Environmental Policy in Japan: The Effect of Japanese Citizen Groups on Policy-Making

This paper shows government responses to environmental problems whether the state will respond voluntarily or as a result of popular pressure in Japan. Japan’s pollution-related miracles and degradations, by their unique values and preferences, make one wonder what political processes and larger social structures made Japanese government yield different performances on domestic air and water pollution management, international deforestation and fishery environmental issues in terms of policy-making mechanism. We find that Japan’s strong economic development also brought them pollution problems which triggered small citizen groups to stand up against their government and cultural values. With help of mass media, they could mobilize the public to pressure and change the ironclad relations among the government, the LDP and business groups, who finally made a concession to the citizen groups and yielded productive environmental regulation policies. Unfortunately, those successful citizen movements, however, could not further develop into strong national organizations, which might have played a crucial role in international environmental issues. In this sense, the paper finds that even though the antipollution movement worked a miracle in the government’s concession, it wasn’t the result of the public aspire to fulfill higher aims. Rather it was the result of the public’s action to secure the basic needs. It is true that values and preferences change as the level of economic development changes, but it is not necessarily true that they will always shift to a higher level. Therefore, governance system needs to further development in environmental policy.