Future Uncertain: Economic,
Environmental, Social and Political
Challenges Facing Japan
EDITED BY MERRAN EBY & DAVID A. WELCH

Proceedings of the Annual Conference of theJapan Studies Association of Canada
October 12–17, 2017, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of TorontoProceedings of the 2017 Annual Conference of the Japan Studies Association of Canada
Future Uncertain: Economic, Environmental, Social and Political Challenges Facing Japan
October 12–17, 2017
Munk School of Global Affairs
University of Toronto© 2018 Japan Studies Association of Canada(Individual essays © the authors.)
Cover images: Katsushika Hokusai; AG2016; Amarpreet.singh.in
Cover concept: Leonard Wyma, R.G.D., Donderdag, TorontoiThe organizers wish to thank the following cosponsors of the 2017 Japan Studies Association of Canada
Annual Conference:
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The Consulate-General of Japan in Toronto
The Japan Foundation
The Japan Futures Initiative
The Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University
The Centre for Asian Research, York University

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The Asian Institute, University of Toronto
The Centre for the Study of Global Japan, University of Toronto
The Contemporary Asian Studies Student Union, University of Toronto
The Department of Political Science, University of Toronto
The Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto
The School of the Environment, University of Toronto

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Bento Sushi
Dufflet Pastries
Ontario Spring Water Sake Company
Raijin RameniTable of Contents
On Being Ambassador to Japan ............................................................................................1
Joseph Caron

Emerging Solidarities and Spatialities in Post-3.11 Japan: Gender, Sexuality
and Transformative Resilience ............................................................................................12
Natasha Fox
Images of Japanese Women: An Analysis of Language Use inAdvertisements ..........................................................................................................................23
Noriko Yabuki-Soh
Tokugawa’s Environmental Philosophy...........................................................................34
Jay Goulding
Yusuhara: Regional Autonomy, Revitalization, and Green Energy ........................47
Sachiyo Kanzaki
Green Space and Suburban Planning in Japan ..............................................................56
Tom Waldichuk
Japanese Smart Communities as Industrial Policy .......................................................67
Andrew DeWit

About the Authors ........................................................................................................................... 84ii

On Being Ambassador to Japan
Joseph Caron
Introduction
What is it like to be Canadian ambassador to Japan? Indeed, what is it like to be an ambassador?
For those who have had the experience of holding ambassadorial posts, there is the honour ofrepresenting Canada to another nation, being the visible representative of a highly respected country
before the governments of the world, whether they are small and barely appearing on the geopoliticalmap, or in the great capitals of powerful nations. There is the title and the official role, shaped overcenturies, with attendant traditions, courtesies and status.
But as each country to which diplomats are assigned will be different, so will be the experience ofbeing ambassador. And to state the obvious, those experiences will evolve over time. Many are particular
to the country of assignment, such as is very much the case with Japan.
There are constants in foreign relations as there are in all dimensions of human society. How
governments and citizens approach the world beyond their borders emerges from their geography anddemography, their history and institutions, their level of economic development, their fears and their
aspirations. These and many other features are reflected in the play of relations between any two
countries, including between Canada and Japan. And the ambassador is usually somewhere in the
middle of it all.
Countries conduct bilateral relations so as to maintain the existing advantages that their government
and their citizens, acting in the pursuit of their myriad national and institutional interests, haveobtained over the course of their relationships, and to find new ways to maximize those benefits. The
desire to enrich and improve relations generates the forward dynamic of bilateral diplomacy. Either
one or both governments will seek changes in the architecture of the rules and agreements on which
their relationships are based. Some of these changes can appear to be minor (an increase in the limit of
temporary work visas) or highly consequent (a new liberalized trade agreement).
In the middle of these policy initiatives and discussions are the foreign ministries and theirpermanent representatives on the ground, led by the ambassador. Sometimes initiatives to enrichrelations are accepted, sometimes not.
The pages that follow are proposed as the beginning of a set of reflections on the experience of being
ambassador to Japan. They form a first attempt at describing the elements of a common experience,
one shared by 18 Canadians—so far, all men—and mostly professional diplomats.
But the real purpose is not to propose a history of these 18 actors on the stage of the Canada/Japan
story, but to start with some of their experiences to illustrate how Canada has conducted its relations
with Japan over the last 90 years, to try to determine what combination of policy from Ottawa andstrategies on the ground have succeeded or failed in their attempt to bring advantage to Canada.
Foreign relations between two countries—bilateral relations—necessarily depend on finding and acting
upon a commonality of interests between two governments, absent which not much happens beyond
business as usual, the product of earlier policies and initiatives. There have to be coincident national
interests for change to happen. By using as a starting point the experience of ambassadors and their
1Joseph CaronOn Being Ambassador to Japan

staff in working to advance Canadian interests, it may be possible to draw insights that will be usefulin shaping future policies and tactics.
To that end, an ambitious two-part study program is proposed:••

