement.
The third COP was held in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997. Months of preparation
went into the Kyoto Conference during which time various possible models of an
international agreement were reviewed and debated. Going into the negotiations there
was a major divide between the EU, on the one side, and the US—with support from
Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Australia—on the other. The EU went into the
negotiations calling for a 15 per cent emissions reduction for all developed countries,
with an important exception for EU member states. In the negotiations, the EU
treated itself as a political unit and thus argued that the EU members as a whole (as
opposed to individually) should be required to make a 15 per cent cut. Within this
bubble some member states would be expected to make sharp emission reductions
while other less developed states within the EU would be allowed to increase their
emissions. This demand for common emissions reduction targets fell flat due to
strong opposition from the US and Japan, which argued the proposal was inherently
unfair and argued that differentiated emissions reductions based on national
circumstances should be required. On this issue, the EU relented (Schreurs 2003).
In part because of developments in the US Senate, the US went into the
negotiations demanding that developing countries also be required to take action.
Just a few months prior to the Kyoto Conference, the Senate had voted 95:0 in a
resolution that made clear they would not back a treaty unless it required ‘meaningful
action’ on climate change from developing countries (Harris 2000: 231–232). The
EU’s position, in contrast, was that, since the rich countries were largely responsible
for the rising concentration of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, they
should be required to reduce their domestic emissions and set an example for
developing countries in doing so (Grant, Matthews and Newell 2000: 120–147).
Although there were several other contentious points, including even which gases
the agreement should cover, the two most visible disagreements regarded what the
actual emissions target(s) for each country should be and how those targets were to
be reached. The US argued that the best it could achieve would be a stabilization of
emissions at 1990 levels by 2012 because of the growing US population and the need
for economic stability. The EU continued to argue for a 15 per cent reduction. Japan
was in a difficult position. It had a strong interest, as host to the agreement, in
achieving a successful outcome. Yet, Japan already had substantially higher energy
efficiency than the US and much of Europe. Thus, the costs of reduction would be
high for Japan. Moreover, within the national bureaucracy there was considerable
tension on this issue. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Japan Environment
Agency were very concerned about achieving a deal, with the latter being of the view
that relatively substantial reductions in the order of 6 to 8 per cent were obtainable.
The Ministry of International Trade and Industry was more cautious. The
compromise reached among these ministries and presented as Japan’s negotiating
position was that the maximum emissions reductions that the country could achieve
without being put at a severe competitive disadvantage was in the order of 5 per cent
(Kawashima 2000, 2001; Schreurs 2002: 186–187).
The debate at COP3 was contentious and reaching a compromise proved difficult.
Eventually a deal was struck with Japan doing its best to play the role of mediator
between the EU and the US. The EU agreed that it would cut its combined member
state emissions by 8 per cent of 1990 levels by 2008–2012 (with different nations
within the EU having different targets) and the US would cut its emissions by 7 per
cent in the same period. In order to seal the deal between the EU and the US, Japan
had to accept a sharper reduction goal than it had said was the maximum it could
achieve. Japan committed to a 6 per cent emissions reduction goal.
There was also disagreement regarding how much of those emissions reductions
should be made domestically. The US pushed hard for the inclusion in the language
of the agreement of the right for a nation to gain credit for emissions reductions
overseas or through enhancing carbon absorbing forests and other sinks. The EU
argued that the agreement should require that the bulk of emissions reductions be
made domestically. Japan sided with the US saying that it would not be appropriate
to cap the percentage of emissions reduction credits a nation could receive for
cleaning up greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries or countries in
transition because pollution control and energy efficiency improvements would be
more cost-effective in those places. Both the US and Japan argued for allowing
nations maximum flexibility in the use of various implementation mechanisms. No
agreement was reached on these implementation questions other than that flexible
mechanisms were written into the agreement. Working out implementation rules was
left for subsequent negotiations.
The US withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol

Although the William J. Clinton administration signed the Kyoto Protocol, the
agreement did not have the support of the United States Senate. In the US,
ratification of an international agreement requires a two–thirds majority of the Senate
to pass. Clinton, therefore, never introduced the agreement to the Senate for
ratification. When George W.Bush became president, one of his very first decisions
was to reject the agreement signed by his predecessor. The basis for his abrupt
decision was his belief that the emissions reductions required of the US under the
agreement would be too costly and would adversely impact job growth and economic
conditions. The Bush administration’s decision, which was made without prior
consultation with either Japan or the EU, shocked and angered the international
community.
The EU erupted in anger both at the US decision to withdraw from the agreement
and the unilateral way in which the withdrawal was announced.7 Japan too criticized
the US withdrawal, but at the same time Prime Minister Koizumi suggested that US
involvement in the agreement was critical and thus efforts should be made to bring
the US back in.8 While the EU was also engaged in diplomatic efforts to try to
change the Bush administration’s stance, it also began an effort to isolate the US on
this issue by moving forward with efforts to ratify the agreement even without the
US. Under strong public pressure, Prime Minister Jun’ichiro Koizumi joined the EU
in moving forward with the Kyoto Protocol even without the US.
Japan’s decision to join the EU in continuing to back the Kyoto Protocol, even
after the George W. Bush administration decided to withdraw the US signature from
the agreement, was critical to the EU’s efforts to keep the Kyoto Protocol alive. The
unilateral US decision to reject the Kyoto Protocol, however, placed Japan’s leadership
in a difficult position. The MITI (which in 2001 became the Ministry of Economy,
Trade and Industry—(METI) and industrial leaders were already worried about
Japan’s ability to meet the 6 per cent reduction goal when the US was still part of the
deal. With the US out of the agreement, US industries would not be bound to any
emissions reductions. This made METI and Japanese industry even more concerned.
The costs of reducing CO2 pollution would put Japanese industry at a competitive
disadvantage at a time when Japan was already facing the longest recession in post-war
history. The bottom line, however, was that Japan had staked its reputation on the
successful conclusion of the Kyoto Protocol and on playing a leadership role in
international environmental protection. Thus, despite METI’s trepidations, the MoFA
and the MoE with the backing of Japan’s political leadership determined to continue
to work towards making the agreement a reality (Schreurs 2002).
It was at this point in the negotiations that Japan was at centre stage and in a
powerful position. Even though the Kyoto Protocol had been formulated, the difficult
work of hammering out rules governing implementation mechanisms still needed to
be done. In these negotiations Japan took on many of the arguments that the US had
been making under the Clinton administration and that would take some of the
burden of the 6 per cent reduction goal off Japan. In an effort to win the Senate over
to the agreement, the Clinton administration had pushed hard for inclusion in the
Kyoto Protocol of the right for a nation to gain credit towards its emissions
reductions from what are known as ‘flexible mechanisms’. There are several kinds of
flexible mechanisms. Joint implementation is an arrangement under which a
developed country can get credit for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a country
in transition (primarily the former Soviet bloc countries) that is also bound by the
Kyoto Protocol. Similar to this, the clean development mechanism allows developed
countries to get credit for emissions reductions in developing countries. Another
flexible mechanism is known as emissions trading. This market-based mechanism
allocates a fixed number of pollution permits to firms at a cost. Depending on the
cost of the permits, firms will have an incentive to reduce their pollution loads so that
they can sell off some of their permits. Others, such as environmental groups, may
have an incentive to buy up permits in order to retire them from the system. This
system can be a cost-effective way of persuading firms to reduce their greenhouse
gas emissions. Countries can also achieve emissions off-sets by expanding carbon
dioxide absorbing sinks, such as forests (Schreurs 2002; Kameyama 2003).
The US succeeded in getting these flexible mechanisms accepted as part of the
Kyoto language but no decision was reached at Kyoto regarding how much a nation
could rely on flexible mechanisms to reach its reduction target. The EU argued that a
nation should be required to meet the bulk of its emissions reduction goals—and
certainly at least 50 per cent of its emissions reductions—by making cuts to
emissions domestically rather than using flexible mechanisms that would allow a
country to obtain credits towards its own emission reduction target by investing in
energy efficiency improvements or pollution reduction programmes in developing

countries. The logic behind the EU position was that, because developed countries
are responsible for the bulk of the greenhouse gas emissions that have accumulated in
the atmosphere, they should take real measures to reduce their own emissions and, in
the process, set a good example for the rest of the world. The US in contrast argued
that there should be no limit placed on the use of the flexible mechanisms as that
would ignore the fact that, in the future, the largest emitters of greenhouse gases will
be the developing countries. Moreover, this would not be cost-effective since
emissions reductions could be achieved for less in developing countries. Given that
the atmosphere is a global commons, it should not matter where emissions reductions
occur. Japan, which had already achieved relatively high energy efficiency standards
domestically, felt that it would be too expensive for Japan to make substantial cuts
domestically and sided with the US on this issue.
In the subsequent negotiations, Japan succeeded in convincing the EU to accept
the idea that only a very limited cap be placed on the extent to which a nation could
meet its reductions requirements through the use of flexible mechanisms. It also won
EU support for the inclusion of sinks as an acceptable implementation mechanism.
Japan did not succeed, however, in winning the EU over to the idea that nuclear
energy development be permitted under joint implementation or the clean
development mechanism.
Winning over Russia

Almost three years after the US rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, the future of the
agreement looks more uncertain. To go into effect, the Kyoto Protocol requires that
two important conditions be met. The first condition is that 55 nations ratify
(approve, accept or accede to) the Protocol. This condition has been met and, as of
November 2003, 120 parties had ratified the agreement. Japan acceded to the Kyoto
Protocol in June 2002 just weeks after the EU ratified it (http://unfccc.int/ resource/
kpstats.pdf). The second condition is that those ratifying the agreement include
countries responsible for 55 per cent of industrialized countries’ carbon dioxide
emissions in 1990 (http://unfccc.int/resource/convkp.html). The 32 industrialized
countries (technically known as Annex I parties to the 1992 FCCC) that have ratified
the agreement as of now amount to only 44.2 per cent of those 1990 emissions
levels. The US alone is responsible for 36.1 per cent of 1990 Annex I country
emissions and the Russian Federation 17.4 per cent (http://unfccc.int/ resouce/
kpco2.pdf). Thus, without US participation, the only way for the Kyoto Protocol to
go into effect is if the Russian Federation agrees to ratify. Numerous efforts to
persuade Russia to join the agreement have been made. As late as November 2003,
for example, Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi had her deputy foreign minister
deliver letters to Russia’s Foreign Minister Igor Sergeyevich Ivanov and Deputy
Prime Minister Viktor Borisovich Khristenko urging Russia to ratify the agreement.9
But despite Japanese and European efforts to persuade Russia to join the Kyoto
club, for two years, Russia played a shrewd diplomatic game, first suggesting it
would ratify, then backing away, but not entirely dismissing the agreement, either.
Russia seemed eager to extract the best deal possible from Japan and Europe before
committing to ratification, including support for the possibility of joining the World
Trade Organization.
Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions

