Dear All,
Much gratitude for this incredibly interesting and insightful stream of discussion about the question raised by Cave, why is there so relatively little climate change protest and politics in Japan? This has evoked a fascinating set of responses, including conjectures, observations, studies, and data. Unfortunately, one commentor chose to castigate one assertion as racist, and then to castigate all the comments by foreigners as "criticism" and say they should clean up their own countries first. Instead of making these ad hominem attacks, it would contribute far more to the collective understanding if that commentator, given his undoubtedly deep experience with Japan, would offer countering objective evidence in a scientific spirit to set right the assertions he disagreed with. I hope he will contribute in that spirit. There is a big difference between racist stereotyping and a sincere attempt to understand the realities of Japan. Everyone in this discussion is attempting the latter, and no doubt are open to correction if their ideas prove mistaken.

Having twice read through the many fine comments and examined the suggested references, I am deeply impressed by the extent to which people such as Vickers and Haddad are indeed conducting research to assess Japan in an objective comparative light with other countries. Since my field work based book, I have also been trying to do that. For instance, our team spent years in data collection and published the book, Comparing Policy Networks: Labor Politics in the US, Germany and Japan (Cambridge 1996). We found significant differences in the three labor policy-making political systems, enough to label them competitive, collaborative and coordinated, respectively. Now we are doing the same with over 15 national cases including Japan comparing climate change policy networks (www.compon.org).

In terms of critiquing ideas, several commentators critiqued my presentation of a cultural explanation based in Japan's supposedly "non-axial" culture (less reference to transcendental abstract moral principles compared to for instance Christianity, more embedded ness of moral principles into the situation). They said they preferred structural explanation such as imposed conformity in Japanese schooling, limits on the press imposed by kisha kurabu, the entanglement of workers and managers into lifetime employment no-escape organizations, and arguably, an imposition of dependency upon the state for NGOs. I totally agree that Japan's major institutions have a structural "vertical society" (Nakane) top-down and encompassing quality. Before World War Two, the Meiji oligarchs, pursuing fukuoku kyohei to escape from Western controls, did their best to organize the entire society into top-down, emperor-centered kokutai vertical society (see Ishida Takeshi). For instance, Ito Hirobumi's revisions of the model German constitution adding in the kokutai ideology to justify Imperial rule had profound roots in the Japanese elites' cultural worldview. They were not referencing John Locke. One big reason why a cultural explanation remains a crucial ingredient for explaining today's Japan is the continuing relevance of the kokutai ideology among conservative nationalists, such as those in the increasingly influential Nippon Kaigi that in its more extreme versions advocates a return to the Meiji Constitution. Many of the soft and hard controls over civil society exercised by the state, such as PM Abe's successful pressure on textbook companies to remove any mention of ianfu comfort women/sex slaves, are exercised under this remaining kokutai vision of how Japanese society should best be reorganized back into a more vertical model.
Now, the really interesting cultural question is the depth of penetration of this kokutai model into the popular Japanese imagination--and evidence suggests that it has been thoroughly rejected by the mass of citizens. So there is a cultural split and many, many resultant questions about political action skills, voluntary association, and so forth, caught in this cultural tug-of-war.
Anyhow, my point is on a theoretical level that many structural features of contemporary Japan result from the dominance of the kokutai ideology as a model for the most desirable form of social organization in the minds of powerful conservative elites and their partial attempts to oppose liberalism and to resuscitate this vertical form of society.. How far it will go is anyone's guess. But as Japan weakens on the world stage, conservative elites will probably make increasingly frantic efforts to circle the wagons and create a more centrally unified Japan.
Thanks
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
Curriculum Vitae Webpage
Compon: Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks project website
East Asian Social Movements

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



On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 2:16 AM SSJ-Forum Moderator <ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp> wrote:


From: Edward Vickers <edvickers08@googlemail.com>

Date: 2019/10/03

Dear All,

Many thanks indeed to Peter for initiating this fascinating and important
discussion. I did some work a couple of years ago looking at the way in
which ideas of 'sustainability' are presented in the Japanese school
curriculum (for primary and junior secondary). This was by way of a
preparatory 'country study' for a 2017 UNESCO report I co-authored on 'The
State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global
Citizenship in Asia' <https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000260568>

I broadly agree with the (rather depressing) comments that have been made
about the lack of attention to climate change in the education system
generally, and the factors militating against much discussion of this issue
in formal classrooms (at any level). I'm disappointed to see accusations of
'racism' flung at people for making this point. Of course, we should always
generalize with caution - but, generally speaking, it is fair to say that
open and critical discussion of the climate crisis is strikingly absent
from mainstream public discourse in Japan. And that certainly goes for the
school curriculum, too.

But one irony is that there is nonetheless probably still a prevailing
assumption here that Japan is a 'leader' in terms of environmental
consciousness. This is partly related to self-stereotyping notions of
Japanese culture as emphasizing the 'oneness' of man and nature - in
contrast to a 'Western' tradition seen as postulating an essential divide
between the human and natural worlds, with the modern West portrayed as
'exploiting' nature in a spirit of 'instrumentalism' and 'individualism'.
(Interestingly, China's Communist regime seeks to popularize a similar
dichotomy, with its current propaganda around 'ecological civilization' and
traditional 'Chinese values'. For a discussion of 'sustainability' in
relation to a supposed East-West cultural divide, see this exchange on the
'NORRAG' site: first this

<https://www.norrag.org/facing-the-climate-change-catastrophe-education-as-solution-or-cause-by-iveta-silova-hikaru-komatsu-and-jeremy-rappleye/>,
then this

<https://www.norrag.org/education-and-climate-change-is-blaming-western-modernity-the-answer-by-edward-vickers/>
.)

Kyoto, the Mecca of this brand of Japanese cultural/ethical exceptionalism,
is of course the city that brought us the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. It was then
at Japanese instigation that UNESCO launched the 'Decade of Education for
Sustainable Development' (2004-2014). But none of this has translated into
concerted efforts to raise public awareness of the challenge posed by the
climate crisis.

At a more 'micro' level, my own university is building its 'brand' around a
research agenda focusing on 'carbon neutral' technologies, energy
efficiency, etc. However, this seems aimed primarily at securing positional
advantage for the institution in the competition for attention from the
Ministry in Tokyo, or from the apparatchiks of the global 'rankings' bodies
internationally. There are hardly any solar panels on campus, and no
effective policy to encourage sustainable transport to and from the campus.
And when we recently shifted our entire campus from a location near the
city centre to a pristine, forested mountainside outside (uprooting /
dislocating trees, boars, bears, etc. in the process), voices of protest
were muted - amongst faculty, students and the local community.

Rather than reaching for explanations of all this in Japan's supposedly
'non-axial' culture, etc., I am inclined to agree with those who stress
politics: the entrenched institutions of 'illiberal democracy' (from skewed
electoral arrangements to the controlled media); the hyper-competitive
labour market, still rigidly structured around seniority, which forces
youngsters to focus on securing jobs immediately on graduation from
college... All of this strongly disincentives dissent from the established
way of doing things. Culture is certainly relevant - including classroom
culture, which, as others have pointed out, typically (but certainly not
universally) discourages open-ended, critical debate, while fostering a
somewhat suffocating 'group' ethos. But culture does not exist as some
immutable essence apart from politics (though that is often how it is seen
here - as elsewhere). Stereotypes about 'our' identity and essential
cultural attributes are continually reinforced by powerful vested interests