Studying the experiences of a small number of Canadian ambassadors, in their dealings with
Ottawa and Tokyo, with a focus on a limited number of policy initiatives; andEncouraging parallel study in Japan of the same historical periods and the same policy
initiatives, in order to tell the story from the two national perspectives, a sort of two-partRashomon.

This paper is thus a sketch of the kinds of themes that could be researched and studied, as a firststep. The focus on two ambassadors: Herbert Marler, Canada’s first full-fledged diplomatic
representative on the ground in Tokyo, between 1929 and 1935, and the author, Joseph Caron,
describing some of the features of his assignment as Canada’s 15th ambassador to Japan from 2005 to
2008. As will be seen, the two experiences were not so far apart.
But first, a bit of diplomatic history.

Canada enters the world of diplomacy
Following an imperial conference in London in 1926, the Earl of Balfour, at that time head of the
Privy Council of the British government, issued a statement to the effect that the dominions, including
Canada, were “in no way subordinate to each other in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs.”
This effectively affirmed Canada’s authority in all matters of foreign policy, thus joining a club ofsovereign states where established diplomatic rules and traditions shaped the conduct of foreign
relations.
This wasn’t quite ex nihilo, however. Canada had created a special branch of the public service
responsible for external affairs in 1909, responsible to Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. However,Canada had been represented in London by a resident High Commissioner since 1880, under Prime
Minister Macdonald, and promoted trade and immigration in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. well before
1926.
With the Balfour Declaration, we now had the right to establish full-fledged embassies—legations,as they were then called—and post ministers or envoys plenipotentiary, that is, ambassadors, a termthat only became common in the 1940s.
Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who conducted Canada’s emerging foreign relationsin the latter half of the 1920s, appointed the rightly celebrated Vincent Massey as Canada’s first envoy
extraordinary to Washington in 1927 and Philippe Roy who became minister plenipotentiary,commissaire, to France in 1928. Both of these legations made sense from the perspective of Canada’s
pre-sovereign history.
Significantly, his third appointment was to a capital in Asia, and that would be Japan.
Many Canadians tend to think that we are now living in the Asian century, but for Canada, Asia
was very much present from the late 19th century onward.
One thinks of the Last Spike completing the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885, or Canadian Pacificsteamship lines connecting Vancouver and Hong Kong in 1887, transporting goods between the twocontinents, as well as a trickle of Asian contract labourers and emigrants to Canada.

2Joseph CaronOn Being Ambassador to JapanIn 1902, the first trans-Pacific telegraph cable, connecting Canada to Asia, was established,providing heretofore unimaginably rapid communications facilities. Canadian missionary groups werealready established in Japan, China, Taiwan, and Korea, providing personal linkages between average
Canadians and the Far East.
King chose Japan as the first Asian diplomatic destination for equally practical reasons:
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Trade promotion offices had long been established in Kobe and Yokohama.
Companies such as Alcan, McMillan, Sun Life, Manulife, Consolidated Mining, and othercompanies had already established offices in Tokyo and other cities in Japan.
Approximately 400 Protestant and Catholic missionaries were active in the country, echoing
the work of Canadian oyatoi gaikokujin, the ‘live machines,’ the foreigners who helped power
the Meiji transformation of Japan.
The ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ on immigration was awkwardly administered at a distance: anoffice in Tokyo would be the venue for issuing immigration visas in situ. This was a verysignificant social issue in British Columbia, with direct political impact at the national level.

Canada would follow the geopolitical lead provided by Britain, which maintained close ties with Japan,
despite the cancellation of the Anglo-Japanese naval agreement. Many recalled that Japanese warships
had provided a degree of deterrence if not protection off the coast of British Columbia during WorldWar I, against a small, marauding German fleet.
Korea had been a Japanese colony since 1910, and Chiang Kai-shek’s Guomindang’s capital in
Nanjing had not and would not achieve authority over all of China. Japan—in the imperial era of theinterwar—was the logical choice for Canada’s third embassy, and first in Asia.

