Sustain Sci (2007) 2:151–158
DOI 10.1007/s11625-007-0033-x

SPECIAL FEATURE: ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Policy sciences for sustainable development

Formation of the resource concept in Japan: pre-war
and post-war efforts in knowledge integration
Jin Sato

Received: 27 December 2006 / Accepted: 18 May 2007 / Published online: 27 July 2007
 Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science and Springer 2007

Abstract The objective of this paper is to trace theevolution of the resource concept in modern Japan byhighlighting key individuals who played major roles incommunicating this idea to a wider audience during its
formation and development between the 1910s and 1950s.
Special attention will be paid to the effect of different
historical contexts on interpretations of the term ‘‘resource’’. The paper reveals how the integration of knowledge indispensable for achieving sustainability occurs. The
orientation of resource policy was drastically different
before and after World War II. In the pre-war period, themilitary government used the resource concept to create acomprehensive inventory of the nation’s military forces,and ‘‘resource’’ was thus a convenient term to neutralize
the aggressive connotations of top-down military mobilization. After the turn to democratic principles in 1945,‘‘resource’’ suddenly acquired a symbolic meaning as ameans to serve the people. Despite these contrasts, however, pre and post-war resource concepts share a commonality in that the government acted as the centralizing
force, providing a platform to integrate disparate knowl-

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International
Workshop on Crossing Borders in Sustainability Development held at
The University of Tokyo on February 4, 2006. I would like to thankthe anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. This work
was supported by MEXT through Special Coordination Funds for
Promoting Science and Technology, as a part of the flagship projectfor ‘‘Development of the Philosophy of Sustainability Science’’
undertaken by the University of Tokyo.
J. Sato (&)
Department of International Studies,
Graduate School of Frontier Sciences,
The University of Tokyo,
5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa-shi, Chiba, Japane-mail: satoj@k.u-tokyo.ac.jp

edge under the resource concept. At a time when society
itself is more prone to fragmentation, the resource concept,
which played a significant role in unification in the past,should be re-examined. The history of the concept in Japan,
particularly during the pre and post-war period up until the
1950s, contains a wealth of insights as to how this can beachieved.
Keywords Resource concept  Resource council Japan  Knowledge integration

Introduction
This paper has two main objectives. The first is to trace theevolution of the resource concept in modern Japan byhighlighting key individuals who played major roles incommunicating this idea to a wider audience during its
formation and development between the 1910s and 1950s.1
Unlike Western countries where ‘‘resource’’ has been inuse since the late nineteenth century, the Japanese equivalent shigen has been used publicly only since the 1920s.
This paper will pay special attention to the effect of different historical contexts on interpretations of the term‘‘resource’’. The second objective is reveal how the integration of knowledge that is indispensable for achieving
sustainability occurs. There were strong forces and mechanisms that integrated resource policies up to the 1950s;
however, these legacies have been almost completely for-1
Shigen sporadically appears in newspapers from ca 1904, and isused almost interchangeably with ‘‘financial resources’’ (zaigen). It
was in the 1910s that shigen began to be used in the present sense of‘‘resource’’.

