> From: Ron Dore
> Date: 2012/04/11
>
>
> Mike Smitka is bang on as usual. He should take a
week to go see the
> line-up in the battle over restarting the reactor In
Osaka. He'd get a
> great paper out of it.
> One thing about the Japanese nimby battles these
days, as I reflected
> seeing all those spare policemen at Narita, is that
the Japanese
> version of such situations is no longer complicated
by helmet and
> scarves and gerabo-wielding Chukaku teenagers -- or
ex-teenagers.
> Who was the political scientist, David XY who wrote
an, I thought
> absurdly sympathetic, book about these people at
Narita?

The line-up over restarts includes Japan's most innovate finance and IT capital together with a new wave in politics that's making serious headway in decentralization and smart deregulation. Thanks to Osaka Mayor Hashimoto, regional blocs are firming up in Kansai, Kyushu, Shikoku and etc and getting ready to take over the METI, National Lands and Min of Environment regional bureaus. Those are the first 3 of
16 central agencies' regional sections to be up for decentralization. They are also key to organizing a smart, green energy shift at the regional level, accelerated by policies like the comprehensive feed-in tariff and robust green city programmes.

The utilities, with their centralized power infrastructure and business models, naturally hate all this and claim the sky will fall. The megabanks, Keidanren and MOF seems just as desperate to preserve the status quo and the utilities' revenue streams. PM Noda was dreaming about being the second coming of Koizumi with a consumption-tax election, but is waking up to find himself standing on what looks a heck of a lot like the wrong side of history with the old guard and their concentrated benefits-diffused costs in a protracted war over energy-policy.

By way of comparison, a bipartisan stream of Americans are trying to go renewable and smart through the Pentagon and its 750-plus bases, federal politics being dysfunctional and too much of the private economy dominated by vested energy interests:
http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/ElectricPower/6168116

So Japan's fight over restarts seems a wee bit bigger than a Narita rerun. Maybe it's a little more like exactly 20 years ago this summer when Keidanren and MOF fought off PM Miyazawa and protected the corrupt status quo in the financial economy.

The reformists might lose this time again, but personally I'm sure happy as hell to be here and able to watch this unfold. This country rocks.