Hebert Marler
After giving some thought to suitable candidates, Prime Minister King chose Herbert Marler to be
Canada’s first envoy to Japan. Marler was a charter member of Montreal’s Anglophone aristocracy, theheir to a prominent and wealthy notary firm established by his father, and the husband of Beatrice
Isabel Allan, granddaughter of Andrew Allan, with fortunes from shipping, banking and railways, andMatthew Hamilton Gault, who founded Sun Life Financial. Marler was also good friends with King,
having served, briefly, in his cabinet.
King’s instructions to his envoy were brief and precise.
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The focus was to be on visibility for Canada, maintaining positive relations with the Japanesepolitical and economic elites. King saw the legation as a means to humanize the relationship,smoothing some of the rough edges off our strict immigration policies, which were highly
resented by the Japanese.
Marler was to expand trade and economic ties, as a high priority.
He was also to keep Ottawa informed of developments in Japan and the continent and put out
bilateral fires if they arose.

King did not appear to have a great interest in broader political developments in the region: Japan was
well-ensconced in Taiwan, and Korea was being colonized, all in good imperial standing. The
Manchurian incident, which would precipitate conflict with China, was two years in the future. And

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Joseph CaronOn Being Ambassador to Japan

King’s successor, R.B. Bennett, would not display great interest in developments under his watch, otherthan to keep Canada at a distance, and leave high policy to Britain and, in time, the United States.
As time would tell, trade and limited involvement in the security of Asia would be leitmotifs
underpinning Canada’s relations with Japan.
Marler had his largely complementary views on what he should be doing in Tokyo, giving a very
active focus on expanding trade, and how he, Marler, should project Canada to Japan: Marler provided
King with plans to build an ambassadorial residence and chancery in Tokyo that would stamp Canada’s
presence and importance on the people and government of Japan.
Both Marler and his wife Beatrice had a strong sense of their self-importance, so from the moment
they arrived in Japan in the fall of 1929, aristocratic poses and attention to protocol was insisted uponby both of them. Some of the Marlers’ pretentions did not play well with Canadian staff who had lived
their youth in the Jazz Age and not at Downton Abbey. Marler was also one of those people who don’tknow what they don’t know, which put him in some contention with his more knowledgeable andconnected staff.
If Marler took himself too seriously, it is to his credit that he took his assigned responsibilities
equally seriously. During his 6 years in Japan, Marler’s focus was on trade promotion and market accessfor Canadian goods in Japan, especially mineral and agricultural resources. Improving the terms oftrade for Canadian wheat in particular attracted much of his attention and energy. He encouraged
individual businesses to come to Japan to develop markets for their goods, and he promoted trade
missions.
Even as the bilateral agenda slowly expanded to include collaboration on fighting drug trafficking
and enforcing international agreements on cable and postal rates—the type of bilateral plumbing thatoccupies most of the time of diplomats—the fact remains that Marler’s posting corresponded with the
October 1929 collapse of financial markets and the ensuing depression. Despite Marler’s greatest hopes
and sustained efforts, bilateral trade declined by over 60 per cent during his years in Japan, from
$55mm to less than $22mm, even as Canada maintained a surplus. And Marler’s last year saw asignificant trade dispute between the two countries, over textiles to Canada and market access for
Canada in Japan.
Still, Marler left a substantial legacy.
Marler had a good eye for staff, which he insisted on vetting. Hugh Keenleyside was a former
professor at Brown and Penn State, later to become ambassador to Mexico, Deputy Minister of Mines
and Resources, and chairman of the British Columbia Power Commission. There is even a dam in B.
C. named in his honour. Kenneth Kirkwood spent 10 years in Japan, writing extensively, including abook on Japanese art during the Muromachi period, one of the 17 books he eventually published.
James Langley, a trade commissioner based in Kobe, whom Marler insisted join him in Tokyo, also
spent a decade in Japan, and was effective enough that, just prior to their return to Canada, he and hiswife were invited to the palace to say farewell to the Showa Emperor, a highly unusual mark for a nonambassador. These and many of their successors would contribute significantly to the reputation of the
Department of External Affairs, especially during the so-called ‘golden days’ of the Foreign Service.
Trade and general economic relations between Canada and Japan were then, and remain today, aconstant among Canada’s bilateral priorities. Marler’s personal and professional commitment tohelping Canadians achieve their economic objectives is echoed with virtually every one of his successors.
Marler’s most visible legacy is the ambassador’s residence. Marler planned, organized, and financed
the construction of what today is called Marler House, an 8,000 square foot neo-classical wonder, witha Japanese garden completed by a flowing stream. Marler insisted that the residence be larger than the
British ambassador’s residence, who Marler felt had slighted him upon his arrival. It has become a most4Joseph CaronOn Being Ambassador to Japanmagnificent venue to welcome and host, on a breath-taking schedule, literally thousands of Japaneseand Canadian guests every year, in an environment which then, as now, brings both together to draw
attention to Canada, to humanize relationships, and to make deals. Oh, and the second floor also serves
to house the ambassador and his family.
Marler’s years in Japan were those of utmost turmoil: the assassination of Prime Minister Inukai(Japan had 9 prime ministers during the 1930s); the Manchurian incident of 1931 and subsequentestablishment of Manchukuo by the kantogun, the out-of-control Japanese army in China’s northeast;and Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933. But, seemingly, Marler kept his eyes on
the narrow set of objectives set for him by King and Bennett. Marler was cautious about criticising
Japan for its growing fascism at home and militarism abroad. He even recommended diplomatic
recognition of Manchukuo.
Since we know how the story ended, and absent a detailed reading of the archives, it is easy to feelthat Marler should have been more attuned to the possible consequences—and ghastly implications for
Canada—of the principal and negative trend lines in Asia pushed by Japan. Maybe he did, and thatalone would be an interesting research project. But one should guard against reading history from backto front, and bring values—say, anti-imperialism—which would not have been broadly shared among
Conservative Prime Minister Bennett’s cabinet in the 1930s.
There is something to be said for being the first at anything, and Marler, as our first ambassador to
Japan, reflects back to us the Canada of his age. Marler, along with his only pre-war successor, RobertRandolph Bruce, a former lieutenant-governor of B.C., closed an era for a Canada that would be very
different when it returned to Japan following World War II.