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gotten, especially since the rise of environmental movements in the 1970s.
As Japan has long portrayed itself as a ‘‘resource-poor’’
nation, it is interesting to examine the emergence andstabilization of the resource concept with its associatedsubtexts. In the current era when knowledge specializationis encouraged, ‘‘resource’’ is an appropriate concept torevisit because it facilitates a unified understanding of thevarious components of natural systems (water, land, forests, minerals, etc.) as an interconnected entity. Furthermore, the act of defining a resource from other potentiallybeneficial natural phenomena provides insight into the stateof human relationships with the natural world. The resource concept thus opens up a common frame of reference
for both natural and social scientists.
Public interest in the state of natural resources was
sustained until the two ‘‘oil shocks’’ of the 1970s; sincethen, it has gradually waned or else been neglected by the
media and the government. As the gross domestic product(GDP) of Japan became the second largest in the world in
the late 1960s, behind the United States, the supply ofnatural resources rapidly shifted towards importation rather
than domestic production.2 Although these changes may
provide reasons to downgrade the importance of the resource concept, the consistent increase in total resource
consumption ensures that ‘‘resources’’ will always be a
topic of vital importance for Japan.3
There are three specific reasons why an investigation
into the resource concept is meaningful. First, knowledgeof the formative and diffusive processes of an importantconcept is inherently valuable from a social science
viewpoint. Such concepts may also induce policymakers tofavor certain ways of defining various ‘‘problems’’ whilevalidating particular actions as relevant for solving them.
In other words, concepts influence perceptions of current
issues facing modern societies. However, such concepts arenever independent from the wider context in which they
operate. Since the invention of the resource concept inJapan almost a century ago, public attention to resource
issues has fluctuated substantially, both quantitatively (interms of published documents) and qualitatively (in termsof the context in which the word ‘‘resource’’ is used). Thesechanges reflect the contextual nature of the concept, and2

Percentage share of domestic production of coal, for example, decreased from 76% in 1965 to 20% in 1980 (Energy white paper 2006,
http://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/topics/hakusho/2006EnergyHTML/
html/i1240000.html).
3
Japan currently imports almost 100% of its oil, 97% of its naturalgas, 100% of its copper, 92% of its zinc, and 80% of its timber.
Although reliance on oil for energy production has gradually diminished because of the diversification of energy sources, oil still accounts for 50% of total energy consumption (from the JOGMEC
home page at http://www.jogmec.go.jp/english/index.html).

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thus must be explained by the surrounding social, economic, and political circumstances.
The second reason for this investigation is to help fill a
gap that exists in the current environmental studies in Japanthat emerged in the 1970s, including environmental sociology, economics, policy, and law. Various modes ofacademic inquiry regarding natural resources and theenvironment were formulated primarily as a response toincreasingly severe pollution problems (kogai) that
occurred as a consequence of rapid industrialization in the
1950s and 1960s, and little attention was paid to the choiceof resources that produced those side effects. Althoughnatural and social sciences related to agriculture, forestry,
and fisheries addressed resource concepts, these were still
regarded as separate fields of investigation; thus little
interdisciplinary communication occurred.
The third reason for this investigation is that there is a
wealth of ideas in history yet to be utilized on how tointegrate knowledge for the purpose of problem solving.
Re-examining the advantages of the interdisciplinary approach used previously in resource studies will shed lighton the present effort to integrate various sciences in solving
the problems of sustainability and environmental damage.
Since the idea of a ‘‘resource’’ by definition lies between
the realms of natural and social science, resource policies
also require the integration of both types of knowledge. In
Japan, serious attempts at ‘‘integration’’ occurred in thewake of World War II, as the loss of overseas colonies
forced the country to focus almost entirely on the domestic
procurement of resources to sustain its population.

Shifting attention
Publication trends
Awareness of the resource concept can be most easily
quantified from increases in the number of resource-related
publications. Figure 1 shows the number of resourcerelated works published since the 1920s, when the term‘‘resource’’ (shigen) was first introduced to a wider audience. The data were collected from the library archives of
The University of Tokyo, one of the largest collections inJapan, particularly strong in pre-war collections. Books andreports were found using a keyword search; the data do notinclude journal articles.
From this figure, the beginnings of an increasing trend in
publications can be seen in the early 1920s, and the trend
continues until the end of World War II in 1945. A small
peak is evident in the late 1950s and a large peak in theearly 1970s. Since the mid-1980s, there has been a consistent increase until the present time. What types of social,political, and economic contexts brought about theseSustain Sci (2007) 2:151–158

Trends of "Resource"related Publications
250

Number of publications

Fig. 1 The number of resourcerelated works published inJapan since the 1920s.
(Source: University of Tokyo
Library database)

153

200
150
100
50

19
21
-1
19 92526-1
19 93031-119 93536-1
19 94041-119 94546-1
19 95051-119 95556-1
19 96061-1
19 96566-1
19 97071-1
19 97576-1
19 98081-1
19 98586-1
19 99091-1
19 99596-2
20 000
01
-2
00
5

