If I might follow up a little on Jeffrey Broadbent's post on local versus national activism on environmental issues. And thank you to Peter Cave for raising this important and interesting question that, clearly from the responses of list members, needs a lot of research.




I think JF is spot on, and I'd like to add that I think some of this is rooted in how the issue of environmental concern developed in Japan through the industrial period and its reverberations for Japanese people today.



Concern for the environment in Japan has in general centred around preventing pollution to one's immediate surroundings for fear of damage to public health by pollutants entering the food chain, water supply or atmosphere. That's necessarily a local thing best expressed by local people in local ways. Climate breakdown or biodiversity collapse, however, are seen as rather abstract problems out there beyond one's locales. Consequently, there have been vigorous protest movements in the past, and recently, against actual or potential pollution in various places and these have been effective in creating policy change, but little protest about issues that are not seen to be directly affecting one's own life, family and friends/colleagues, or surroundings.



One can speculate about why Japanese are like this. I see it as a historical one steeped in Japan's own experience of pollution and environmental breakdown. There's also the potential to see this as a sort of 'mura shakai' problem with Japanese being rather unconcerned about anything at all beyond their immediate neighbourhood. Japan is also a rich country and has the resources to insulate itself from the worst outcomes of climate breakdown, even as Japan's contribution to the problem increases and are visited upon people in the rest of Asia and beyond - for now! Education and enculturation are also issues, as other contributors to this discussion have pointed to.



I was at the second week of the Paris COP21 meeting in December 2015 and was present in the main gathering theatre when the agrement was concluded. After lots of discussion all week with many different people, I was taken aback by what I saw as the replacement of Japan in international diplomacy by China. China was much more active at the talks and seemed to have taken on the mantle both of the major representative from Asia, as well as a country connecting the developed countries of the West (USA and EU) with the less developed countries - particularly the small island states in the most perilous position vis a vis sea level rise. This was a role that I thought was made for Japan to assume, but they did not seem to be interested or know how to do it, from what I saw from my rather limited vantage point - I only had an observer badge.



This may point to the 'problem' of younger people's willingness and/or capabilities to express their concern or outrage at the position they have been placed in by older generations. To me there appears to be a complex interplay of different reasons for lack of self-expression that coalesce around this most serious of crises facing us, and Japanese of all ages and levels seem to be unable (unwilling?) to get to grips with both the seriousness of the problem and/or how to express one's concern and cooperate with others towards developing solutions.



Thanks for a really interesting discussion.



Peter




----- Original Message -----
From: SSJ-Forum Moderator <ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
To: ssj-forum@cal.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Date: 2019/9/26, Thu 10:48
Subject: [SSJ: 10834] Re: Climate strikes and Green politics in Japan



From: Jeffrey Broadbent <broad001@umn.edu <mailto:broad001@umn.edu>>

Date: 2019/09/25



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 <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 <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>
<mailto: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 <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>
<mailto: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>
<mailto: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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