Marler’s successors
Marler and Bruce were Canada’s two first ambassadors to Japan. Ian Burney, living in Marler
House in 2017, is the 18th. The first three ambassadors were businessmen who had dabbled inpolitics. The fourth was a mayor of Prince Albert and later a judge. The next 14 have all been
public servants and Foreign Service officers. 10 of the 14 were Asia hands, and share knowledge
and experiences of great value to an assignment to Tokyo. Two—Rob Wright, at 14th, and I,
at 15th—have also served as ambassador to the PRC, and one—Fred Bull—to the Republic ofChina in Taiwan. In addition, the Canadian mission has been lead by three chargé d’affaires,
including the greatest Japan hand of them all, Herbert Norman.
Interestingly, our 18 ambassadors have been paralleled by 29 Japanese ambassadors to Ottawa,
almost all University of Tokyo law department graduates and professional diplomats.
Prime ministers and policies
We are called ambassadors presumably because it sounds good and prestigious, but we should reallygo back to being called envoys, because that’s what we do: we are sent by our national governments torepresent, within clear and expansive—or, under Prime Minister Harper, strict and monitored—
guidelines and policy sets.
Admittedly, sometimes the guidelines are neither clear nor strict. We exercise discretion andjudgement on how best to deliver these policies and established programs. All of us seek to contribute5Joseph CaronOn Being Ambassador to Japanto policy formulation and some of us actually have an impact. But, by and large, we work at the delivery
end of the process.
The substance of work of the ambassador to Japan is influenced directly by whether, in the prime
minister’s and foreign minister’s views, relations with Japan can contribute to the political andeconomic objectives that Canada sets. In matters of foreign policy and foreign relations, it all starts andends at home, in Canada. No prime minister or foreign or trade or defence minister has the time toprivilege relations with Japan or any other counterpart that cannot help her or him achieve the politicalobjectives of the day.
This may sound self-evident, but it does explain why being ambassador to Japan can be such a
different experience from one time to another, under one Ottawa government or another. It is anespecially interesting job when the government sets out to define and achieve new and perhaps untriedobjectives. That can generate the most active engagement with our Japanese counterparts and, for thatmatter, our counterparts in the Prime Minister’s Office and, now, Global Affairs Canada.
But at best, this heavy lifting will consume, say, ten per cent of the ambassador’s and the mission’stime. The vast majority of the efforts on the ground in embassies comes from servicing the constantflow of requests for support from Canadians, literally from all walks of life, in their individual,
corporate, institutional or academic efforts to achieve their objectives in Japan.
Canadian tourists who have lost their passports or are in some difficulty with the host governments
need the help of the consular staff. Canadian university researchers who need introductions to
MECSST—the education ministry - or research institutions call on the academic affairs section of theembassies to open doors for them. Canadian business people who are running into regulatory barriers
ask for help from the commercial division. And Canadians, including government officials, who needto understand the prevailing political and economic situation seek information and advice from theambassador, as well as the political staff or the defence attaché. This movement of Canadians across theembassy threshold is what drives the vast majority of embassy activity.
The importance of this cannot be overstated, because it largely constitutes what has been thesubstance of the Canada-Japan bilateral relationship, as it is experienced by the ambassador and his
staff.
Policy and practice has sought to increase the linkages between Canadians and Japanese. And ingeneral, the more such contacts and touch points between Canadians and Japanese, the better. Giving
circularity to all of this, increasing that flow, and enhancing its quality, is above all what policy
development between Canada and Japan has been meant to achieve.
Not for a moment is this ignoring or demeaning the centrality of multilateral diplomacy, where theframework is systemic and the purpose is to enhance the quality and stability of the global commons.
However important is the monitoring of the Japanese government’s views on, say, UN Security Council
debates or attitudes regarding developments on the Korean peninsula, the fact is that these kinds ofmultilateral issues have rarely played dominant roles in Canada’s relations with Japan. With some
exceptions, being ambassador to Japan can involve very little of this. The focus is almost unrelentingly
bilateral, from the ground up. That is the nature of the job.
Accordingly, the policy development and delivery process can be very straightforward. Here, theambassador’s role is at both the strategic and tactical levels. Greater or lessor amounts of dialogue andexchange of ideas occur between the ambassador and the Prime Minister’s Office, Global Affairs andvarious concerned ministries. Ideas are bounced back and forth, with Ottawa conveying the views anddesiderata of politicians, while senior bureaucrats and the ambassador also generate ideas, as well as
explaining how much change the Japanese system can take.