0

changes in each period? What kind of qualitative trends
can be seen over these years? These questions will provide
a starting point for the examination of the concept of‘‘resources’’.
Resource-related publications of the 1920s primarily
focused on Russia, Chinese Manchuria, and the Japanese
prefecture of Hokkaido, where many untapped resourceswere identified for potential exploitation. Most of thesestudies were carried out by military or military-related
research institutes, for example the Research Bureau of theSouthern Manchurian Railways Company. From the 1930s
on, the scope of the publications expanded to include
Southeast Asia and the Pacific region (collectively known
as nanyo) as realistic targets for supplying raw materials.
The sharp decline in the number of publications from1946 to 1950 is not a reflection of a decline in public
interest but of a general decline in the publishing industry
as a whole due to war damages. As we shall see later,‘‘people-oriented’’ resource policies were in fact a topic ofintense debate in the Japanese government under thesupervision of the General Headquarters (GHQ) of theSupreme Commander of Allied Powers (SCAP) until 1952.
During the first post-war peak in the 1950s, resource-related publication topics focused on economic recovery,
food supply, and flood prevention. A second peak occurredin the 1970s, when Japan had already joined the ranks ofthe global economic powers, reflecting a national interestin energy supplies, which then expanded into the global
environmental movement in the latter half of the 1980s.
Key concepts of the 1980s were ‘‘environmental conservation’’, ‘‘resource management’’, and ‘‘human resources’’,demonstrating the gradual expansion of the ideas coveredby the resource concept.
Since the 1980s, there has been a consistent increase inpublic awareness in Japan of resource-related issues. The
reason behind this growing attention is not necessarily aninterest in resources per se, but concern over environmental issues, particularly those related to recycling andwaste management. Additionally, ‘‘soft’’ elements such as

information and national image are increasingly regarded
as a resource by the Japanese government (Resource
Research Council 1998). More recently, resource-related
conflicts in the South China Sea and aggressive resource
diplomacy by China have also helped attract publicattention to this topic.
There have also been periodic efforts to systematize
knowledge related to resources as an applied academic
field. Although new fields, for example ‘‘national raw
material science’’ (Tanaka 1928), ‘‘resource administration’’ (Sakata 1954), and ‘‘international resource studies’’(Fukami 1972) have been proposed in the past, these
periodic increases in interest were sporadic and never became a successful, coordinated movement. As expected,
the most intense debates on resources in Japan seem tooccur during periods of severe resource shortages.
Dictionary definitions
As indicated earlier, the resource concept in Japan is relatively new, and was first introduced around 1915.4 Although it is difficult to identify the exact origin of the term,
the process of its diffusion into public awareness can betraced through its appearance in dictionaries. In Japanese–
Japanese dictionaries, the earliest appearance of the term
shigen is in 1934.5
For Western-language-to-Japanese dictionaries, a surveyof 45 major French–Japanese, German–Japanese, andEnglish–Japanese dictionaries published from 1867 to
4
Before 1915, terms such as ‘‘raw materials’’ or ‘‘natural wealth’’
were used; however, these terms placed emphasis on material aspects
and did not capture the nuances conveyed by ‘‘resource’’.
5
The author referenced eight major dictionaries, including(Genkai) (1891),(Jirin) (1907),(Kotoba no(Gensen: Nihon Daijiten)
Izumi) (1908),(Nihon Daijiten Kaishu Gensen)(1922),(Dainihon Kokugo Jiten) (1915), and(1928),(Daigenkai) (1st edition 1915, 2nd edition 1933); nonecontained the term shigen (resource).