There are numerous greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous
oxides, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride. However,
because of the sheer quantity of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from the
burning of fossil fuels, CO2 is considered the biggest emissions problem. In the
United States, for example, it is estimated that CO2 accounted for approximately 80
per cent of global warming potential weighted emissions in 1990. The Japanese
government estimates that CO2 accounted for approximately 90 per cent of Japan’s
greenhouse gas emissions released between April 2001 and March 2002 (Japan Times,
29 August 2003). Carbon dioxide emissions therefore have been a main target of
government programmes to counter global warming.
Japan is one of the world’s biggest carbon dioxide emitters. Its 1990 carbon
dioxide emissions levels (the base year used for the Kyoto Protocol) were 8.5 per cent
of Annex I country totals. Japan is the third largest emitter of CO2 among the
advanced industrialized states, but its emissions are relatively small when compared
with the US or the Russian Federation. Japan’s status improves slightly when viewed
on a global scale (including developed and developing countries). The world’s
largest emitters are the US accounting for approximately 23.1 per cent of global
emissions in 2000, China 11.5 per cent, the Russian Federation 5.9 per cent and
Japan 4.89 per cent. India does not trail far behind Japan, however, at 4.42 per cent.
Germany comes in sixth place at 3.24 per cent.10
On a per capita emissions level, Japan’s rankings look somewhat less disturbing. The
largest emitters on a per capita basis are the very small, wealthy countries. Per capita
CO2 emissions are an astounding 61.12 metric tons in the Antarctic Fisheries, 29.91
in the US Virgin Islands and 19.65 in Qatar, the world’s three largest greenhouse gas
emitters on a per capita basis. Next in the rankings are primarily the wealthy Middle
East oil producers. The United States comes in tenth place, Canada nineteenth,
Germany thirty-fifth, the United Kingdom thirty-sixth and Japan thirty-seventh at
2.55 metric tons per capita (Marland et al. 2003). Japan’s relatively good per capita
CO2 emissions ranking can be largely attributed to energy-saving measures
introduced in Japan in reaction to the two Organization for Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) oil embargoes of the 1970s. The oil shocks hit Japan particularly
hard because of its near total dependence on energy imports. Oil prices nearly
quadrupled after the 1973 oil embargo causing great concern about Japan’s heavy
dependence on petroleum imports. In reaction, MITI initiated the Sunshine Project in
1975, an effort to promote the development of alternative energy sources to
petroleum (including nuclear energy and renewable energy sources). This was
followed in 1978 by the Moonlight Project to promote the development of energy–
saving technologies. MITI’s various initiatives helped to reduce dramatically the
energy intensity of industry. Thus, although the economy continued to grow at a
healthy rate throughout the 1970s and 1980s, carbon dioxide emissions remained
virtually flat. Japan emitted 248,470 metric tons of carbon in 1973 and 244,816
metric tons in 1987 (Marland et al 2003).
Emissions trends since this time, however, suggest that Japan has a substantial
challenge ahead if it is to meet its Kyoto Protocol emissions reduction pledge. In the
decade between 1987 and 1996 CO2 emissions grew by 30 per cent suggesting that
past energy-saving measures had reached a threshold. At the December 1997 Kyoto
Conference, Japan agreed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 6 per cent of
1990 levels by 2008–2012. Yet, according to Japanese government statistics, CO2
emissions for all energy industries combined had increased 9.6 per cent between
1990 and 1999. Carbon dioxide emissions in the commercial (office and residential)
and agricultural (forestry and fisheries) sectors increased 4.7 per cent over this same
period. Even more alarming were the particularly large increases evident in the
transportation sector (a 23.9 per cent rise) and the civil aviation sector (a 50 per cent
increase) over the decade of the 1990s.11 While there was a 2.5 per cent drop in
greenhouse gas emissions between fiscal year 2000 and fiscal year 2001, the fall was
largely attributed to a warm winter. Moreover, there was a 2.2 per cent increase in
emissions between fiscal year 2001 and fiscal year 2002. Emissions in fiscal year
2002 were 7.6 per cent higher than in 1990.12 This means that over the next decade
emissions must be cut by approximately 13.6 per cent if the goal of returning to 1990
levels is to be achieved. These figures suggest that Japan has a difficult road ahead if
it is to fulfil its Kyoto Protocol obligations.
Comparative perspective with other ecologically modern

states
Comparatively speaking, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden were among the
first to introduce comprehensive programmes to address climate change. The
Norwegian government was also prompt to respond with some narrowly focused
domestic reduction measures. Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands all introduced
carbon taxes in the early 1990s. While Japan was also early in its introduction of an
emissions reduction goal, Japan’s approach has differed a little from the other
ecologically modern states with its heavier emphasis on technological development,
particularly in the energy sector and also with the adoption of a key mediation role in
relation to the formulation of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Of the five countries, only
Germany appears to be currently moving toward meeting its target under the Kyoto
Protocol. This has been largely as a result of industrial collapse and subsequent clean-
up in the former East Germany following reunification, rather than as a result of a
climate change policy per se. A comparison of the per capita CO2 emissions for the
five states is presented Figure 9.1. It is interesting to see the significant dip in
emissions in Germany since reunification. It is also worth pointing out that, although
per capita emissions in Japan have gradually increased since the early 1980s, they are
well below those of the Netherlands and in line with those of Norway.
Figure 9.1 Per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the five EM states from the
consumption and flaring of fossil fuels, 1980–2000 (metric tons carbon equivalent)
(source: Greenhouse Gas Inventory Office of Japan, http://www-gio.nies.go.jp/gio-e/gio/
db-e.html).
Transposing the Kyoto Protocol into domestic laws and

programmes
Regulatory measures
The uncertainty that surrounded the future of the Kyoto Protocol for so long dulled
somewhat the drive to fulfil Kyoto Protocol mandates domestically. The uncertainty
has been an important factor, for example, in preventing the introduction to date of
carbon taxes, which have been called for by the MoE. Both Japan and the EU have
been operating under the assumption that the Kyoto Protocol would eventually go
into effect and that it was therefore wise to begin the process of reducing emissions.
They also felt that, even if the Kyoto Protocol did not become binding, then in the
future other efforts to address climate change would arise and Japan and the EU
would have a head start on the US in addressing the problem.
During the many years that negotiations progressed at the international level,
domestically Japan began to introduce various legislative and voluntary measures
aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and especially CO2 emissions. Numerous
measures have been introduced in Japan in an effort to stop the growth and
eventually cut the level of greenhouse gas emissions. In April 1998, for example, the
Law Concerning the Rational Use of Energy (or the Energy Conservation Law) was
amended to further energy saving measures (http:// www.eccj.or.jp/law/e-law.html).
Under the revised law specific categories of appliances were designated as requiring
measures to improve their energy efficiency standards. In 2000 the list was expanded
to include items such as heaters, heating and cooking appliances, automatic goods
vending machines, and transformers among others. A system was also established
under which industrial facilities were categorized as Type 1 or Type 2 Designated
Energy Management Factories and have been required to draw up medium- to long-
term plans for rationalizing their energy use.13
The guideline listed a variety of specific suggestions for meeting the 6 per cent
reduction target established by the Kyoto Protocol. These included targets to improve
automobile fuel consumption by 15–20 per cent of 1995 levels by fiscal year 2010
and an 8–30 per cent improvement in the energy efficiency of household appliances.
It also promoted Daylight Savings Time. Another measure was the establishment of
the Top Runners programme, which promotes the establishment of new efficiency
standards at the level of the most energy efficient product supplied domestically, and
the introduction of an energy efficiency labelling system for products. The guideline
further called for annual assessments of implementation measures and the
development of climate change centres.14
In 1998, the Diet also passed the Law Concerning the Promotion of Measures to
Cope with Global Warming.15 In reaction to the law local governments began
drawing up action plans for how they would work to reduce their greenhouse gas
emissions. The July 2001 assessment of the law found that 412 municipalities in 40
prefectures had drawn up action plans.16 With pressures mounting for Japan to ratify
the Kyoto Protocol in the wake of the US withdrawal from the agreement, new
efforts were made to strengthen climate change regulations. In March 2002 the
Government of Japan adopted the New Climate Change Policy Programme17 and in
May 2002 the Diet passed the Revision of the Law Concerning the Promotion of
Measures to Cope with Global Warming or, more simply, the Climate Change Policy
Law.18 The law formally adopted the Kyoto Target Achievement Plan, which sets
sector-specific goals for obtaining the 6 per cent reduction target. It assumes that
there will be an increase in greenhouse gas emissions over 1990 levels as a result
of a growth in emissions from HFCs, PFCs and SF6 (+2 per cent), transportation
(+17 per cent), and utilities (+5 per cent). This increase is to be off-set by a reduction
in emissions from industry (–7 per cent), of CH4 and N2O (–0.5 per cent), other
reductions (–2 per cent), and emissions reduction credits obtained through Kyoto
flexible mechanisms (e.g. joint implementation, clean development mechanism and
emissions trading) (–1.6 per cent) and development of carbon absorbing sinks
(−3.9 per cent). Progress towards meeting these goals is to be assessed in 2004 and in
2007 and new measures introduced as deemed necessary at those times. The extent to
which Japan is relying on development of sinks and the Kyoto flexible mechanisms
to off—set the substantial growth in emissions expected, especially from the
transportation sector, is noteworthy. The Kyoto Target Achievement Plan further
introduces economic incentives such as reduced tax rates for eco-friendly
automobiles and mandates that all official vehicles be low emission vehicles by fiscal
year 2004.19 Other measures taken include an amendment to the Energy
Conservation Law extending the energy management system requirements to large
commercial buildings and the promotion of energy conservation measures for

buildings during their construction.20 Japan has also introduced renewable energy
portfolio standards to encourage the use of renewable energies.
Nuclear energy
While many of these measures have encountered relatively little resistance, there has
been considerable public debate regarding plans to enhance Japan’s energy self—
sufficiency through the development of nuclear power. METI and the nuclear
imports from politically unstable regions and the fact that nuclear power plants do
energy industry argue that, both because of Japan’s high dependence on energy
energy intensive mining that is required to extract uranium), nuclear energy should
not emit greenhouse gases (a claim disputed by the Germans who point to the be a
key element of greenhouse gas mitigation plans. Anti–nuclear advocates argue that
nuclear energy is too risky and expensive and that the country should instead invest
in other renewable energies.
Japan imports approximately 80 per cent of its total energy supply. A central aspect
of the Japanese government’s energy policy to deal with climate change is the
construction of new nuclear power plants. At the time that the Kyoto Protocol was
formulated, MITI was calling for the construction of an additional 20 nuclear power
plants. A series of accidents at Japanese nuclear reactors during the 1990s and into
the 2000s, however, has made METI reconsider its nuclear power development
projections. In December 1995 there was a sodium leak and fire at the Monju fast-
breeder reactor. A year and a half later a fire broke out at the Tokaimura reprocessing
facility exposing 37 individuals to radiation. Then in September 1999 a criticality
accident—the worst nuclear accident in the world after Chernobyl—occurred at a
uranium conversion facility in Tokaimura, Ibaraki. Two workers died almost
immediately and dozens of others were exposed to high levels of radiation.21 These
and other smaller accidents have rocked the public’s confidence in the safety of
nuclear energy and led to various protest movements against nuclear fuel shipments
and new plant construction. Because of these public concerns and the difficulty that
METI has had in siting new facilities, the Ministry has been forced to alter its
assessment of the number of new facilities that can be built. Environment Minister
Yuriko Koike attributed in part the 2.2 per cent increase in Japan’s greenhouse gas
emissions between fiscal years 2001 and 2002 to increased power generation in
Japan’s thermal power stations that was necessitated by the shutdown of nuclear
power plants operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co.22
As of 2003, Japan has 53 commercial nuclear reactors and another two under
construction. They generate 34.6 per cent of Japan’s electric power.23 Despite
considerable disagreement within Japan regarding the desirability of nuclear energy
or the feasibility of building an additional 10–13 nuclear power plants, the Energy
Basic Law of July 2002 and the subsequent Energy Basic Plan approved by the
Cabinet in October 2003 place a priority on the development of nuclear energy.
Renewable energy
For years MITI/METI argued that non-nuclear renewable energies were not
something that the country could rely on for more than a fraction of its energy supply.
This view still dominates. Nevertheless, in part because of the example of several
European countries that have seen remarkable growth in wind and biomass energy
and to a lesser extent solar energy and in part because of the lobbying efforts of
environmental groups (such as the Green Energy Law Network) and a group of
environmentally oriented politicians, Japan in recent years has also begun to invest
more intensively in renewable energies. In April 2003 the Special Measures Law
Concerning the Use of New Energy by Electric Utilities came into effect. Under this
framework, the renewable portfolio standards (RPS) will require electric utilities to
purchase 1.35 per cent (12.2 billion kilowatt hours) of their electricity from
alternative energies, including wind, solar and biomass.24
Voluntary measures by industry

Japanese industry has been eager to avoid regulations and has been at the
international forefront in the introduction of voluntary measures to reduce industrial
emissions and waste. The Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren),
the largest association of corporations, businesses and industries in Japan, introduced
in 1997 a voluntary action plan to reduce their CO2 emissions in 2010 to below 1990
levels. Most major industries have now completed environmental action plans in
which they establish targets for reducing their environmental load. Many of the
agreements focus on climate change and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The
agreements typically spell out major steps that industries plan to take to reduce their
environmental loads. Annual assessments of the plans are now conducted by
Keidanren’s successor, Nippon Keidanren.25 The 2003 global warming assessment
involved 35 industries that together emitted the equivalent of 45.3 per cent of the total
amount of CO2 emitted in Japan in 1990 (and 82.6 per cent of the total amount of CO2
emitted by the country’s industry and energy—converting sectors). Carbon dioxide
emissions of these industries in fiscal year 2002 were 1.8 per cent higher than in
fiscal year 2001, but 1.9 per cent below fiscal year 1990 levels.26 This suggests that
the voluntary measures have had some success.
Pluralizing decision-making and implementation processes

One of the politically more fascinating aspects of Japan’s engagement with the
climate change problem has been the impact this has had on domestic policy-making
processes (Fisher 2004). Traditionally, policy-making in Japan in relation to
environmental and energy issues was largely dealt with by bureaucrats. There have
always been citizens’ movements and some environmental groups concerned with
local environmental issues, but there were few national groups dealing with
environmental or energy policy matters. This is no longer the case as a still small, but
very active, environmental community addressing national and international
environmental issues has emerged.
Japan’s involvement in international climate change negotiations has helped to

legitimize the activities of environmental groups. In the past, bureaucrats had a
tendency to look down on environmental activists as radicals and communists.
Japan’s NGO community was faced by one of the most inhospitable environments of
any advanced industrialized democracy (Schwartz and Pharr 2003). Obtaining not for
profit status was extremely difficult and required the approval of relevant ministries.
Japan’s environmentalists, therefore, often operated without not for profit status and
the benefits such status accrues. They tended to be small and cash strapped. Staff
tended to work as volunteers as most organizations did not have sufficient capital to
pay employees.
A norm of international environmental negotiations, however, is that non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) be allowed to participate as observers and in
some cases even as members of national negotiating teams. The Japanese
government found itself in an awkward position. Although Japan’s bureaucrats had
little interest initially in sharing decision-making authority with NGOs, they found
themselves under considerable international pressure to open decision-making
processes to NGOs. This has meant that over the course of the 1990s several
Japanese NGOs have been able to open doors in Kasumigaseki (Japan’s government
district) and get invited to sit on advisory councils (shingikai) to the ministries and
even to participate in the official delegation to the Johannesburg Earth Summit in
2002, something which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs points out on its web site
(Kawaguchi 2002). These groups now use their climate change and energy policy
expertise to make policy proposals to the government, to critique the government’s
policies or implementation record, and to form coalitions with international groups to
enhance their influence. Slowly, these groups are also beginning to form networks
with groups in other parts of Asia.
One of the first groups to form was the Osaka-based Citizens’ Alliance for Saving
the Atmosphere (CASA). CASA initially focused its campaigns on phasing
out stratospheric ozone—depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). In preparation for the
UNCED, it also began to address global climate change.27 Greenpeace Japan, which
was established at the urging of (and with financial support from) Greenpeace
International in 1990, has made climate change one of its organizational priorities.28
Greenpeace and Kiko Forum (Climate Forum) have been among the more active
groups working on climate change. They have lobbied the government, critiqued
governmental policies, advised the ministries and prepared policy alternatives for
addressing climate change (Reimann 2001). Japan’s environmental groups are now
accepted as players in climate change policy formulation and implementation even if
the door is not yet fully open to them and their financial status and membership size
remain circumscribed.
Conclusion: where to from here?