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Joseph CaronOn Being Ambassador to Japan

A common feature of these back-and-forth dialogues is that ambassadors insist that they are best
informed on what initiatives will be acceptable to Japan and that some of Ottawa’s proposals will not
fly. In response, headquarters will argue that the ambassador has gone native and should just deliver
the message. Sometimes new policy proposals emerge from all of this to-ing and fro-ing; sometimes
not.
Once a course is set, the ambassador’s job in Tokyo is ensuring that the Government of Canada’s
objectives are very clear, that these are explained to concerned ministries from the top to the desk levels,and that important players such as the Keidanren and some Diet members and perhaps key public
intellectuals are informed and hopefully supportive. If progress is made in these deliberations, the textsof bilateral agreements have to be drafted, analyzed, debated, and agreed upon, to both sides’ generalsatisfaction.
Most importantly, the ambassador and senior staff have to develop an approach that demonstrates
how a Canadian proposal is, first and foremost, in Japan’s best interest: that can often be the mostchallenging job of all.
Japan will have its own list of asks, its own level of interest in what Canada has to offer, its own
bureaucratic hurdles to overcome, and its own grander foreign policy objectives, which may or may
not prioritize Canada at that very moment in time.
There are creative periods in the history of the relationship—think Diefenbaker, Trudeau andMulroney—and there are periods of policy stasis—late Trudeau and Harper. During those periods, it
is primarily the decisions and activities of individual Canadians and their institutions that generate anembassy’s work, with little invention of new policies. Instead, the emphasis is on existing policy delivery
and responses to changes at less than macro levels.

Me, from 1975 to 1998
I was first posted to Japan in 1975, and was sent for Japanese language training at the U.S. State
Department language school in Yokohama. Once in the embassy, as a young trade commissioner, I
was assigned to the commercial division and the exciting world of forest products. In the mid-1980s, I
became Counsellor for Political and Diet relations.
In the mid-90s, I became Minister and Head of Chancery, just below the rank of ambassador. In
some respects, this is the best policy making post at the embassy, because of the opportunity forspecialization. I take credit for developing an opening for Canada, as a credible interlocutor on peaceand security issues, as the Japanese were re-defining post-Cold War policies.
This was a fluid time in Japanese foreign policy and, as always, this fluidity provided an openness
among officials at the foreign ministry and defence agency to broaden their minds and their options.
The end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union changed the dynamics in Asia and,accordingly, Japanese calculations of their security needs and policies. I followed this closely, anddeveloped with Ottawa a proposal to invite two academics, Nishihara Masashi at the National Defence
Academy in Yokosuka and Brian Job at UBC, to prepare a report outlining opportunities for bilateral
cooperation in the areas of peace and security. After much nemawashi—the well-known Japaneseprocess of persuasion and dialogue—the MFA and the self-defence agency agreed to Canada’s proposal.
Thus was launched ongoing Track 1 and 2 Canada-Japan dialogues that created, in my humble
opinion, an openness to collaboration between Canada and Japan on initiatives such as obtaining
Japan’s signature on the Land Mines Treaty in 1997, cooperation in the UN Disengagement Observer
Force on the Golan Heights involving Canada and Japan, also in the 1990s, and in Japanese refuelling7