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Table 1 First appearance of shigen (‘‘resource’’): dictionary comparison

The ‘‘mobilization’’ context

Dictionary
type

Japanese–Japanese

German–Japanese

French–Japanese

English–Japanese

Year

1934

1927

1931

1915

One source of the development of the resource concept was
the planning section of the Japanese army that closely
observed the development of World War I in Europe.
These military observers concluded that a crucial aspect ofmodern war was not only combat capacity at the front
lines, but also the supply of raw materials to back them up.
The army started to use the term shigen towards the end ofWorld War I (ca 1918) to emphasize the material basis for
conducting a modern ‘‘sustainable’’ war. The first book thatused shigen in its title was Resources for Imperial National
Defense (Teikoku Kokubo Shigen) by Kuniaki Koiso, an
Army major and later Prime Minister of Japan (1944). In
his diary, Koiso states that his concept of ‘‘resources’’ wasmainly influenced by the actions of Germany and other
Western nations in developing a centralized system of raw
material supply and distribution for war.7 The Japanesemilitary was equally keen on following this trend to reevaluate the possibility of drawing on human and nonhuman potential in the private sector for combat purposes.
This awareness resulted in a push for nationwide research on the capacities of private factories that produced
potentially useful goods for supporting the military. In
addition, it led to the establishment of laws like the Resource Research Law (Shigen Chosa Ho) of 1929, which
permitted the government confiscation of goods and productive facilities in the event of a national emergency.
The term fugen, literally translated as ‘‘natural wealth’’,was often used before World War I to describe the untapped profit potential of the natural world. Shigen, thepresent translation for the term ‘‘resource’’, was introduced
to indicate a wider array of means, including the military
power and economic strength of a nation, than merely the
profit that is extracted from natural sources. Althoughshigen began to appear often in army magazines andpublications around the early 1920s, the use of the term
was still relatively limited and was often used interchangeably with fugen.
The dramatic spread of the resource concept with a clear
direction for its meaning had to wait until a government
official, Haruo Matsui,8 who played major role in creating
the Resource Bureau (Shigenkyoku) in 1927 as a key plan-

Source: Author’s survey

19586 reveals that ‘‘resource’’ was first translated as shigen
in 1915 in an English–Japanese dictionary, after which it
gradually spread to other language dictionaries, as shownin Table 1.
The above table also indicates that the term was introduced in foreign-language dictionaries more quickly thanin Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED),
second edition, there are five main definitions of the term‘‘resource’’:1a.

a means of supplying some want or deficiency; a stock
or reserve upon which one can draw when necessary;
1b. (pl.) the collective means possessed by any country
for its own support or defense;
2. possibility of aid or assistance;
3. an action or procedure to which one may have recourse
in a difficulty or emergency; an expedient, device, shift;
4. a means of relaxation or amusement;
5. capability in adapting means to ends, or in meeting
difficulties.
Most dictionaries in Japan published before 1930 listed
definitions included in the OED. However, there was no
appropriate term to indicate a ‘‘collective means possessedby any country for its own support or defense’’ (OED, 1b.).

Rise of the resource idea and ‘‘finite resources’’Two major developments gave the resource concept inJapan new importance:
1.

2.

a military and bureaucratic need for a generic concept
to describe the means to be mobilized for the purposesof national planning; andthe development of the conservation concept from anecological perspective.

These developments were commonly derived from anincreasing awareness of the finiteness of resources.
6
Japanese–Japanese (n = 13), French–Japanese (n = 20), English–
Japanese (n = 14) and German–Japanese (n = 12). A complete list of
dictionaries can be found in Sato 2007 (unpublished).

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7

Koiso’s diary, Katsuzan Koso, was published in 1963; a chapter
titled ‘‘Resources for National Defense’’ (Kokubo Shigen) refers to his
younger brother who told him about German material on wartime
autarky ca 1916.
8
Haruo Matsui (1891–1966) started out as a staff member of the
Cabinet Legislation Bureau, which was then regarded as an elite
branch of the Japanese government. He soon became director of the
Planning and General Affairs Departments of the Resource Bureau,
and was promoted to Secretary General of the Bureau in 1936. Healso served as the governor of metropolitan Tokyo immediately afterWorld War II.