Japan’s decision to support the Kyoto Protocol contrasts sharply with the US
withdrawal from the agreement. Japan, like Europe and in contrast with the US, has
embraced the precautionary principle in relation to climate change. The precautionary
principle is premised on the notion that action should be taken to address a problem
despite scientific uncertainties when inaction could result in serious or irreparable
damage to the natural environment or human health. That Japan has introduced an
array of policy measures to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions suggests that the
government does take climate change and the need for an economic transformation to
a less greenhouse gas intensive society seriously, although, as rising emissions trends
suggest, not yet seriously enough. Perhaps the largest challenge for Japanese
policymakers in moving the country towards a lower emission society and to what
could be considered the next stage of ecological modernization is persuading the
public to change its behaviour. Consumption-driven growth is really the root cause of
the climate change problem (Princen et al 2002).
From a societal and democratic perspective, one of the most encouraging changes
has been the growth in public concern for global environmental preser—vation and
the opening of decision—making processes at the national and local levels to permit
greater citizen involvement. It is doubtful that any society will be able to make major
cuts in greenhouse gas emissions without strong public support and involvement.
Yet, whether or not Japanese society really has the will to make the kinds of deep
cuts in emissions that will be required to address climate change in the long run
remains to be seen.
The US opposition to the Kyoto Protocol complicates Japanese and international
efforts to formulate a post-2012 (the year the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment
period ends) mitigation strategy. It must be remembered that the Kyoto Protocol was
only ever meant to be a first, small step towards curbing greenhouse gas emissions
and that additional measures to further reduce emissions beyond those mandated by
the Kyoto Protocol will be necessary if we are to slow global warming. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that emissions of greenhouse
gases will have to be drastically reduced if human-induced global warming is to be
slowed (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2001b). Japanese negotiators
are now beginning to think about what should come after 2012 and laying the
groundwork for the next international agreement or the next phase of the Kyoto
initiative. The divide between the US (and Australia—another opponent of the Kyoto
Protocol), on the one side, and Japan and the EU, on the other, makes this planning
extremely difficult. It also means that there are intense efforts under way to influence
the positions of developing countries towards any post-2012 agreement.
Notes
1 This quote is taken from a paper entitled An Economic Analysis of Japanese and
Global Participation in Kyoto Protocol presented at the International Symposium
on Climate Policy and Sustainable Development: Measures for Global
Participation, held in Korea on 20 March 2002. Professor Tsuneyuki Morita was a
leader of Japanese efforts at acid rain and climate change modelling. He also was a
strong proponent of Japanese leadership in climate change policy and an active
participant in international scientific and policy forums. He served as Project
Leader of Climate Change Research at the National Institute for Environmental

Studies, Ministry of the Environment, Japan.
2 For a synthesis report on the status of climate change science see Watson, R.T. and
the Core Writing Team (eds) (2002) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
Third Assessment Report, Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report, New York and
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3 See Japan’s Official Development Assistance Charter, Cabinet Decision, 30 June
1992, available at http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/oda/summary/1999/refl.html. See
also Institute for International Cooperation, Japan International Cooperation
Agency (2002) The Second Study on Development Assistance for the Environment:
Practical Approaches towards the Environmental Challenges, Tokyo, August.
4 A thermometer tracking the status of ratifications of the Kyoto Protocol can be
found at http://unfccc.int/resource/kpthermo.html.
5 It should be noted that in 1992 Japan agreed to a zero import quota on its
reservations on the import of elephant ivory and hawksbill turtle under the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
6 See United Nations, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,
available at http://unfccc.int/resources/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf.
7 See Edward L.Andrews, Frustrated Europeans Set to Battle U.S. on Climate, New
York Times, 16 July 2001: A3, and Bush Angers Europe by Eroding Pact on
Warming, New York Times, 1 April 2001: A3.
8 Howard W.French, Japan Promotes Treaty on Global Warming but Keeps Its
Options Open, New York Times, 16 June 2001, A9.
9 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2003) Request for Russia’s Early Ratification of
the Kyoto Protocol, Nov. Available at http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/europe/russia/
request0311.html.
10 Derived from Greg Marland, Tom Boden, Bob Andres, Global, Regional and
National Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions, Apr., http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/emis/
em_cont.htm.
11 Source: UNFCCC, FCCC/SAI/2001, Synthesis and Assessment Report of the
Greenhouse Gas Inventories Submitted in 2001. Accessible online at http://
unfccc.int/programs/mis/ghg/sai2001.pdf.
12 Eriko Arata, Japan’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions up 2% in ‘02; First Rise in Two
Years, Japan Times, 19 May 2004.
13 For more information see Progress on the Guidelines for Measures to Prevent
Global Warming and Priorities for Future Action (Summary), 10 July 2001, http://
www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/policy/ondanka/01071 0summary_e.html.
14 Available online at http://www.env.go.jp/en’pol/gw/index.html.
15 Available at http://www.env.go.jp/en/lar/warming/index.html.
16 Progress on the Guidelines for Measures to Prevent Global Warming and Priorities
for Future Action (Summary), 10 July 2001, available online at: http://
www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/policy/ondanka/01071 0summary_e.html.
17 Available online at www.env.go.jp/en/topic/cc/020319.pdf.
18 Available online at http://www.jccca.org/en/laws.html.
19 Available online at http://www.kantei.jp/foreign/policy/ondanka/
020319summary_e.html.
20 See http://www.eccj.or.jp/law/rational_use_of_energy.html.
21 See Michael Donnolley (2003) Nuclear Blight in Japan: Criticality at Tokaimura,

Annual Conference of JSCA, 5–7 Oct.
22 Eriko Arata, Japan’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions up 2% in ‘02; First Rise in Two
Years, Japan Times, 19 May 2004.
23 For more information see www.enecho.meti.go.jp/english/policy/nuclear/p.
24 For more details see http://www.rps.go.jp/RPS/contents/pdf/outline.pdf.
25 Nippon Keidanren was formed in May 2002 as an amalgamation of Keidanren and
Kikkeiren (the Japan Federation of Employers’ Associations) with a membership
of 1,584.
26 See Keidanren, Results of the Fiscal 2003 Follow-Up to the Keidanren Voluntary
Action Plan in the Environment—Section on Global Warming Measures, 21
November 2003, http://www.keidanren.or.jp/english/policy/2003/113/report.pdf.
27 See for more details http://www.netplus.ne.jp/~casa.
28 For more information see http://www.greenpeace.or.jp/index_en_html.
10
Conclusions
Brendan F.D.Barrett
Japan appears to be on the way toward ecological modernisation. The

conceptual break with the past for the Japanese appears to have occurred
during the late 1970s when it became clear, largely due to several
serious and widely publicized contamination events, that health of the
population was jeopardized by the country’s environmental conditions.
Further, the state of the environment was likely to pose a profound
obstacle to future economic expansion. Since this period, Japan has
made commendable strides in reducing industrial emissions and has
become an international leader in the development of environmental
technology.
(Cohen 1996:12)
In this volume we argue that the evolution of a Japanese variant of ecological

modernization is following the same trajectory as its European counterparts and has
attained comparable results. The main contrast may be that the key determinants for
the emergence of ecological modernization in the Netherlands, Germany, Norway
and Sweden was the existence of comparatively open, democratic polity with
extensive civil society participation and heightened public awareness of
environmental concerns (see Dryzek 1997; for background on the Netherlands see
Hajer 1995; Cohen 2000; on Germany and Norway see Dryzek et al 2003; on
Sweden see Lundqvist 2000). In Japan’s case, however, we witness a more gradual
opening up of the democratic policy processes as a result of innovative measures
along ecologically modern lines, with the late 1990s representing an important
watershed (see Chapter 5; also see Schwartz and Pharr 2003 for recent changes in
Japan’s civil society). Essentially, as each environmental innovation occurs in Japan
(for example, new measures to promote the recycling of household appliances or
cars), awareness within policy circles and wider society is assumed to grow with
regard to the potential for win-win situations in economic-environmental
interactions, even when accompanied by a more active civil society (as is the case
with the Aichi Expo 2005 mentioned in Chapter 7). This runs counter to much of the
logic of the traditional model of environmental governance that dominated Japanese
thinking in the 1980s (Tsuru and Weidner 1989; Barrett and Therivel 1991;
168 CONCLUSIONS
Broadbent 1998; Tsuru 1999). The discussions presented in Chapters 8 and 9 are also
particularly supportive of this proposition.
The difficulty that we face in analysing the situation in Japan is that, although
external globalization forces and internal political and social change forces have
brought about ‘change in some unexpected areas, many pockets of old practices remain
in the very areas where true change seems to be most called for’ (Schaede and
Grimes 2002:4). This diagnosis certainly applies to the attempts to reform the
Japanese electricity supply industry and waste management policy (as discussed in
Chapter 8). As a result, commentators on Japan tend to divide into two camps. The
first argues that changes are superficial and the core remains unaltered. The second
group argues that a complete overhaul of everything has already begun. Schaede and
Grimes distance themselves from this polarization and instead argue that Japan is
changing significantly but along the dual tracks that they describe as ‘permeable
insulation’ differentiated by sector, policy and issue areas. In essence this suggests
that the Japanese government is reacting to the existing external and internal
pressures by shifting away from previous unified protectionist (insulating) policies of
the 1980s, that functioned also to defend business from environment related
pressures, to a more flexible (permeable) approach to securing the economic growth
imperative by evaluating the potential for non-disruptive change on a case by case
basis, and recognizing that there will be both intended and unintended consequences.
In part, this willingness to expose business to environment related pressures may
reflect the emergence of an additional state imperative for Japan—the conservation
imperative (Dryzek et al. 2003)—or put another way we may be witnessing the more
widespread recognition in Japan of the basic, most fundamental idea of ecological
modernization theory—the ‘growing independence of an ecological sphere and
rationality with respect to the economic sphere and rationality’ (Mol 2001b: 222).
We have explored the configurations of this growing independence throughout this
volume with respect to the growth of social movements (Chapter 5), the emergence
of pro-environmental conservation values in society (Chapter 7) and the greening of
Japanese industry (Chapter 8).
In recent research on environmentalism in the United States, United Kingdom,
Germany and Norway, ecological modernization has been applied as one frame for
analysis (Dryzek et al. 2003). This research found that the emergence of an ecological
conservation imperative is conditioned by the creation of linkages between
environmentalism and the core economic and legitimation imperatives, through the
existence of new forms of sub-politics around the issue of how risks are dealt with by
society. A qualitative measurement of the degree of linkage between the economy
and environment was used in the assessment, as well as the authors’ judgment on the
extent of sub-politics, to come to a decision on whether a strong or weak form of
ecological modernization was manifest in each country. With regards to sub-politics,
they argue that the approach taken to the inclusion or exclusion of social movements
is a significant factor in determining the extent to which ecological modernization
penetrates state structures. Further, they argue that forms of ecological modernization
characterized as techno-corporatist ultimately fail to deliver in terms of connecting
ecological aims to state imperatives and that to be successful ecological

modernization requires a vibrant and active civil society.
While appreciating that not all ecological modernization scholars feel comfortable
with the strong-weak polarizations (e.g.Jänicke 2000;Jänicke and Jacob 2002), it is
interesting to note that Germany is the only country that stands out in the analysis
undertaken by John Dryzek and his colleagues. They define Germany as having the
potential to become a strongly ecological modernized nation, exhibiting professional
sub-politics exemplified by election of an SPD/Green coalition in 1998 (Dryzek et al
2003:185). In this analysis, Germany is described as passively exclusive
(opportunities for formal inclusion of the environmental movement were limited and
unconventional challenges to governmental authority were resisted) and it is argued
that this condition is conducive to the formation of a vibrant civil society. The
discourses on ecological modernization and sustainable development are seen as
dominating recent environmental politics in Germany. Nevertheless, Dryzek and his
colleagues hesitate to define Germany as a ‘green state’—it still has a long way
to go.1
So where does Japan stand in this analytical framework? In the first instance, it is
possible to argue that Japan adopted from the mid-1990s onwards (increasing pace
around 1997) an approach to the involvement of social movements that essentially
lies somewhere between actively inclusive, exhibiting tendencies toward consultation
(without influence) and passively exclusive, with rather strong patterns of very
locally oriented sub-politics (as discussed in Chapter 5; see also Tsujinaka 2003) but
a ‘dearth of large, professionalized, independent organizations’ (Pekkanen 2003). In
Japan, localism (jimoto shugi), identification with local interests, has been described
as a ‘free-floating resource that can be mobilized for policy innovation and may in
fact be necessary for its successful implementation’ (MacDougall 1994). While, like
Germany, Japan cannot be considered a green state, it is firmly exhibiting some
ecologically modern characteristics, but let us explore this further in comparison to
the five green, clean states (Dryzek 1997).
How does Japan compare to other ecologically modern states?