Joseph CaronOn Being Ambassador to Japanof Canadian vessels combating piracy under operation Enduring Freedom off the Horn of Africa a
decade ago.
I mention this to flag that the greatest potential for expanding the scope of Canada-Japan relations
comes when big changes in national circumstances impose the need for policy fluidity and initiative.
This fluidity is essential, in my mind. Japan welcomed Marler and his mission in 1929 because it
was transitioning from a Depression economy to a militarized economy and it needed grain and natural
resources, as well as foreign exchange from exports.
Diefenbaker, Kishi and Ikeda were able to substantially broaden the filature of relations between
Canada and Japan in the late 1950s and early 1960s because Japan, less than a decade since regaining
its sovereignty, again needed not only resources and markets, but also legitimacy in a world where it
had yet to join the GATT, the IMF or the OECD, and needed the support of countries like Canada.
For our part, we had emerged from the war as a powerhouse, we had a growing economy and wewere rewriting our immigration policies.
Trudeau did not succeed in his government’s “third option” ambitions to make Canada a privileged
supplier of semi-processed resources and manufactured goods to Japan, because Japan was already thesecond economy in the world and could shop wherever it wanted; in any event, the Canadian economy
was in some turmoil in the 1970s, and business was not yet ready for proto-globalization.
Thus, you can see a dividing line between eras of policy growth and expansion in the formal
government-to-government relationship, and eras of relative policy stasis when ambassadors and theirstaff implement and fine-tune established policies, assist Canadians and keep the on-site programme
plumbing in order. Those can be productive periods as well, but business-as-usual offers less of thedrama and excitement of change, which of course is of greater interest to scholars.
And those realities pretty well frame my years as ambassador to Japan.

On being ambassador
I arrived in Tokyo from Beijing in the summer of 2005 in a period of policy fluidity. A few months
earlier, Prime Ministers Martin and Koizumi had agreed during a bilateral visit on two important
initiatives: an updated Canada-Japan agenda for peace and security cooperation, and a renewed
Canada-Japan economic framework.
The first of these built on the productive relationship of the past decade, which saw Canadians andJapanese working together on a number of security and policy issues and collaboration in a variety ofinternational venues. The update also called for “cooperation in their peace-building efforts such as
security sector reform” in Afghanistan. It also promised to continue the successful security symposiums
which involve academics and thought leaders, and ongoing political/military talks at the purely
government level.
The second driver of bilateralism was a new joint economic framework, which was directed to use
the venue of the Joint Economic Committee, meeting since 1976, to advance the possibility ofchanging the structure of the Canada-Japan economic relationship towards something like an FTA. It
promised a joint study to provide what was referred to as an “assessment of the implications of further
trade and investment liberalization and related policy instruments.” This language was insisted uponby the Japanese so as not to suggest even a whiff of some sort of free trade agreement.
Furthermore, in April, still in 2005, Martin’s government launched a comprehensive “international
policy statement” which re-defined Canada’s international diplomatic, defence, economic, anddevelopment objectives. These generally tied into the bilateral January initiatives, especially with regard
8Joseph CaronOn Being Ambassador to Japanto seeking to expand the economic relationship, and more bilateral activism on matters of the post-9/
11 security world, including in Afghanistan. Japan was specifically mentioned in the policy statement
as an important partner in these efforts.
Fortunately, these objectives largely survived the major readjustment to Canadian diplomatic andsecurity policies when Stephen Harper’s government came to power in February, 2006.
Coming on top of these frameworks, I also received instructions from Peter Harder, then the UnderSecretary, now the leader of the Senate. Much of these were standard boilerplate directions to manage“the full spectrum of Canada’s mature and extensive political, economic, defence, academic andcultural relations with Japan.” But emphasis was placed on both of the Martin/Koizumi security andeconomic initiatives.
Peter also prioritized the issue of parental child abductions, an ongoing issue between Canada andJapan.
And, basically, these are the strategic policy areas in which I worked during my three years asambassador, emphasizing once again that the day-to-day job of serving individual Canadians and theircompanies and universities and arts groups took up most of my days.
A review of daily schedules during my 1,000 days in Tokyo, from July 28, 2005 to August 8, 2008,
when I left for India, shows that clearly.
Just to illustrate, let me list, briefly, my activities during the month of November 2005, to give youa sense of what I and my fellow Canadian ambassadors to Japan would do in a given month.
November 2005:
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Among other meetings, I called the governor of the Bank of Japan, Fukui Toshihiko, to discuss
the Japanese economy, his plans to fight deflation, and to flag our aspirations for enhanced
economic ties;
I called on Ogata Sadako, who then led the Japan International Cooperation Agency, to discuss
Afghanistan cooperation;
I met my decades-long friend Kanemoto Yasunori, a veteran of the National Police Agency andthe Secretary General of INTERPOL from 1996 to 2000, in Lyon in his new position as
personal advisor on national security issues to Prime Minister Koizumi, at which time we
discussed Japanese national security policies and Canadian cooperation;
I planned and directed the annual embassy retreat of senior staff;
I participated in the Canada/Japan Housing Committee, continuing an engagement that began
in my forestry days, some 30 years earlier;
I met in formal meetings with over 20 Japanese and Canadian companies, including Honda,
Toyota and Itoham, as well as Canadian Forest Products and CIBC;
I had separate meetings with 12 artists, academics, journalists, and visiting economists;
I travelled to Tottori prefecture to formally launch the Canada-Nakanoumi Friendship Society,and to Nagoya for meetings with business and local political leaders;
I wrote an article on Canada/Japan economic relations and our hopes for an FTA of sorts; andI drafted and delivered a speech to the Tokai/Canada Japan Society.