Sustain Sci (2007) 2:151–158

ning agency housed in the Cabinet Office. Matsui wasgreatly inspired by the leadership of US President Theodore
Roosevelt in conservation and conservation-related movements, and widely publicized the resource concept in Japan.
It is important to understand why Matsui, a pioneeringresource policy specialist, was attracted to the resource
concept. He recalls his first encounter with the idea back inthe early 1910s in an article on Roosevelt’s conservation
policy in The London Times. In his book Resource Policy(Shigen Seisaku) (Matsui 1938), which outlined his mainargument why resource policy is essential, he argues thatthe most pressing issue of his time is ‘‘differentiation’’. By
this he meant fragmentation and lack of coordination,
particularly among government agencies that had expanded
enormously and were following overlapping mandates.
Matsui viewed ‘‘resources’’ as a unifying concept thatprovided an integrative perspective on various aspects,
both human and material, of military strength. ‘‘Resources’’ was a particularly suitable concept for Japan,
because it emphasized the development of potential
materials, rather than the raw materials that were perceived
as physically ‘‘scarce’’. Matsui instead placed high hopeson ‘‘human’’ resources and emphasized the importance of
science, technology, and human ingenuity in filling thematerials gap of the nation. In an interview, he recalls how
he envisaged the resource concept:
Around 1923 or so, I read Richard Ely’s small bookwhich summarized what resource policy is all about… Theodore Roosevelt was the one who translated
this kind of idea into action. I found this movement
quite interesting and told this story to the then chiefof the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, Mr Yamagata …
to initiate a resource conservation movement inJapan. (Matsui 1975, p. 35; author’s translation)
Matsui also introduced the idea of hoiku (nurturing) as his
own translation for the English term ‘‘conservation’’, stating that ‘‘in a resource-rich country like the US, sustaining
what they already have through conservation may be enough, but in Japan, which is a country with poor natural
resources, there is a need for some element of resource
development in addition to conservation. This is why I
prefer to use the term hoiku’’. (Matsui 1975, p. 36; author’stranslation) Unfortunately, his idea was skewed towards
military objectives and was thus overshadowed by thegeneral mobilization movement that began in the 1930s
and eventually led the nation into World War II.9 It is
9

One of the standard explanations of the causes of the war was
Japan’s need for natural resources. However, Yasukichi Yasuba
provides evidence that the ‘‘lack’’ of resources and the need forexternal acquisition of these materials were probably fictions createdby the military as reasons to invade China and Southeast Asia
(Yasuba 1996).

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important to note that Matsui’s main interest was in comprehensive national planning to integrate both the naturalenvironment and human capacities, not the conservation ofnatural resources itself. A different line of investigation istherefore required to fully identify aspects of the resource
concept that stem from an interest in conservation.
The conservation context
As Japan endeavored to reach the level of modernization ofEurope and the United States, the government predictably
placed a heavy emphasis on short-term production rather
than long-term conservation of the nation’s natural assets.
However, a failure to influence government policy did notmean there was a general denial of the significance of theconservation concept. The preservation of the natural‘‘landscape’’ became an issue addressed by private individuals and scholars instead of policymakers (see footnote 10).
This alternative way of thinking came to fruition inaround 1919 with scholars and commentators observing the
rapid degradation of the rural Japanese landscape, aninevitable side-effect of modern infrastructure development. The ‘‘preservation of resources’’ first became a topic
of discussion in the House of Peers in 1919, when members
Takio Izawa and Kyoshiro Inoue questioned Prime Minister Kei Hara on national policy towards the preservationof resources (House of Peers 1982, p. 71).
Izawa: I wish to ask about the conservation of natural
resources … Based on my experience as an officer inthe countryside ... building a road, for example ... is awonderful thing in and of itself … However, if you
look at the consequences, building many roads in themountains will result in the deforestation of precious
trees. That may result in the degradation of paddy
fields. In a country like ours, where land area islimited, conservation of natural resources is something very important. (author’s translation, emphasis
added)
Izawa was not only talking about trees; by introducing thegeneric term ‘‘resources’’ he was referring to the foundation of economic development in general.
This was in fact the first occasion that the term ‘‘resources’’ appeared in a national policy discussion in Japan;
Hara responded by denying the need to introduce conservation measures, arguing that human ingenuity can find technical alternatives even when certain resources are physicallyexhausted. As we can see, the deep philosophical divide
between techno-centric optimists and eco-centric pessimists
that persists today has its origin far back in history.
In addition to the ideas originating from Izawa’s own
experience in rural Japan, there was an effort to introduce
the conservation concept more explicitly from abroad.