According to Dryzek (1997:140), the five ecologically modern nations share key
commonalities. Germany, Japan and the Netherlands are all densely populated
countries that have largely destroyed their native ecosystems, providing a strong
incentive to try to accommodate high population levels while seeking to minimize
further environmental damage. Moreover, all five countries share a common political-
economic system eschewing ‘adversarial policy making and unbridled capitalist
competition’ (Dryzek 1997:141). Moreover, they all have a strong state, an
industrialized economy and innovative markets (Dryzek 1997:144).
There are a number of recent publications reviewing the environmental
performance of high consumption industrialized societies which provide interesting
insights on experience in Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. For
instance, Lafferty and Meadowcroft (2001) describe Norway, Sweden and the
Netherlands as enthusiastic implementers of sustainable development domestically
170 CONCLUSIONS
and globally, with Germany and Japan seen as more cautious, although this
varies depending on the issue under analysis.2 With regards to per capita CO2
emissions, for example, Japan is performing much better than both the Netherlands
and Norway. The authors describe Japan’s approach to sustainable development as
having a strong emphasis on technological development and energy efficiency, with
recent limited opening of the closed government policy-making to wider societal
participation, and an external focus on assisting other countries to achieve
sustainability.
Another recent study compares the environmental performance of 17 industrial
democracies, including the five main ecologically modern states mentioned above
(Scruggs 2003). Six environmental indicators are applied in the analysis, covering air
pollution, waste, water treatment and fertilizer use, and a simple scoring system is
devised based on performance. Taking into consideration the trends from 1970 to
1995, Germany ranks as the best performer (score of 538 out of 600), followed by
Sweden (489) and the Netherlands (482). The two other ecologically modern
countries, Japan and Norway, rank ninth and tenth respectively. Both score poorly on
water treatment, with Japan surprisingly faring badly with respect to recycling
activities and Norway scoring low on fertilizer use. Furthermore, the study correlates
environmental performance with income per capita levels and geographic structure
(land area and population density) and finds that the densely populated Netherlands
has relatively good environmental performance while Japan, Germany and Sweden
fare better than anticipated (reinforcing the point made by Dryzek above with regard
to population density and environmental performance). On the relationship between
environmental performance and public opinion/environmental mobilization, Scruggs
finds that, as expected, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Germany
have the best-informed and most active publics. Japan, compared to all 16 other
countries in the study, is something of an anomaly here, with the lowest
environmental mobilization in 1990 (low membership of environmental groups and
public unwillingness to donate money for the environment) but relatively high
environmental performance (as discussed in Chapter 6 of this volume). The final set
of criteria taken into consideration by Scruggs is the links between pluralism,
corporatism and environmental performance, whereby all the ecologically modern
countries are described as corporatist, although Japan is somewhat unique since it is
described as ‘corporatist without labour’ (linking back to Dryzek’s comments in
Chapter 1 of this volume) or elsewhere as ‘communitarian elite corporatism’
(Broadbent 1998). Based on this assessment Scruggs argues that the ‘more
corporatist-consensual the country, the better its environmental performance’
(Scruggs 2003:160). One inference we can draw from this study is that in terms of
the current state of Japan’s environmental performance it appears (judging by data up
to 1995) to be moving beyond the cluster of poorly performing pluralist countries
(like the United States, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom) and closer to the
ecologically modern, corporatist countries.
Looking at the environmental performance of all countries around the globe
presents a broader and more challenging picture for Japan. The 2002 Environmental
Sustainability Index (ESI), developed by the World Economic Forum, provides an
Table 10.1 Ecological footprints for ecologically modern countries
Source: http://www.redefiningprogress.org/programs/sustainability/ef/projects/
1999_ results.html
Note: * Global hectares per capita.
interesting, yet controversial, ranking of environmental sustainability in 142

countries through 20 indicators, each of which combines eight variables (World
Economic Forum 2002).3 The ESI tracks each nation’s performance against the five
components: maintenance of vital systems at healthy levels, environmental stress
reduction (reducing impact of human activity on the above systems), human
vulnerability, social and institutional capacities and global stewardship. Based on this
analysis, ESI ranks Norway second (behind Finland), Sweden third, the Netherlands
thirty-fourth and Germany fiftieth. Japan is ranked number 78 from 142 nations,
highlighting the sharp contrast between the performance of industrial and non-
industrial societies with regards to environmental sustainability.4
Lastly, when examining the environmental performance of the five ecologically
modern nations, it is useful to look at the comparative size of their ecological
footprints, drawing on the work of ‘Redefining Progress’ under the supervision of
Mathis Wackernagel (see also Wackernagel and Rees 1996; Worldwide Fund for
Nature 2002). The results for 1999 are presented in Table 10.1 and show that, with
the exception of Sweden, the four other ecologically modern countries are in
ecological deficit. According to Redefining Progress, on average there are only 1.9
global hectares of biologically productive space available per person on the Earth.5
However, the world average ecological footprint is 2.3 global hectares per person,
implying that humanity is currently exceeding the biosphere’s ecological capacity by
20 per cent. Interestingly, some scholars argue that the historic trend for Japan’s per
capita load in the past one hundred years is a tenfold increase (Wada 1999). The
available data indicates that, around 1880, pre-industrial Japan had an ecological
footprint equivalent to 0.4 hectares per capita and that by 1991 this had increased to
4.8 hectares (which is fairly close to the 1999 level in Table 10.1).6 In many respects
the question of growing ecological footprints is intimately linked to the notion of
dematerialization (see Ayres and Weaver 1998; von Weizsacker et al 1998; Hawken
et al. 1999) and Martin Jänicke from the Free Berlin University sheds some light on
this problem (Jänicke 2000). He states that the incremental increases in eco-
efficiencies in many industrialized countries are still not a ‘causal, sustained solution’
and they tend to be wiped out by subsequent growth processes (e.g. industrial NO2
emission reductions in Japan subsequently neutralized by road traffic increases).7 He
172 CONCLUSIONS
also argues that there has been only a slight decoupling of materials use intensity8
and no general reduction of total material use for OECD countries since 1973.
The same situation currently applies to CO2 emissions growth in Japan throughout
the 1990s. While the data shows that a decoupling of economic growth and CO2
emissions is taking place, it is also apparent that actual CO2 emission levels are
increasing almost year on year from 800 million tons in 1970 to 1.3 billion tons in
2000 (although a decline is noted in 20019). Similar trends can be confirmed with
respect to the rise in domestic waste generation with an almost doubling in the same
period. Moreover, with respect to total energy consumption there was a near doubling
from 270 million TOE in 1971 to 510 million TOE in 1996 (MoE 2002a). In 1978,
Jänicke described this kind of situation as the dilemma of the ‘environmental N
curve’ (as cited in Mol 2001b: 162). This perspective contrasts sharply with the more
common environmental ‘Kuztnetz curve’—an inverted U shape where the intensity
of pollution initially increases with GDP growth and then begins to decrease once a
certain income threshold as been crossed. The environmental N curve, on the other
hand, occurs when a problem is tackled as a symptom rather than the cause and as a
result it is likely that any associated environmental improvements will be cancelled
out by the subsequent economic growth (for a fuller explanation see Mol 2001b:
161–163). According to Jänicke (2000), the environmental N curve remains very
much in evidence and the engines of demand for materials are deep-seated and
persistent within the OECD countries. Nevertheless, some commentators
acknowledge that recent innovative measures (recycling, eco-auditing, zero
emissions, factor 4/10) in countries like Japan might yet again give impetus to a new
efficiency drive (see von Weizsacker et al. 1998; Hawken et al. 1999).
The above studies offer very interesting insights on Japan’s comparative
environmental performance and are generally supportive of the view that Japan has
recently made significant, but not yet categorical, progress in catching up with the
other ecologically modern states. Nevertheless, reservations remain regarding the
classification of Japan as an ecologically modern state (as discussed in Chapter 1).
As such, we now spend some time examining the roots of this ambivalence before
reaching our conclusions on the claims about the applicability of ecological
modernization for Japan.
Why is it difficult to view Japan as ecologically modern?

As mentioned in Chapter 1, ecological modernization is a complex social theory and
one of the most influential explanations of the contemporary environmentally
conservation oriented transformative processes within industrialized societies like
Japan (Hajer 1995; Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000; Young 2000; Mol 2001b; Dryzek et al
2003; Eckersley 2004). It is a theory focused on structural changes in social practices
and institutions, on the actual contributions to environmental reform (rather than on
the actual effects of these changes for other social criteria such as distributional
equity) and on the analysis of the consequences of environmentally radical changes
on society (Mol 2001b: 201–204). In reviewing the historical and empirical trends (as
presented in Chapters 2, 5, 6 and 8), it is clear that Japanese experience with
environmentalism until the 1970–1980s and then again in the mid-1990s is more
consistent with reflexive modernization in a Risk Society, particularly with respect to
the cases of organic mercury (for more on Minamata see Mishima 1992; George
2001; Keibo 2001), cadmium contamination (for more on itai itai see Huddle and
Reich 1975) and dioxin pollution (see Chapter 5; see also Broadbent 2002a).
However, in the past ten years there have been some signs of a shift to a stronger
form of ecological modernization (see Christoff 2000 for discussion of this term)
exemplified by actors from science, industry and the state leading the way in the
implementation of the climate change regime (Chapter 9), by the gradual adoption of
new sources of ‘clean’ energy (Chapter 8) and by the emergence of new social
movements actively lobbying for global warming response measures (explored in
Chapter 5).
The problem that we encounter when discussing whether or not Japan is actually
ecologically modern is the fact that a large part of the academic literature (mainly
from outside commentators) tends to preclude such a judgment (e.g. Tsuru and
Weidner 1989; Barrett and Therivel 1991; Broadbent 1998; Tsuru 1999; Yoshida
2002). While recognizing the often ambiguous nature of empirical evidence and the
fact that large variations in data sets, criteria and time intervals can at times rule out
the possibility of reaching irrefutable conclusions (Mol 2001b: 203), the data
presented in this volume appears to support the view that over a period of time
starting from the energy crises in the 1970s Japan made good progress in disengaging
its economy from the environment, particularly in terms of energy and resource use
(perhaps to a lesser extent with respect to emission reductions) associated with
structural changes in the economy from mass production-based to value-based
industries (Jänicke et al. 1996, 2000). From the mid-1970s onwards, however, most
commentaries on Japan’s environmental performance have tended to adopt the
treadmill of production (ToP) perspective in their analysis of the problematique (as
mentioned in Chapter 1; for a detailed explanation of the ToP see Mol 2001b; Mol
and Spaargaren 2002; Schnaiberg et al. 2002). This may be because, according to
some commentators, the explanatory potential of the ecological modernization theory
is at times seriously constrained when marketable technological solutions are not
available, where the risks are acute and where immediate action is required (see
Jänicke 2000). For instance, many critics argue that Japan’s technological zeal led to
environmental degradation on an unprecedented scale within its national boundaries
and overseas (for example see Huddle and Reich 1975; Barrett and Therivel 1991;
Broadbent 1998; Tsuru 1999; Kerr 2001). The nation’s dash to modernize is seen as
encouraging an approach within industry and government described as ‘techno-
nationalism’ (Samuels 1995), required in order to revitalize the post-war economy
and to maintain some degree of economic parity with the United States and Europe
(Neary 2002). Others argue that Japan is imbued with an ideology of ‘rampant
industrialisation without fear of consequences’ (Taylor 1999:554) or that ‘industry in
Japan is confronted less with political and civil society counter powers’ (Huber 2000:
276) and that in reality industrial environmental conservation efforts are far from
exemplary (Rosenbluth and Theis 1999) with many problems, especially related to
new high-technology industries, remaining intractable (Yoshida 2002). Further, as
174 CONCLUSIONS
mentioned in Chapter 1, the promotion of Japan’s technocratic development model