That was the month of November.
I don’t think that my ambassadorial schedule during my years in Japan was in any way unlike thatof my predecessors or successors. If I had one distinguishing feature among my 17 Canadianambassador colleagues, it is that I had already spent 14 years in Japan, including in the private sector,
and could bring that experience to good use.
9Joseph CaronOn Being Ambassador to Japan

With respect to the strategic objectives on matters of peace and security, and the economic
relationship, I can point to efforts to those ends, but no dramatic breakthroughs.
Canada/Japan cooperation continued apace on the peace and security front. I played my role ofbooster by meeting and discussing cooperation with Diet members and senior officials, giving regularpublic speeches, participating in peace and security panels with people like former UN UnderSecretary-General Akashi Yasushi, doing media interviews, and thus beating the drums. I was invited
to make a speech to the editorial board of the Yomiuri Shimbun.
This was a bit tricky because we were now in the Harper era, and contrary to the past, asambassadors, we were forbidden to speak publicly without explicit permission from Ottawa. Nor could
I meet, during visits to Ottawa, with Canadian cabinet ministers, who appeared to consider the role ofdiplomats in general, and ambassadors in particular, as little more than expensive mailboxes.
My colleagues and I worked hard, in particular, with the MFA, the Defence Agency, and JICA todevelop cooperation programs in Afghanistan. One promising project involved reconstruction of theDahla Dam in Kandahar, the second biggest in the country. Another involved cooperation in providing
police training and equipment. Discussions were extensive, but ultimately failed because of Japan’s
great concern about the security of its staff and the dangers of exposure outside their embassy
compound.
On the economic front, the joint study of the potential for liberalization of trade and investment
between Canada and Japan was indeed completed, making recommendations in fifteen areas such as
government procurement, trade in services, and intellectual property. While meetings on next steps did
take place, and I was involved in them, Japan considered that it would make greater gains through a
proposed trans-Pacific partnership. As some of you know, even the withdrawal of the United States has
not cooled Japan’s interest in an agreement. So, as of this moment, there is no movement on a Canada/
Japan agreement. And, frankly, I too believe that Canada would benefit more substantially in a new
regional trade agreement.
Another important initiative was obtaining Japanese agreement to join the Hague Convention on
the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. This involves getting Japan to respect the decisionsof civil courts outside Japan and dealing with children who are abducted by one of the parents andbrought back to Japan, despite legal restrictions against doing so. It is a very complicated issue, withcomplex legal, social, political, and indeed emotional ramifications. My colleagues in the embassy andI were very active on this file, including working with other embassies to press the foreign ministry andthe justice ministry in Japan to address a growing problem, given the increasing number of international
marriages, including between Canadians and Japanese.
It did not occur during my watch, but Japan did ultimately sign the convention, effective in 2014.