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Kiyoshi Sasagawa played an important role in this regard by
introducing the idea of conservation to the general Japanesepublic through his 1917 translation of Charles Van Hise’s
landmark work The Conservation of Natural Resources in
the United States (1910). In this book, Van Hise classified
natural resources into four categories: soil, water, forest,and mineral. Although its content focused on the situation in
the US, The Conservation of Natural Resources was probably one of the first comprehensive works on conservation
made available to the Japanese public. In the translator’s
introduction to the book, Sasagawa also added an interesting comment that should not be overlooked:
In the same way that we feel a sixth sense outside of
the realm of five senses, there seems to be a fifth
endowment of nature that we must appreciate. This is
my subjective and modest thinking, but this fifth asset
seems to arise from a combination of soil, forest
and water. We may call this fuko (scenic beauty).
(Sasagawa 1917, p. 6; author’s translation)
Sasagawa’s contribution to the resource concept was not
limited to his introduction of the conservation idea to thegeneral public through his translation work. Although it
only gained widespread public attention 50 years later, hedescribed a concept (fuko) that was very close to themodern idea of ‘‘the environment’’.
Sasagawa’s ideas on conservation seem to have appeared too early to enter the mainstream of policy debate.
The concept and appreciation of ‘‘landscape’’ and its connection with nationalism were apparent in the late nineteenth century, yet policy discussions on how to conserve
this landscape were absent at the time.10 The dominant
policy in the early twentieth century was still to discover,extract, and utilize resources for strengthening the militarycapacity of the nation. In sum, the resource concept was
brought about by awareness of the ‘‘finiteness’’ and shortage of means, notions that were both attached to national,
not local, interests. Although we find the seeds of interdisciplinary principles in the resource concept of these prewar policies, the full flowering of the idea had to wait until
the end of World War II.
The second wave and the democratic turn of the 1950s
Establishment of the resource committee
The total defeat of Japan in 1945 brought new and pressing
questions about resources. This time, however, the chal10
A ground-breaking book on landscape was Shigetaka Shiga’s
Treatise on Japanese Landscape (Nihon Fukeiron), published in
1894. This book is one example of the backlash against the Western
influence on all aspects of Japanese society during the Meiji era.

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lenge came from a completely different angle; instead of
expanding national capacity, now the central policy question was how to feed a hungry population of 80 million.
Until the end of the war, Japan had effectively portrayeditself as a member of the resource-poor, ‘‘have-not’’ nations, and this perceived shortage had justified the invasions of China and Southeast Asia. As the technical advisor
to the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers, Dr Edward
Ackerman, reflected after the war:11
One of the most repeated and most effective instruments used in the psychological warfare was the‘‘have not’’ campaign conducted by the Fascist
powers before and during the last war. Japan, like
Germany, presented itself as a poor but deserving
nation intent only upon getting enough to keep its
growing population alive (Ackerman 1948, p. 32).
Post-war Japanese interest in resources started with theissue of food security. Starvation was a serious concern for
the government, which feared massive anti-government
movements resulting from food shortages. During thisperiod the Economic Stabilization Bureau (later the Economic Planning Agency) was established primarily to address the food security issue and other areas of direct
relevance to the livelihoods of people (i.e. energy, water,
and land). It is ironic that the first institution to comprehensively address the resource situation in Japan was an
American organization, the Natural Resources Section
established within the General Headquarters (GHQ) of
the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers that governedJapan until 1952.
Defeat in World War II and the subsequent establishment of the GHQ had a substantial impact on Japan’s postwar resource ideas and policies. Ackerman, for example,
introduced the idea of ‘‘integrated planning’’ to Japanesebureaucrats who were eager to learn democratic methods ofresource governance.12 Ackerman also advised the creationof a governmental Resource Committee; this would play animportant role in implementing the idea of ‘‘resources asone’’ as exemplified by the Tennessee Valley Authority
11
Ackerman inspired many personal reminiscences despite his short
residence in Japan. Saburo Ohkita, who later became the Minister of
Foreign Affairs, wrote in his memoirs that he, along with other young
bureaucrats, visited Ackerman’s office almost every week to discuss
resource problems (Ohkita 1949). Also recommended are the recollections of Tohru Ishimitsu, who served as Ackerman’s research
assistant during his time as a technical advisor to the GHQ (Ishimitsu
1999).
12
In 1949, the Japanese translation of TVA: Democracy on the March(David Lilienthal) became available; a TVA study group within thegovernment was also appointed to study the impact of this project.
The actual application of principles that characterized the TVA wasattempted in the Kumano water systems development plan covering
Nara and Wakayama Prefectures.