abroad is linked to Asia’s growing environmental problems through the export of
pollution and the location of manufacturing plants in nations with less stringent
environmental standards (Dryzek 1997; Imura 1997; Taylor 1999; Hall 2001; Wong
2001). This is a long list of problems and yet the radical critique of Japan plays an
important role in raising public awareness of environmental concerns and in
stimulating innovative changes within the environmental administration and business
practices. Such critique plays an educative role and, to some extent, embodies one
condition for the pursuit of more reformist approaches along ecologically modern
lines (Eckersley 2004:75).
Only recently have we begun to find more positive reports on Japan’s overall
environmental performance (Broadbent 2002a; OECD 2002; Schreurs 2003; Scruggs
2003) and it is possible to hypothesize that in any assessment of Japan’s
environmental performance we can now recognize dual tracks whereby features that
are indicative of ecological modernization sit alongside other features that are
indicative of ToP. However, it is very difficult to reach firm conclusions due to the
complex and dramatically changing character of Japanese society in the 1990s and
early 2000s, and because of the difficulties encountered when trying to assess the
impact of global modes of production and consumption on national environmental
governance where states’ ability to prescribe the scope of society—economy—
environment interactions appears increasingly limited (Mol 2001b; Mol and Buttel
2002:4). Bearing the above constraints in mind, the findings from this volume do
point toward an on—going active search for a new model of environmental
governance in Japan under the leadership of key segments of society (i.e. influential
academics, business leaders, some government officials and representatives from the
NGO community10) as evidenced by the rise of concepts such as the ‘recirculatory
society’, the ‘environmental conservation society’ and the ‘clean energy society’.
In the past, these reformist efforts have been undermined by factors such as a
renewed focus on economic growth or by the extension of the state to incorporate the
more radical elements (Jänicke et al. 2000:149; Mol 2001b: 133). In this context, it
may well be that the contemporary innovative changes in Japanese environmental
governance are also transitory—history could repeat itself. Moreover, today’s reform
efforts could well be undermined by a general failure of the innovators to look
beyond national boundaries when assessing the robustness of the new measures (this
may be particularly relevant with respect to the new recycling laws for major
products such as automobiles and home electronics). When such a large part of
Japanese industry is spread across the globe (described as the hollowing out or de-
industrialization of the Japanese economy), when reverse importing is now a core
economic process (Nelson 2003) and when the export of waste goes hand in hand
with the import of natural resources, the kind of model environmentally efficient
society that Japan is pursuing may seem elusive, and is certainly difficult to evaluate.
However, it is precisely with regard to the extension of ecological modernization
beyond national boundaries that the greatest confusion with the notion of sustainable
development begins to arise (Langhelle 2000). The global processes and dynamics of
ecological modernization are analysed by Mol (2001b) who argues that it represents a
promising course for ‘interpreting innovations and achievements in environmental

reform under conditions of globalization as well as for outlining future trajectories
for environmental transformation’ (p. 225). The analysis presented in this volume
supports the view that ecological modernization has begun to shift beyond its earlier
geographical limitations (Mol 1995; Spaargaren 1997) to become increasingly
relevant at the global level (Mol 2001b) and that ‘local refinements and contextual
refinements of this theoretical framework, which until recently could rightfully be
criticized as too monolithic and too Eurocentric, would be most welcome’ (Mol
2001b: 225). In this volume, we have attempted to make such a contextual
refinement focusing on experience in Japan and have gained some interesting
insights.
Concluding remarks
In the face of a decade of tremendous global pressures and competition, which have
worked to both undermine the vitality of the Japanese economy and bring about major
institutional changes in various domains, the national and local environmental
regimes in Japan have flourished (Chapters 3 and 4). The analysis of Japan in this
volume provides fairly convincing evidence of its emergent ecologically modern
nature, mainly when defined in economic and technical terms (see Jänicke et al.
1996, 2000; Mol 2001b: 132–134) but with growing diversity in the patterns of
institutional and cultural politics reflecting a stronger role of civil society
organizations and social movements (Chapter 5). For instance, in Chapter 2, we
describe the development of various environmental discourses in Japan and show
how environmental sociologists (e.g. Funabashi 2001) argue that over time
environmental responsibilities (constraints) are being internalized into governmental
structures and into other entities including corporations. This phenomenon, although
we cannot be sure how deep the changes actually are, is consistent with ecological
modernization and represents a shift away from the traditional approach in Japan
where environmental issues were treated as an add-on. We also note from Chapter 4
that environmental concerns have moved beyond the control of one single
government agency (although this was always difficult in Japan—Barrett and
Therivel 1991) to a situation where in key areas like global warming and recycling
responsibilities are spread across government, business and the rest of society, with
this trend beginning to take shape after the release of the first Environment Basic
Plan in 1994. In this context, the new MoE is no longer a ‘steward’ or ‘watchdog’
(with or without teeth), but functions more as a facilitator or partnership builder
within and outside of government (as mentioned in Chapter 3, the creation of the
Global Environment Partnership Plaza in 1996 is a good example of this).
Looking at the environmental performance of Japan, in general, it is possible to
argue that the process of ‘superindustrialization’ (Buttel 2001) fits closely with the
Japanese development model as best exemplified by new policies measures from
METI including the recirculatory society or zero emissions (discussed in Chapter 3;
see also Elder 2003) involving the implementation of ecologically efficient
manufacturing processes designed to try to loosen the couplings between economic
176 CONCLUSIONS
growth and environmental deterioration (Low et al 1999). This process of industrial

change and environmental reform is in part stimulated by the implementation of
strict government regulations (Cohen 1997). While Japan does have a long tradition
of support for the use of voluntary agreements (Chapter 3), the whole array of recent
recycling laws and the new strict controls on automobile emissions, amongst others,
illustrate how tight regulatory controls can force through technological changes.
Related to this, Japan has been promoting integrated pollution management from the
1970s particularly at the local government level (as discussed in Chapter 4) but also
within the context of individual firm management (exceptions being the smaller
firms—see Revell 2003). This approach (Barrett 1994; Gouldson and Murphy 1997;
Murphy and Gouldson 1998) is crucial in preventing the transmedia movement of
contaminants and also in encouraging the use of systems theory in the design of
manufacturing approaches along the lines of the zero-emissions concept (see Suzuki
and Kuehr 2003). We likewise find an emphasis, often associated with moves toward
integration, on anticipatory planning in ecologically modern states in order to deal
with risk reduction and scientific uncertainty. While acknowledging the progress
made in some areas, particularly with regard to the legislation of environmental
impact assessment (as discussed in Chapter 7), the OECD (2002) called upon the
environmental administration in Japan to further develop a number of anticipatory
planning measures including risk assessment and strategic environmental
assessment. It is important to note that one such anticipatory planning measure, the
precautionary principle, gained greater acceptance in the 1990s (Schreurs 2002:241)
bringing the Japanese environmental management system one step closer to the
German model (Cohen 1997).
Finally, it has been argued that changing discursive practices, the creation of new
coalitions and new ideologies are very important in bringing about environmental
restructuring (Mol and Spaargaren 1993; Hajer 1995). In Chapter 1, we mentioned
that, since 1997, there has been a general upswing in civil society activity and that
this has also impacted on the opportunities for social movements organized around
environmental issues. Japanese civil society is expanding and becoming more
pluralistic, moving away from the patterns of government and business dominance
typical of the developmental state (Tsujinaka 2003). Moreover, in Chapter 5, we
argued that the antagonism and conflict that characterized the pollution problems in
the 1960s and 1970s are now less apparent and have been replaced, in some
instances, by significant (but still not extensive) cooperation between civil society
and the development community, perhaps best exemplified with the experience
related to the Aichi Expo 2005. The evidence presented in Chapters 5, 6 and 8
suggests that, in Japan, ecological modernization remains a somewhat elitist
construct, not shared with Japanese citizenry, but incorporated within political and to
a certain extent business rhetoric. There still remain many obstacles to the full
participation from civil society in environment related decisions, which are mainly
institutional including the strict regulatory environment in Japan for non-profit
organizations (Yamamoto 1999; Vosse 2000; Danaher 2002a; Schwartz 2003). The
above points paint a rather rosy picture of recent progress made in Japan along
ecologically modern lines. However, as we have mentioned throughout this volume
much of the evidence is conflicting and our conclusions can only be tentative.
Significant changes are taking place in some key areas but it is not clear how deep or
sustained they are and it is possible that the progress made could be wiped out when
the economy begins to pick up. Nevertheless, after a decade of environmental gains
matched by changes in institutional structures and social practices, Japan stands
tantalizingly close to being able to project itself in the twenty-first century as a
relatively good model of a clean, green state.
Notes
1 According to their analysis, Norway is characterized as exhibiting weak ecological

modernization and limited sub-politics. The main reason for this is that the
Norwegian state adopts an actively inclusive approach to social movements
whereby these groups moderate their demands in order to gain access to state
funding and public policy-making. In essence, with the Norwegian approach,
ecological modernization is initiated and controlled by the state, which works to
undermine grassroots environmentalism and sub-politics. In contrast, the United
States is described as having some sub-politics and no ecological modernization.
Activist environmental politics is still in evidence in the US but the battle lines
between economics and ecology are entrenched, resulting in a zero-sum game. The
situation in the US is described as passively inclusive whereby groups, once
included, tend to engage in adversarial politics characterized by lobbying and court
actions. The description of the United Kingdom is even less complimentary—
portrayed as sub-politics by default and belated ecological modernization. The UK
is an actively inclusive state that can also be described as a culture of consultation
that inevitably results in social movements settling into a moderate and somewhat
institutionalized relationship with government. However, the main problem is that
consultation can occur without influence on outcomes being possible; the result is a
chain reaction whereby we witness the emergence of more extensive activism
within society as manifested through the anti-roads demonstrations.
2 For instance, official development assistance being consistently high at around
0.8 per cent of GNP for Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden comparing with 0.3
per cent for Germany and Japan.
3 The methodology applied is still in the early stages of development and significant
changes have been made over the three years of evolution of the ESI. For instance,
Scruggs (2003:201) mentions that ESI does not measure change over time and
includes many environmental indicators that might be considered ‘tangential to
national environmental performance.’
4 For four out of the five components, Japan scores lower than the other countries
and it is only with respect to reduction of environmental stresses that Japan scores
better than both the Netherlands and Germany.
5 The ecological footprint approach does face serious limitations in terms of data
availability and reliability. For more on limitations see Wackernagel (2002).
6 In response, social theorists refer to Opschoor’s work on environmental space
utilization and argue that the equal distribution of this space, the harmonization
of environmental backpacks and the shrinking of ecological footprints can be
178 CONCLUSIONS
included in a radical ecological transformation of industrial societies along

ecologically modern lines (Opschoor 1992). There are early indications that this is
happening, particularly through environmental groups in the Netherlands, with
implications for the patterns of production and consumption in the industrialized
countries (Spaargaren 2000a). Moreover, Arthur Mol argues that the issue of equal
distribution of environmental space, ecological footprints and environmental
rucksacks is used at the global level, rather than national, as a means to focus
public/political attention on issues of poverty, access to resources and the
distribution of environmental threats (Mol 2001b: 83). This issue needs to be
understood within the framework of the so—called flexible ceiling determined by a
combination of ecological and technological criteria. That is, society through some
form of technological innovation has the capacity to reduce ecological footprints.
Further, it is argued that some of the criteria used in relation to ecological carrying
capacities are survivalist in nature (referring back to the limits to growth debates)
whereas others are open to political negotiation and societal acceptability. It is also
argued that operationalization of concepts such as environmental space, rucksacks
and footprints remains questionable (Spaargaren 2000a). Experiments conducted to
date, rationing for instance, have proven both unfeasible and politically undesirable,
amounting to something along the lines of resource communism (Huber 2000:
269–285). Nevertheless, ecological modernization scholars do appreciate the
importance of these concepts as a means to identify the available space (rather than
the limits to growth) and the different ways in which environmental resources are
being used (inefficiently, prudently or recklessly) within limits set by eco-politics
and eco-technology.
7 For instance, it is argued that between 1973 and 1985 Japanese industries made
remarkable savings in energy and raw materials but subsequent high industrial
growth linked to lower prices simply cancelled out this effect (Jänicke 2001).
8 Also referred to as the material inputs per service (MIPS)—but can cover industrial
sectors, firms and products—and is a way to determine the kilograms of materials
that must be moved about somewhere in the world (see von Weizsacker et al.
1998).
9 According to the Japan Times (29 August 2003) the amount of greenhouse gases
emitted in Japan in fiscal year 2001 fell by 2.5 per cent compared to the previous
year due to the deteriorating economy as well as an unusually warm winter and cool
summer, resulting in a reduction in air conditioner use. The amount of greenhouse
gases emitted from April 2001 to March 2002 totalled 1.3 billion tons with CO2
accounting for 90 per cent of this total. The 2001 figure was still 5.2 per cent
higher than recorded in 1990 (requiring an 11 per cent emissions cut in order for
Japan to fulfil its protocol obligation of reducing emissions by 6 per cent from 1990
levels by 2008–2012).
10 It might be helpful to provide some examples here of the kinds of people we are
talking about. With respect to political leaders good examples include the former
Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and a number of former Ministers of the
Environment including Wakako Hironaka, Kazuo Aichi and Hiroshi Ohki. The list
of leading academics is extensive and includes Yoichi Kaya (Director—General,
Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth), Hidefumi Imura
(Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University), Takamitsu Sawa
(Professor, Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University), Ryouichi
Yamamoto (Professor and Director, Centre for Collaborative Research, University

