Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. I'm going to try to summarise my own thoughts in posts on different aspects of it, starting with media.

A number of contributors have suggested that Japanese media coverage of climate crisis/change topics is tame, and/or have hypothesised reasons (e.g. Florentine Koppenborg suggested that 'well-staffed environmental desks at big newspapers are rare and there are no powerful environmental and climate NGOs that could put the topic on the agenda', while Yosuke Buchmeier pointed to the kisha club system and other pressures on media, and Nick Kapur suggested that media narratives might be affected by oligopolies in corporate advertising and government 'quasi-control of NHK' and what he described as a 'very impoverished, monotonic media landscape'). On the other hand, Saki Mizoroki was more sceptical about the role of the kisha club system. Meanwhile, Andrew DeWit suggested that even a cursory search indicated that there has in fact been media coverage of climate strikes in Japan.

Hypotheses are interesting and worthwhile. However, I find it quite striking that nobody has been able to point to rigorous studies of how climate crisis/change issues (or other aspects of green issues) have been covered by the Japanese media. It seems to me that such studies could be very interesting and fruitful - and even more so if they were comparative. They would make good subjects for BA or MA theses by linguistically able students.

A quick search of the Asahi Kikuzo database shows 30 uses of the term 気候危機 (climate crisis), and a search in Japanese with Factiva shows 145, in both cases heavily concentrated in 2019 and especially the last few months. On the other hand, a search using the term 地球温暖化 (global warming) comes up with 21022 items on Kikuzo, and 199,636 on Factiva. Obviously other terms could also be used, and it would be important to analyse the content of the articles, the style, and so on. It is also quite easy to do searches on documentary programmes on the NHK website.

While the Japanese media, like media in other liberal democracies, has shortcomings, I think there should be considerable caution about assuming that it is substantially worse in its coverage of environmental and climate crisis issues than media elsewhere. In the UK, for example, there are some media outlets (such as The Guardian) which give extensive coverage to such issues. But The Guardian has a circulation of less than half a million, even though the online readership may well be higher. I strongly suspect that most of the UK press gives much less, and much poorer quality coverage of climate issues. Nor do I have the impression that climate issues are covered with that much intensity by the BBC (I don't think I can actually remember a TV programme dedicated to the issue, though obviously there are slots from time to time on news and current affairs programmes), and, indeed, environmental activists have repeatedly criticised the BBC for giving too much time to climate change deniers and for inadequate coverage.

However, it seems to me that there is perhaps one hypothesis that might be worth exploring. That is, while the coverage of climate crisis issues might not necessarily be more extensive or of better quality overall in (for example) the UK, it could be that the pockets of much more intensive coverage in media outlets such as The Guardian help to inform and motivate a relatively small number of more committed activists who engage in street protest. If Japan lacks these pockets of intensive coverage, then that could help to explain a situation where you have broad acceptance of climate change and the need for action to combat it, but not a significant minority of highly committed activists.

At any rate, there seems a lot of scope for empirical research to fill the lack of knowledge we have. A quick and no doubt inadequate search on CiNii suggests there is little research on this subject in Japanese too (though there is an interesting survey comparison of consciousness of German and Japanese students published in 1999, with the title 日独若者の環境問題に関する意識調査 - it shows some differences between the two groups, but at a cursory glance seems to show quite high environmental consciousness among the Japanese students).

Next, maybe, education.

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/