Sustain Sci (2007) 2:151–158(TVA), which tried to integrate all dimensions of water,
infrastructure, employment, and electricity supply into a
unified policy.
From 1950, the Korean War unexpectedly boosted theJapanese economy, and the country gradually regained its
industrial capacity; with this development came a second
wave of interest in natural resources. Consequently, following the recovery of economic capacity and the end of
the US occupation, publications and studies addressed thefuture vision of the nation, and grand designs for development became the focus of discussion during this period.
In reviewing the shorthand minutes available frommeetings of the Resource Committee since 1951, it is notdifficult to detect the complete absence of ‘‘democracy’’,
the central concept infused into all aspects of post-war
governance in Japan, in resource-related policymaking.
Two factors in the establishment of the Resource Committee may explain this absence. First, Ackerman did notwant Japan to suffer from the political struggles overcontrol of the direction of resource policy that had plagued
the US, where the original mission of the committee toprovide technical expertise was lost amid political manipulation. Therefore the Japanese version of the Resource
Committee deliberately limited its mission to purely technical and scientific concerns (Ohkita 1949). Second, theneed to clarify its bureaucratic turf was also a factor, as
ministries and committees related to national planning already existed. To justify its existence, the Resource Committee had to carefully limit its mandate to scientificresearch and technical advice on cross-ministerial issues.
Appeals to science and technology, or the study of‘‘things’’, are inherently accompanied by the risk of compartmentalization of work according to the technology
available in the respective disciplines. Thus, the performance of the Resource Committee must be evaluated interms of the exact manner in which an integrated approachto resource governance was achieved. Upon its initiation in1947 the Committee started out with four technical subcommittees on water, land, energy, and minerals. These
areas were selected on the basis of the urgency of the
problems faced by the general population in various locations across Japan.
The Resource Committee soon developed into the Resource Research Council (Shigen Chosa Kai) in 1949,
which became, intriguingly, the leading center for a holistic
approach to resource management. An example of thisapproach was the inclusion of pollution and degraded resources in the committee’s mandated research targets. At
the time Japan was unable to afford the luxury of
increasing the productive capacity of its available resources, let alone account for sources of negative productivity, for example degraded rice fields or malfunctioning
reservoirs and canals. By including these negative aspects

157

into its research agenda, the Resource Research Council
was able to integrate disaster research and resource policy
into a unified planning target field.13
This ideal method of integrated planning was initiatedwhen the Resource Committee created the Regional Planning Subcommittee (Chiiki Keikaku Bukai) in October
1948. This subcommittee was responsible for the actual
application in the field of the policies and decisions generated by more technical subcommittees. The decisions
surrounding the creation of this group are also of interest.
According to the minutes of a meeting held on May 10,
1948, Shunichi Uchida, the Committee Chairman, raised
this question: ‘‘If we leave the subcommittees as they are,they will go in each direction without any coordination.
How can we coordinate them towards a common objective?’’ Ukichiro Nakaya, a committee member, then suggested: ‘‘Let us target the region and problems first andthen organize water, energy, and land issues surrounding
those problems.’’ (Regional Planning Subcommittee of the
Resource Research Council 1952, p. 3; author’s translation). Thus, the Resource Committee attempted to situate amajor organizing force in the field to act as a centralizing
force for knowledge integration.