of Tokyo), Tadahiro Mitsuhashi (Professor, Faculty of Policy Informatics, Chiba
University of Commerce) and Motoyuki Suzuki (former Vice—Rector of the UN
University). Other leaders from civil society include Saburo Kato (former
government official and head of the Environment and Culture Research Institute)
and Akio Morishima (Director of the Institute for Global Environmental
Strategies). The list could go on and on.
180
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Index
academic community 80–81, 177 n 10 automobile industry 132, 136, 144 n3, 146
acid rain 29 n14
Action Programme for Economic Structure Automobile NO2 Law 29
Reform 138 automobile recycling 136
advisory councils (shingikai) 35, 66, 80,
162 Barrett, B.F.D. 80–81, 126 n4
Agency for Natural Resources and Energy Basic Environmental Law 75
37 Basic Environmental Plan 75, 86 n7
Agenda 21 152 Basic Law for Environmental Pollution
Agenda 21 Kanagawa 53 Control 44–45 n4
Aichi, Kazuo 177 n10 Beck, U. 6, 17, 75
Aichi Agenda 21 53 BIE see Bureau International des
Aichi Expo 2005 72, 113, 122–123, 125 f Expositions
Aichi Prefecture 53, 122 Biodiversity Centre of Japan 33
air pollution 7, 16, 29, 44–45 n4, 65 n6, Biodiversity Convention 152
129, 130, 132 f, 133 f biomass energy 139
Air Pollution Control Laws 45 n4 Broadbent, J. 15 t, 20, 67, 69, 78, 80, 170
air quality 31 t, 129–130 building ventilation systems 36
akirame (giving up) 79 Bureau International des Expositions (BIE)
Akita Prefecture 133 122, 123
Antarctic Fisheries 156 Burgess J. et al 53, 65 n2, 65 n9
anthropocentrism 20–21 Bush, George W. 153
anti-pollution groups (jumin undo) 67 Buttel, F.H. 5, 6, 175
Aoyagi-Usui, M. et al. 87, 98, 100, 101,
101 t Cabinet Office 37
Arcadianism 91 f, 100 f, 104, 106 f, 106 Cambodia 40, 86 n8
Area-Wide Total Pollutant Load Control Canada 153, 156
System 45 n4 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety 40
Asahi Newspaper 82, 112 Central Council for Environmental
Asahi Shimbun 42 Pollution Control (CCEPC) 35, 65 n4
Asia-Pacific region 103, 104, 106 f, 107 Central Environment Council (CEC) 35,
n11 37, 44, 117
associations 74; Chiba Prefecture 72, 83, 114, 133
see also community organizations China 97, 104, 106 f, 107 n11, 135, 156
Australia 106 f, 107 n11, 153, 164
211
212 INDEX
CITES (Convention on International Trade community organizations 66–67, 74–75

in Endangered Species) 39, 164 n5 Comprehensive National Development
cities 16, 111 Plans 111
citizen groups (shimin undo) 67 Comprehensive Research Group on
Citizens’ Alliance for Saving the Environmental Impact Assessment
Atmosphere (CASA) 162–163 Systems (CRG) 117
civic/deliberative model 65 n2, 65–66 n9 Comprehensive Research Group on SEA
civil society: 120
academic community 80–81, 177 n10; Conferences of the Parties (COPs)
culturalist view 73–74, 78, 86 n9; 152–153
definition 66; conservation imperative 168
development in Japan 8, 11n7, 19, 20, construction 8, 11 n6, 11, 36, 37–38,
40, 67–73, 84–85, 175–176; 111–115, 126 n3, 160;
ecological modernization 168–169; see also Ministry of Construction
environmental movements 67–73, consumption patterns 134, 138, 145 n8,
69–70 t, 77; 163
hegemonic relationships 77–79; Cooperative Association 68
institutional statist view 74, 78, 84; cooperative management regimes (CMR)
media 77, 78, 79–80, 113, 114; 13, 50–50, 50 t, 64 n2
new political landscape 75–77; corporatism 8, 15, 170
post-war development 77; Council of Ministers for Global
role 4, 5; Environmental Conservation 18
social hegemony view 74, 78–79, 85; Council of Overseas Economic
social pluralist perspective 74, 84–85; Cooperation Related Ministers 39–40
theoretical perspectives 73–75 Council on Comprehensive ODA Strategy
Clean Water for People Initiative 39 40
climate change 37, 147–150, 163–164; cultural politics 74, 81–83
see also global warming; culture Japanese 13, 73–74, 78, 86 n9, 152
Kyoto Protocol;
Kyoto Protocol: Daily Yomiuri Newspaper 145 n 9
Japan dam construction projects 40, 72, 86 n8,
Climate Change Policy Law 159 112
Clinton, Bill 153, 154 Daylight Savings Time 159
CMR see cooperative management regimes Decentralization Promotion Act 54
CO emissions 129, 144 n2 dematerialization 170
CO2 emissions 7, 29, 38, 127 n 13, 129, Democratic Party (DPJ) 41
131, 132 f, 138, 150, 152, 156, Denmark 139
157–158, 158 f, 159–160, 161–162, Dentsu International Values Surveys
170, 171, 177 n3 (DIVS) 92 t, 97, 97 f, 106, 106
Coalition of Local Governments for developing countries 150, 153, 153, 154,
Environmental Initiatives (COLGEI) 53, 155, 164
64, 64 n1 development crisis 11
cogeneration plants 139 dioxin 70, 130, 135, 172
Cohen, M.J. 87, 90–91, 91 f, 93, 98, 104, discourse analysis 47
106, 131, 144 n1, 166 domestic waste 132 f
collaborative environmental management Domoto, Akiko 83, 114
see cooperative management regimes DPJ (Democratic Party) 41
communitarian elite corporatism 15, 170
INDEX 213
Dryzek, J.S. 7, 8, 9–11 n4, 124, 147, 168, endocrine disrupters see environmental
169 hormones
energy 36, 37;
Ebara Corporation 133 codes and standards 140;
EBL see Environment Basic Law consumption 132 f, 137–138, 146 n12,
EBP see Environment Basic Plan 171;
eco-cement production 133–134 efficiency 129, 131, 134, 140, 144 n3;
eco-efficiency 128, 131–134, 132 f, 133 f, energy saving 100–101, 101 t, 157;
143, 144 n1, 145 n5, 170–171 industry 137, 138;
eco-materials 36 Moonlight Project 157;
eco-nationalism 13, 21 nuclear energy 70, 112, 139, 151,
Eco-Towns 133, 146 n10 160–161;
ecocentrism 89, 100 f policy 138–139, 140;
ecocidal mysticism 91 f, 100 f, 106 f quantitative targets 140;
ecological consciousness 90, 91 f, 106 renewable energy 132, 139–140, 141,
ecological crises 14 151, 160, 161;
ecological footprints 170, 170 t, 177 nn6–7 research and development 139–140;
ecological modernization: Sunshine Project 157;
as cultural politics 81–83; supply structure 140
in Japan 3–3, 6–8, 28, 166–168, Energy Basic Law 161
169–176, 176–177 n3; Energy Basic Plan 161
sub-politics 168–169, 176 n1; Energy Conservation Law 137, 159, 160
theory 3, 3–6, 13, 27, 111, 171–172 Environment Basic Law (EBL) 42, 82, 115
Econet 21 Hiroshima 53 Environment Basic Plan (EBP) 19, 30, 53,
Economic Planning Agency 36 54–55, 115
economy 3, 7, 18–19, 44, 76, 111–112; Environment Partnership Office 33
vs. environment 91–97, 95 f, 97 f, environmental change in Japan:
102, 103, 106, 107 n2, 107 n13, 168, impact of recent modernization 18–20;
172 monitoring system 29–30, 45 n4;
education 106, 173 OECD’s evaluation 30–32, 31–32 t;
EIA see Environmental Impact Assessment post-war evolution 14–18, 15 t
EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) Environmental Conservation Initiative for
Law 20, 72, 111; Sustainable Development 39
characteristics 118–121; Environmental Constraints Theory 14–18,
criticisms 120–121, 124, 127 n13; 15 t, 16 f, 19, 36
development 117–118, 118 t; Environmental Disputes Coordination
local ordinances 51, 65 n5, 115; Committee 145–146 n10
need for legislation 115–117, 126 n8; environmental hormones (kankyo
practical experience 121–123 horumon) 30, 42, 45 n7, 70, 86 n5
EIS see Environmental Impact Statements Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
electricity 138, 139, 140–141, 161 111, 124, 124–126 nn1–2;
Electricity Utility Law 117, 126 n8 see also EIA Law
embedded autonomy 6 Environmental Impact Statements (EIS)
emissions trading 154 118–120, 123
EMS see environmental management environmental knowledge orientations
systems 90–91, 91 f, 170;
endangered species 39, 152, 164 n5 surveys 92–93, 93 t, 94 t, 103–104,
106 t
214 INDEX
environmental management systems Environmental Assessment Directive

(EMS) 51–52, 65 n4, 66 n11, 134 118, 126 n7, 127 n12;
environmental monitoring 29 Framework Convention on Climate
environmental movements 67–73, 69–70 t, Change 152;
77, 161, 162–163 Kyoto Protocol 150, 153, 153–154,
environmental N curve 171 155, 159
environmental policy 8; Expo 2005 (Aichi) 72, 113, 122–123, 125 f
global policies 18; extended producer responsibility (EPR)
impact of recent modernization 18–20, 136
28;
institutions 32–38; FCCC see Framework Convention on
integration 30, 32; Climate Change
overseas manifestation 38–41; Federation of Economic Organizations
post-war evolution 14–18, 15 t; (Keidanren) 111, 161
value persistence 42 fertilizer use 170
Environmental Political Party Green Finland 145 n5, 170
Assembly (Kankyosento Midori no flexible ceiling 176 n6
Kaigi) 43 foreign policy 150;
environmental politics in Japan 13–18; see also Ministry of Foreign Affairs
culturally specific perspective 13; Forest Principles 152
geographic/natural resources forestation 30
perspective 13; Framework Convention on Climate Change
greening of politics 41–43; (FCCC) 8, 20, 152
political opportunities structure (POS) Free Forum (Jishu Koza) 81
13–14 Fujimae Tidal Flats Reclamation Project
environmental problems 8, 14, 19 (Nagoya) 72, 113, 114, 121–122
environmental protection 150, 151, 152 Fujisawa Eco-Industrial Park 133
environmental protection style society Funabashi, H. 14, 15 t, 16 f, 17, 19, 36
(kankyo hozengata shakai) 43
environmental regime: GEA (Global Environmental Action) 45 n9
definition 28–29; gender 43
environmental powers 35–38, 43–44; genetically modified foods 42
institutions 32–38 geothermal plants 139
Environmental Resource Technology Germany:
Integrated Research Centre 45 n12 CO2 emissions 156, 157–158, 158 f;
environmental rucksacks 176 n6 eco-efficiency 145 n5;
environmental space utilization 176 n6 ecological footprints 170, 170 t;
‘environmental state’ 4 ecological modernization 169–170,
Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) 170;
170–170, 176 n3 energy 139, 160;
environmental values see values Green Party 43;
environmentalism 20–22, 87, 168 Local Agenda 21 52;
epistemic communities 62, 66 n15 surveys 91, 98, 100 f, 101–102, 102 t;
EPR (extended producer responsibility) waste generation 135
136 Giddens, A. 5–6
ESI see Environmental Sustainability Index Gifu Prefecture 126 n8, 133
European Union: Global Environment Partnership Plaza 33
INDEX 215
Global Environment Survey (GOES) 92 t, households, environmental impact 134,

