Peter Cave raises a key issue--why no climate strike protests in Japan?


As readers of my work will know, I have been studying this issue of environmental action in Japan for a long time, I offer a few thoughts based upon this research. I have not been following Japanese politics lately (being occupied with a global climate change policy network study that includes Japan-- that global study COMPON can be seen at www.compon.org <http://www.compon.org>).


Anyhow, in my field work and book Environmental politics in Japan (Cambridge 1998) I concluded that Japanese environmental interests in the 1960s and 70s were very localized--willing to fight against village or neighborhood pollution, but not willing to donate money to support national level environmental organizations. This lack of support for national (or international) environmental organizations has continued to the present. I think one reason is cultural--the "presentism" and pragmatism of Japanese culture that eschews getting concerned about truly abstract moral principles. To put this assertion into deeper reference, cultural sociologists of Japan like Bellah and Eisenstadt call Japanese culture as "non-axial" meaning that it lacks a transcendental break with presentism into abstract moral principles. As a concrete example, in my field work, when I would talk about abstract moral reasons for conducting environmental research, I would be accused of being "rikutsuppoi"--stinking of logic. The mitigation of global climate change is an abstract issue that will benefit humanity and all Japanese people, but doesn't have much immediate relevance to one's own village or neighborhood. Therefore, Japanese people do not rally around this abstract principle as a driving moral cause. (Of course, that is weak enough in the US, but it does evoke some response as the US Youth Climate Strikes show).


There is another aspect to this lack of mobilization--the vertical control of voluntary associations in Japanese civil society. As the article by Dreiling, Lougee and Nakamura, "After the Meltdown" in Social Problems 2017 shows, most environmental associations in Japan have been forced to accept a retiree from the national bureaucracy onto their board of directors, and this exerts a moderating effect upon their environmental activism--to the point that they did not protest about the environmental damage caused by the Fukushima meltdown. Those protests that did occur welled up from less organized grassroots sources. In the US, Greta's Youth Climate Strikes also welled up from the grassoroots, but they were heavily supported by established national and branch civil society environmental NGOs such as Sierra Club and 350.org <http://350.org>.


So, I think that these two factors help accounts for the lack of climate change mobilization in Japan.


Best wishes


Jeff



Jeffrey Broadbent
Professor, Department of Sociology

Fellow, Institute on the Environment
909 Social Science Building
University of Minnesota
267 19th Ave. S.
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455
Office phone: 612-624-1828
Department Phone: 612-624-4300


Department Fax: 612-624-7020
Email: broad001@umn.edu <mailto:broad001@umn.edu>
Curriculum Vitae Webpage <http://www.soc.umn.edu/people/broadbent_j.html>
Compon: Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks project website <http://www.compon.org>
East Asian Social Movements <http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/book/978-0-387-09625-4?cm_mmc=EVENT-_-BookAuthorEmail-_-%20East%20Asian%20Social%20Movemen>


"The world is much more interesting than any one discipline." - Edward Tufte



On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 8:29 AM SSJ-Forum Moderator <ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp <mailto:ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp>> wrote:


From: Peter Cave <Peter.Cave@manchester.ac.uk
<mailto:Peter.Cave@manchester.ac.uk>>

Date: 2019/09/20



Dear Forum Members


Today (Friday 20 Sept), large climate strikes are going on
worldwide.
As I write at 9 a.m. UK time, there are reports of 300,000 people on
the
streets in Australia (a country of about 25 million population), for
example. No doubt there will be similarly large numbers in many other
countries.


In Japan, on the other hand, a country of 126 million people,
severely
affected by the climate crisis in all sorts of ways, including more
frequent and more powerful typhoons (one just this month) and heavy
rain
resulting in disastrous floods last year, very little seems to be
happening. When I look at the Asahi Shinbun (Japanese) website, there
does not seem to be any mention of climate strikes, even overseas. The
same goes for the NHK top page. UK reporters also report that not much
is happening in Japan.


Why not?


Just to continue the Japan-Australia comparison, both countries are
liberal democracies with a highly educated population, impressive
universities and scientists, and a free press, and both are being
significantly affected by the climate crisis. So why the huge
difference? It's not as if people in Japan are completely unaware of
the
issues. The term 'global warming' has been current for decades, and
ordinary people I know in Japan seem quite happy to acknowledge climate
change.


I would be interested to see what Forum members think.


I would also like to ask a related question about Japanese
politics. I
have not been following politics in Japan closely for a while (aside
from watching the news for the seven months I was in Japan during
2018),
but my impression is that green issues hardly feature in Japanese
politics. To me, this seems quite surprising, given that (a) in some
other countries, Green parties have been making significant strides -
notably in Germany, where it is even reported that they are on a
trajectory to displace the Social Democrats as the second largest party
(b) you would think that this might be a good issue for Japan's
lacklustre opposition parties to seize and try to make their own, to
give them some much needed cutting edge. Is my impression about green
politics in Japan wrong? If it is right, why don't green issues feature
more?


I look forward to hearing your thoughts.


Peter


Peter Cave
Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies
SALC, University of Manchester
Samuel Alexander Building
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)161 275 3195
www.manchester.ac.uk/research/peter.cave/
<http://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/peter.cave/>



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