The forces of integration
Except for the first few years of the post-war era, when‘‘human’’ was deliberately excluded from the definition of
resources, there has been a general trend of expansion of
the resource concept in Japan. Particularly after the 1980s,
the resource concept expanded to include ‘‘soft’’ dimensions, for example the ability to utilize information or
influence other countries through cultural-political means(Resource Research Council 1998). However, a rapid
comeback of traditional ministries wanting to defend theirown turfs overshadowed the rold of cross-ministerial
Resource Council, and the unifying force of the resource
concept faded away.
What are the lessons that emerge from this half-century
of resource policy debate in Japan? As shown in this paper,the orientation of resource policy was drastically different
before and after World War II. In the pre-war period themilitary government used the resource concept to create acomprehensive inventory of the nation’s military forces,and ‘‘resource’’ was thus a convenient term to neutralize
13

The Resource Research Council still exists, although greatly
diminished in size and scope. In 1956, the Resource Bureau, which
served as a secretariat to the Council, became the core of the Economic Stabilization Board (Keizai Antei Honbu) in the newly established Science and Technology Agency. In 2001, it was further
downgraded to the Resource Section of the Ministry of Education,
Science and Sports.

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the aggressive connotations of top-down military mobilization. After the radical turn to democratic principles in
1945, ‘‘resource’’ was suddenly assigned a symbolic
meaning as a means to serve the people. Despite theseradical contrasts, however, pre and post-war resource
concepts share a commonality in the sense that the government acted as the centralizing force, providing a platform to integrate disparate knowledge (e.g. on materials,
conservation, labor, information) under the resource concept. For various reasons, the integrative effect of the resource concept was the result of necessity rather thanacademic endeavor or the idealistic pursuite of holistic
approach.
As Japan is now wealthy enough to import the various
resources it requires, it is appropriate to ask whether the
resource concept can be relevant or revitalized in thepresent context of the globalized economy. The creation of
the Resource Committee during the post-war period may
provide some hints on this process. The original function of
the Resource Committee was not necessarily to develop an
integrated field of resource science as such, but to serve
instead as a barometer of various resource problems. In
other words, the committee functioned as a mechanism tohelp prioritize issues and to concentrate technologicaladvancement in the areas that were in the greatest need ofdevelopment from a cross-sector perspective.
In the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary‘‘resource’’ is defined as ‘‘a stock or reserve upon which one
can draw when necessary’’. The phrase ‘‘when necessary’’seems to imply that there are times when certain resources
are perceived as unnecessary and thus are dismissed. In
modern society, goods and services produced for direct
human utility are now mainly provided by the state and themarket. As the international market has emerged as the key
distributive mechanism for desired goods and services, themanagement of resources that do not produce immediate
utility, but instead indirectly serve as an economic foundation, requires systematic and long-term attention; wenever know what will become necessary, or when.
Because of the continuing compartmentalization ofknowledge, however, analysis of resources has usuallymeant a study of individual raw materials, for example soil
or water. Consequently, despite the expansion of knowledge about the material aspects of resources, such analyses
provide little in the way of policy advice on how to use,share, and redistribute resources wisely within a society.
Studies of individual materials do not lead to insights into
how priorities can be set in policy choices. At a time whensociety itself is more prone to fragmentation, the resource

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concept that played a significant role towards unification in
the past should be re-examined. The history of the resource
concept in Japan, particularly during the pre and post-war
period until the 1950s, contains a wealth of insights into
how this can be achieved. As the world faces the urgent
problem of balancing economic development and environmental conservation, the revitalization of the resource
concept to facilitate integration of the two realms could not
be more timely.

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