93, 95 f, 97 f, 98, 100, 106 145 n8
Global Environmental Action (GEA) 45 n9 hydropower 139
Global Environmental Information Centre Hyogo Prefecture 126 n8
33
global warming 20, 38, 68–69, 147–150, Ichikawa, Satoshi 107 n11
152, 156, 159; ICLEI-Japan 52–53, 54, 64 n1;
see also climate change; survey 56, 61, 62, 63, 64
Kyoto Protocol; ICLEI (International Council for Local
Kyoto Protocol: Environmental Initiatives) 52
Japan IEA (International Energy Agency) 140
globalization 150, 173 Iida City (Nagano Prefecture) 55, 61–57 t,
GOES see Global Environment Survey 133
GONGOs (government organized NGOs) INGPEN 145 n8
68 Independent Power Producers 138
government action 102, 106 India 40, 86 n8, 97, 106 f, 107 n11, 156
Great Britain 98, 100 f Indonesia 40, 97, 106 f
green consumerism 100–101, 101 t Industrial Science, Technology Policy and
Green Energy Law Network 161 Environment Bureau 37
green productivity 132 Industrial Structure Council 37, 136
green purchasing 132, 143 industrialization 5, 170, 172–173, 175
‘green state’ 4 industry:
Greenhouse Gas Inventory Office of Japan energy-saving 157;
158 f environmental trends 83, 129–131,
greenhouse gases 147, 150, 152, 156–157, 143–144;
158 f, 159, 161, 177 n9; global market 9 n2, 173;
see also Kyoto Protocol; and Kyoto Protocol 150, 154, 161–162;
Kyoto Protocol: policy 15, 16, 23 n1;
Japan technical hearing system 44 n2;
greening of Japanese politics 41–43 voluntary measures 161–162
Greenpeace Japan 163 information deficit model 52–53, 65 n2, 65
groundwater pollution 130 n9
Information Disclosure Law 77
Habermas, J. 5 Inglehart, R. 82–83, 89, 92, 98, 100
Hajer, M.A. 6, 111 Institute for Global Environmental
Hashimoto, Ryutaro 45 n9, 117, 177 n10 Strategies 33, 37
Hino City (Tokyo) 55, 61–57 t Institute of Social Research, Tilburg
Hinode-machi 72 University 100
Hinode (Tokyo) 135 institutional statism 74, 78, 84
Hironaka, Wakako 177 n10 institutions 32–38
Hiroshima Prefecture 53 Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee
Hokkaido Prefecture 126 n8, 133 40
Hong Kong 106 f, 107 n11, 135 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Hosokawa, Morihiro 75 Change 163–164
House of Representatives (Shugiin) 42 International Council for Local
household size 134, 145 n8 Environmental Initiatives;
see also ICLEI-Japan
216 INDEX
International Council for Local Japan Wild Birds Society 123

Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) 52 Japanese culture 13, 73–74, 78, 86 n9, 152
International Eminent Persons’ Meeting 45 JBIC (Japan Bank for International
n9 Cooperation) 40
International Energy Agency (IEA) 140 JCP (Japan Communist Party) 41
International Impact Assessment JEA see Japan Environment Agency
Association 123 JICA (Japan International Cooperation
International Social Survey Programme Agency) 40
(ISSP) 92, 92 t, 93, 95 f, 97, 97–98, Johannesburg Earth Summit 162
100 f, 100, 101, 106, 106, 107 n4, 107
n13 Kagawa Prefectural Government 145–146
Ireland 98, 100 f n10
Isahaya Tidal Flats (Nagasaki) 113–114, Kanagawa Prefecture 51, 53, 126 n8
126 n6 kankyoo (environment) 21
Ishigaki Island Airport 120 Kansai International Airport 120
ISO 14001 accreditation 134 Kato, Saburo 177 n10
ISSP see International Social Survey Kawasaki 126 n8, 133
Programme Kaya, Yoichi 177 n10
itai itai 11 , 17, 172 keywords 82
Italy 98, 100 f Kiko Forum (Climate Forum) 163
Iwate Prefecture 83, 103, 106 f, 107 n11 Kitakyushu Eco-Industrial Park 133
Kobayashi (Miyazaki Prefecture) 70
Jänicke, M. 6, 129, 170–171 Kobe 126 n8
Japan Association for the 2005 World Koike, Yuriko 161
Exposition 122 Koizumi, Junichiro 40, 153, 154
Japan Bank for International Cooperation Koizumi Initiative 40
(JBIC) 40 Kokubo Eco-Industrial Park (Yamanashi
Japan Centre for Climate Change Actions Prefecture) 133
33 Komiyama, Hiroshi 132
Japan Communist Party (JCP) 41 Konagai (Nagasaki Prefecture) 126 n5
Japan Development Bank 86–87 n12 Kosugi, Takashi 87 n13
Japan Ecological Society 81 Kotopanjang Dam (Indonesia) 40
Japan Environment Agency (JEA): kougai (public nuisance) 21
establishment 32, 33; Kuztnetz curve 171
policy 42, 45 n7, 111, 116–117, 118, Kyoto Protocol:
122, 123, 126 n2, 127 n13, 134, 153; clean development mechanism 154;
status 36, 45 n8, 116; emissions trading 154;
surveys 86 n5, 123 European Union 150, 153, 153–154,
Japan Environment Corporation 33 155, 159;
Japan Ichthyology Association 81 flexible mechanisms 153, 154–155,
Japan International Cooperation Agency 160;
(JICA) 40 formation 150, 151–153;
Japan Land and Water Academy 81 joint implementation 154;
Japan Socialist Party 75 ratification 155;
Japan Times 117, 177 n9 Russia 150, 155–156, 158;
Japan Wetlands Action Network (JAWAN) sinks 154, 155, 160;
121
INDEX 217
United States 150, 153, 153–155, 163, promoting pluralistic approaches 56,
164 61;
Kyoto Protocol: shared knowledge base 62);
Japan 77; Sweden 52
decision-making and implementation local environmental governance 47–50,
45 n5, 127 n13, 150–151, 162–163; 63–64;
greenhouse gas emissions 156–158, EIA systems 51, 65 n5, 115;
158 f; environmental management systems
nuclear energy 160–161; 51–52, 65 n4, 66 n11, 134;
precautionary principle 163, 175; greening of politics 42–43;
ratification 40, 147, 155; historical perspective 50–52, 82;
regulatory measures 158–160; innovative practices 56;
key objectives 50, 64–65 n2;
renewable energy 161; LA21 progress 52–53, 54–56, 61–64;
targets 153, 153; Ministry of Environment control 35;
voluntary measures by industry participatory management 53–56,
161–162 61–57 t, 62, 118;
Kyoto Target Achievement Plan 159–160 pollution control 50–51, 159, 175;
post-war evolution 16, 17;
LA21 see Local Agenda 21 theoretical framework 50–50
Lake Nakaumi reclamation 113, 114 Local Government Environment
Law Concerning Countermeasures against Conference 64 n1
Soil Pollution 130 local government system 50, 65 n3, 111
Law Concerning the Promotion of localism (jimoto shugi) 169
Measures to Cope with Global Warming London Convention on Ocean Dumping
20, 45 n5, 159 39
Law Concerning the Rational Use of Long-Term Energy Supply and Demand
Energy see Energy Conservation Law Outlook 138, 140
legislation 8, 15 t, 17, 27, 29, 32 t, 41–42,
44 n2, 44–45 n4, 68, 75, 77, 86 n2, 111, MAFF see Ministry of Agriculture,
114–115, 122, 126 n8, 130, 135–136, Forestry and Fisheries
159, 161, 175; Maki (Niigata Prefecture) 70
see also EIA (Environmental Impact Masuda, Hiroya 83, 112
Assessment) Law material inputs per service (MIPS) 177 n8
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) 17, 41, material use 171, 177 n8
42, 68, 75, 76, 77, 82, 111 Meadowcroft J. 50, 50, 64 n2, 169–170
limits to growth 176 n6 media 77, 78, 79–80, 113, 114
Local Agenda 21 (LA21) 54; METI see Ministry of Economy, Trade and
evaluation models 65 n2; Industry
Germany 52; MHW see Ministry of Health and Welfare
Japan 43, 52–53, 54–56, 61–64; Minamata 11, 17, 172
Netherlands 52; Ministerial Council for Comprehensive
Norway 47, 52; Energy Measures 140
objectives: Ministry for International Trade and
(comprehensiveness 62–63; Industry (MITI):
discourse coalitions 61–62; economy 15;
joint implementation 63; EIA Law 111, 117, 122, 123, 126 n1;
218 INDEX
energy 157, 161; MLIT see Ministry of Land, Infrastructure

Kyoto Protocol 153, 154; and Transport
status 45 n8, 45 n12; MoC see Ministry of Construction
see also Ministry of Economy, Trade MoE see Ministry of the Environment
and Industry (METI) MoFA see Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Mol, A.P.J. 3, 3, 4, 6, 9 n4, 11 n5, 27, 142,
Fisheries (MAFF) 36, 45 n8, 45 n11 150, 168, 171, 174, 176 n6
Ministry of Construction (MoC) 36, 81, Moonlight Project 157
111, 112, 117, 126 n6; Morishima, Akio 37, 177 n10
see also Ministry of Land, Morita, Tsuneyuki 147, 164 n1
Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT) MoT see Ministry of Transport
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Murai, Yoshinori 81
(METI): Murayama, Tomiichi 76
eco-efficiency 131, 133;
energy 151, 160–161; NACS-J see Nature Conservation Society
and Kyoto Protocol 150, 154; of Japan
policy 36–37, 128, 138, 175; Nagano Prefecture 83, 112–113
recycling 136, 137; Nagara River Dam 72, 81, 113–114, 126
status 32, 35; n6
structure 45 nn11–12; Nagoya City 65 n7, 122
see also Ministry for International Nagoya City Land Development
Trade and Industry (MITI) Corporation 121
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) Nakamura, Atsuo 43
35–36, 38–41, 45 n11, 150, 152, 153, Narmada Dam (India) 40, 86 n8
154, 162 nation-states:
Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) role 27–28
32, 45 n8 National Environmental Research Institute
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and 45 n8
Transport (MLIT) 36, 37–38, 45 n11, 45 National Environmental Training Institute
n14, 111–112; 33
see also Ministry of Construction National Institute for Environmental
(MoC) Studies (NIES) 33, 98, 100, 100 f
Ministry of the Environment (MoE): National Institute for Minamata Disease
eco-efficiency 131, 132 f, 133 f; 33, 45 n8
ELIA Law 120, 121; national parks 72, 86 n6
establishment 8; National Research Council 89
and industry 44 n2; National Strategy for Biological Diversity
and Kyoto Protocol 150, 154; Conservation 30
policy 15 t, 32–35; National Strategy of Japan on Biological
status 32, 36, 40, 45 n9, 120, 174; Diversity 45 n10
waste management 137 natural disasters 76, 111
Ministry of Transport (MoT) 45 n8, 122 natural gas 139
MIPS (material inputs per service) 177 n8 nature conservation 30, 31–32 t, 72, 92,
Mitake (Gifu Prefecture) 70, 135 120
MITI see Ministry for International Trade Nature Conservation Council (NCC) 35
and Industry Nature Conservation Society of Japan
Mitsubishi 86 n8 (NACS-J) 72, 77, 123
Mitsuhashi, Tadahiro 177 n10
INDEX 219
NEP see new environmental paradigm Norway:

Netherlands: CO2 emissions 157–158, 158 f;
CO2 emissions 157–158, 158 f; ecological footprints 170, 170 t;
eco-efficiency 145 n5; ecological modernization 164,
ecological footprints 170, 170 t, 176 169–170, 170, 176 n1;
n6; Local Agenda 21 47, 52;
ecological modernization 164, waste generation 135
169–170, 170; NPOs (not for profit organizations) 8, 77,
Local Agenda 21 52; 162
surveys 90–91, 98, 100–102, 100 f, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency 37
101 t, 102 t, 106, 106; nuclear energy 70, 112, 139, 151, 160–161
waste generation 135 numinous-aestheticism 90, 91 f
Network Movement (NET) 42–43
New Climate Change Policy Programme OECD see Organization for Economic
159 Cooperation and Development
New Energy Foundation 138 Official Development Assistance (ODA)
new environmental paradigm (NEP) 89, 39–40, 152
92, 94 t, 98, 100, 103 Ohki, Hiroshi 40, 177 n10
New Komeito (NK) 41 oil crises, 137, 157
New Zealand 106 f, 107 n11, 153 Oita Prefecture 69
NGOs (non-government organizations): Omuta City 133
in civil society 67, 72, 79, 81; optimism 100 f
climate change policy 150; Organization for Economic Cooperation
links with Ministry of the Environment and Development (OECD) 7, 30–32,
33; 31–32 t, 115, 129–130, 131, 138, 147,
in local governance 62–63; 152
NGO-MoFA cooperation 40; Organization for Petroleum Exporting
political alienation 44, 66, 85; Countries (OPEC) 157
status 77, 162; Osaka 111, 162
see also GONGOs (government Osaka Prefecture 65 n4, 66 n11
organized NGOs) overseas aid see Official Development
NHK see Nippon Hyoso Kyoka Assistance
NIES see National Institute for
Environmental Studies participatory assessment (sankagata
nihonjinron (Japanese identity) 13, 21 assess) 121
Niji to Midori (Rainbow and Green Party) pessimism 100, 100 f, 102, 103, 106
43 pesticide aid 40, 86 n8
Nikkei newspaper 80 Philippines 98
NIMBY-style movements 69, 73 policy epistemic model 65 n2
Nippon Hyoso Kyoka (NHK) 97, 107 n4, policy-making 162–163
107 n10 political activity 100–101, 101 t;
Nippon Keidanren 161, 165 n25 see also protest groups
Nippon Steel Corporation 129 political modernization 4
NK (New Komeito) 41 political opportunities structure (POS)
NO2 emissions 129, 131, 144 n2, 171 13–14
Noashima 146 n10 pollution:
non-government organizations see NGOs abatement 144 n3;
Non-Profit Organization Law 8, 77
220 INDEX
crises 11, 16–17, 21; recirculatory society (junkangatta shakai)

‘export’ 130; 37, 43, 134–137, 144
Kuztnetz curve 171; recycling 29, 36, 37–38, 103, 122, 128,
local authority control 50–51, 159, 175; 132, 134–137, 170
prevention 130; Recycling Diet 136
standards 117, 127 n11; Red Data Book 30
trans-boundary 29; Redefining Progress 170, 170 t
water 130; referendums 70–72, 112, 126 n5
see also air pollution reflexive modernization 6, 17, 75
Pollution Diet 17, 68, 136 renewable energy 132, 139–140, 141, 151,
Pollution Related Health Damage 160, 161
Compensation and Prevention renewable portfolio standards (RPS)
Association 33 140–141, 161
POS (political opportunities structure) Rio Earth Summit 19
13–14 risk society 6, 75, 85, 172
post-materialism 82–83, 83 f, 89 River Law 114
power stations 117 Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed
precautionary principle 163, 175 Consent Procedure for Certain
Prime Minister 37 Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in
Prime Minister’s Office surveys 80, 86 n10, International Trade 40
91, 107 n2 RPS see renewable portfolio standards
Prometheanism 20–21, 91 f, 100 f, 104, Russia:
106 f CO2 emissions 156;
protest groups 67–68, 70–72, 77, 78, 85, Kyoto Protocol 150, 155–156, 158
86 n1, 112, 160
public consultation 118, 121 Saitama Prefecture 120, 126 n8
public opinion surveys 52, 65 n8, 92 t; Sanbanze Tidal Flats (Chiba) 72, 113, 114
economy vs. environment 91–6, 95 f, Sapporo City 133
97 f, 102; Satoyama movement 21
environmental knowledge 92–93, 93 t, Save Fujimae Association 121
94 t, 103–104, 106 f; Sawa, Takamitsu 177 n10
environmental values 97–102, 100 f, science and technology 4–5, 104
101 t, 102 t; Science and Technology Agency 36
government action 102, 106; SEA (Strategic Environmental
international comparisons 98, 100–102, Assessment) 120
100 f, 101 t, 102 t; Seikatsu Club 42–43, 68
techniques 89–91; Sendai 69
young people 103–106, 106 f, 107 n11 Shiki City (Saitama Prefecture) 55, 61–57 t
Public Waters Reclamation Act 122 Shiroishi (Miyazaki Prefecture) 70
public works 38, 42, 111–115, 126 n3 Shizuoka Prefecture 107 n14
shore and coastline development 29
Qatar 156 Singapore 97, 103, 106 f, 107 n11
qualitative environmental issues 52 ‘slow life’ movement 112
Small and Medium Enterprise Agency 37
rational-ecologism 91 f, 100 f, 106 f small and medium-sized enterprises
rational-scientism 90, 91 f (SMEs) 141–143
SO2 emissions 129, 131, 137, 144 n2
INDEX 221
social actors 4–5 Takeshita, Noboru 18, 45 n9

social exclusion 44 Tanabe, Yasuo 136
social hegemony 74–75, 78–79, 85 Tanaka, Yasuo 83, 112–113
social movements 66–73, 69–70 t, 77, 78, technical hearing system 44 n2
79, 169, 176 n1 techno-nationalism 172
social networks 78 technocentrism 89, 100 f, 103
social pluralism 74, 84–85 technology 5, 89, 98, 106, 172
Socialist Party of Japan 41 Teshima (Seto Inland Sea) 135–136,
soil contamination 130 145–146 n10
solar power 36 Teshima Sogo Kanko Kaihatsu 145–146
South Africa 97 n10
South Korea 97, 135 Thailand 97, 98, 106 f, 107 n11, 135
Southeast Asia 152 theory of ecological modernization 3, 3–6,
Special Measures Law Concerning the Use 13, 27, 111, 171–172
of New Energy by Electricity Utilities thermal recycling 137
140, 161 3-R approach 136
SPEED (Strategic Programme on 3Es 138–139
Environmental Endocrine Disrupters) Tohoku Electric Power Company 70
45 n7 Tokaimura, Ibaraki 160
state 5 Tokushima 112
state failure 6 Tokyo 65 n3, 103, 106 f, 107 n11, 111,
steel industry 129 126 n8
Stockholm Conference 152 Tokyo Bay Aqualine 116, 126 n4
Stockholm Convention on Persistent Tokyo Electric Power Company 144 n2,
Organic Pollutants 40 161
Strategic Environmental Assessment Tokyo Metropolitan Government 65 n8,
(SEA) 120 120
Strategic Programme on Environmental ToP see treadmill of production
Endocrine Disrupters (SPEED) 45 n7 Top Runners programme 140, 146 n14,
sub-politics 168–169, 176 n1 159
Sumi, Kazuo 81 toxic waste 145 n4
Sunshine Project 157 Toyonaka City (Osaka Prefecture) 55–56,
‘sustainable capitalism’ 5 61–57 t
sustainable development 19, 152, 169–170, trans-boundary pollution 29
174 transportation 36, 37, 38, 160, 171
Sweden: treadmill of production (ToP) 5, 9–11 n4,
CO2 emissions 157–158, 158 f; 14, 15, 172, 173
ecological footprints 170, 170 t;
ecological modernization 164, Uguiszawa City 133
169–170, 170; Umino, M. 15 t
Local Agenda 21 52; Unakami (Chiba Prefecture) 70
surveys 101–102, 102 t United Kingdom 139, 156, 176 n1
United Nations:
Taiheiyo Cement Corporation 133–134 Conference on Environment and
Taiwan 135 Development (UNCED) 152;
‘Take-It-Easy Declaration’ (Gambaranai Convention on the Human
Sengen) 112 Environment 152;
222 INDEX
Decade of Education for Sustainable surveys 91–98, 92–93 t, 94 t, 95 f, 97 f,

Development 40; 101 t, 107 n2;
Framework Convention on Climate technocentric perspective 89, 100 f,
Change 8, 20, 152 103;
United Nations University, Tokyo 33 traditional (conservation) 89, 106;
United States: young people 103–106, 106, 107 n11
CO2 emissions 156; Vietnam 135
eco-efficiency 145 n5; Virgin Islands 156
Framework Convention on Climate voluntarism 143, 161–162
Change 152; Voluntary Action Plan on the Environment
Kyoto Protocol 150, 153, 153–155, 140
163, 164;
National Environmental Protection Act waste:
(NEPA) 124 n1, 126 n7; disposal 29–30, 31 t, 55, 70, 72, 76,
Official Development Assistance 122, 135;
(ODA) 39; domestic 132 f;
sub-politics 176 n1; generation 135, 171;
surveys 89, 91, 92, 98, 100 f illegal dumping 135–136, 145–146 n10;
University of Tampere, Finland 145 n5 management 135, 137, 146 n10;
power generation 139;
value persistence 42 toxic waste 145 n4
values: Waste Management Law 135–136
Arcadianism 91 f, 100 f, 104 , 106 f water pollution 130
106; Water Pollution Control Law 130
biospheric-altruistic 89; water quality 29, 31 t, 45 n6, 65 n6, 170
dominant social paradigm 89; White Paper on the Environment 29, 65
ecocentric perspective 89, 100 f; n4, 131
ecocidal mysticism 91 f, 100 f, 106 f; Wild Bird Society of Japan (WBSJ) 77
ecological consciousness 90, 91 f, 106; wind power 72, 86 n6, 139
economy vs. environment 91–97, 95 f, World Business Council for Sustainable
97 f, 102, 103, 106, 107 n2, 107 n 13; Development 131
egoistic 89; World Economic Forum 170–170
environmental knowledge orientations World Summit on Sustainable
90–91, 91 f, 93 t, 103–104, 106 f, Development (WSSD) 39, 40
environmentalism 87; World Trade Organization 156
international comparisons 98, 100–102, World Values Surveys (WVS) 82–83, 83 f,
100 f, 101 t, 102 t; 92, 92 t, 93, 95 f, 97, 97, 97 f, 106
new environmental paradigm (NEP) World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) 123
89, 92, 94 t, 98, 100, 103; WWF Japan 77
numinous-aestheticism 90, 91 f;
openness to change 89; Yakushima Island 133
post-materialism 82–83, 83 f; Yochinaga (Okayama Prefecture) 70
Prometheanism 20–21, 91 f, 100 f, 104, Yokohama Municipal Government 51
106 f; Yoshino River Dam 72, 112, 113, 114
rational-ecologism 91 f, 100 f, 106 f; young people 103–106, 106 f, 107 n11
rational-scientism 90, 91 f;
zero emissions 36, 132, 133

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Brendan F.D. Barrett - Ecological-Modernisation-and-Japan

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Ecological Modernization and Japan

Brendan Barrett is an Academic Programme Officer at the United Nations

LONDON AND NEW YORK

ISBN 0-203-02331-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-35166-9 (Print Edition)

List of figures vii

8 Ecologically modern industrialization 129

2.1 Internalization of environmental constraints 17

2.1 Evolution of environmental related discourses in Japan 16

Brendan F.D.Barrett is an Academic Programme Officer at the United Nations

Jeffrey Broadbent received his B.A. in Religious Studies—Buddhism from the

Dana R.Fisher is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at

Andrea Revell is a Researcher at the Small Business Research Centre, Kingston

Miranda A.Schreurs is Associate Professor in the Department of Government

Mikoto Usui has taught at a number of Japanese universities including the

and Yasunari Shigemoto of the Aichi Expo Association, Ms Midori Aoyagi-Usui

BIE Bureau International des Expositions

ISSP International Social Survey Programme

PCA Pollution Control Agreement

There is some empirical evidence that such developmental states [as

The theory of ecological modernization

A relatively comprehensive summary of ecological modernization by Mol and

being important participants in ecological transformations (Mol 2000a). In essence,

Ecological modernization theorists are basically of the view that as much as

The ecological modernists’ reliance on technology offers a potential point of

Japan as a case of ecological modernization

‘paradigmatic’ example of ecological modernization (Hajer 1996:249). Moreover,

Outline of this volume

Having escaped the bonds of the traditional, undeveloped economy, and

A framework to understand Japanese environmental politics

Transitions in the main environmental discourses

Table 2.1 Evolution of environmental related discourses in Japan

Figure 2.1 Internalization of environmental constraints (source: Funabashi (2001), partly

government ministries tended to function as reasonable brokers or bridge keepers

period, Japan experienced economic restructuring induced by high inflation and

Impact of recent modernization on Japan—the fourth stage

an incomprehensible tangle of politicians and bureaucrats, regular institutions

This complex composition of environmental constituencies and their interaction

Japan. Clearly many significant environmental measures were introduced in this

Reflections on Japanese environmentalism

amongst the Japanese elite to favour grand-scale nature remaking schemes

will show in Chapter 6, there has been a gradual increase in pro-environmental

Policies, actors and institutions

The ecological modernization theory has identified two options for

The core scholarship on ecological modernization deals with changes in institutions

Within the framework of ecological modernization, the state is viewed as working

transaction costs, facilitating inter-group negotiations and supporting collective

Coping with environmental change in Japan

From Japan Environment Agency to Ministry of the

Table 3.1 Comparison of OECD reviews of Japan’s environmental performance

Table 3.2 Major environmental legislation, 1990–2003

associated with the national environmental administration—the Central Council for

Environmental powers throughout government

promote innovation and industrial transformation. For instance, by amending the

Overseas manifestation of Japanese environmental policy

to the compliance conditions of the London Convention on Ocean Dumping. Perhaps

Japan is facing the need to change traditional regulatory approaches. Japan

The greening of Japanese politics

It is has a centre-left platform: ‘popular sovereignty’, ‘respect for fundamental

This ‘value persistence’ is an underlying factor influencing the behaviour of Japanese

bureaucratic autonomy and privilege, and the exclusion of democratic

1 It also potentially undermines the possibility of maintaining a critical public sphere

16 See the following web site for more details—http://www.seikatsuclub.coop/english/