Being ambassadors to JapanAs I stated earlier, my 17 ambassadorial colleagues, stretching from Herbert Marler in the 1930s to
Ian Burney 80 years later, have each had experiences that differed one from the other. Professional
priorities may be spelled out clearly, but how we do them, in what order, what experiences wepersonally bring to the job, how we take advantage of circumstances, or how we fail to grasp
opportunity, all of those will differ from individual to individual.
However, in preparation for these notes, I did speak to some of my Canadian ambassadorial
colleagues, and pass on, in conclusion, some of our shared perception of what it was like to beambassador to Japan:
10Joseph Caron

•

•

•

•

•

On Being Ambassador to JapanThe ambassadors of recent history all say the same thing: they all loved the job, felt incredibly
privileged to represent Canada in Japan, and enjoyed working with the Japanese in both
personal and professional circumstances. Every one of us found aspects of Japanese history,society, popular culture, cuisine, pop music, and high art to be enriching, something to retain
long after the end of our assignments. One of my colleagues said that he hoped that he would
not die while in Japan, because he expected that when he got to heaven, he would be very
disappointed!
As a Pacific neighbour, as a member of the G8, as a country with an excellent image in Japan,
and as an economic partner, all doors were open to all of us. This is not the case for the large
majority of ambassadors. The Canadian ambassador can meet just about anyone he—and
eventually, no doubt, she—wishes, all the way to members of the imperial family. Japanese
government officials are always available to meet with their Canadian counterparts. But outside
government-to-government business, it was always important to be able to offer something in
exchange to your interlocutors: insights, information, access, even hospitality. There is areciprocal dimension to meeting such people as the president of Mitsui and the like; the job of
the ambassador is to ensure that the door is opened the second time he knocks.
Japanese institutional conservatism is a fact of life, and is as common in Japanese ministries as
it is in businesses or the academic world. Promoting initiatives is always a challenge. Canada,in the vast majority of cases, is the demandeur, the initiator; Japan, rarely so. Some of this reflects
our relative sizes as populations and markets. Japan is bigger than Canada in everything but
geography. Also, in Canada, the political direction is vertical and responsiveness is expected. In
Japan, the balance of power is more complex, more horizontal and diffuse, and veto power cancome right out of left field. There is the strong if residual operating principle of gekokujou—
the power of underlings in a hierarchy—to impose their usually conservative, rarely imaginative
views on their superiors, who can choose not to fight them. I saw this on many occasions.
Relations with the U.S. are at the centre of Japanese political, economic, and security relations.
All good ideas and initiatives coming from Canada benefit from being examined for the way
they intersect with Japan/U.S. relations. The U.S. can be a great ally, especially on matters ofpeace and security. On occasion, I ran things by the U.S. ambassador before proposing themto the Japanese. This “America first” tendency colours Japanese responses to Canadian
initiatives in the economic sphere.
Finally, we Canadians under-rate the power of active communications strategies and cultural
diplomacy on our relations with Japan. There are recognized Canadian superstars in Japan, andrecognized places like Whistler, Mont Tremblant, the Rockies, and Niagara Falls. Japanesepeople love Robert Lepage, Margaret Atwood, Bryan Adams, Céline Dion, and now Justin
Trudeau. But the biggest superstars are our values, our openness and the welcoming friendlinessof the average Canadian, including I hope their ambassador. We do well when we promotethese in Japan. None of them will get us an FTA. But all of them provide the positive
disposition among the Japanese without which we will find it difficult to achieve our goals.

Thank you for listening to these remarks. I hope that you found them informative. I will welcome,in the coming days, any advice on where I might go from here. Goseicho, arigato gozaimashita.

11

Emerging Solidarities and Spatialities
in Post-3.11 Japan: Gender, Sexuality
and Transformative Resilience
Natasha Fox
Abstract: This paper discusses some ongoing outcomes of the Great East Japan Earthquake
and Tsunami of March 11, 2011 (“3.11”) from the perspectives of thirteen members of asexual and gender minority community in Japan. Foundational research on the social
dimensions of disaster has highlighted the ways in which gender, income, race and othersocial demarcations intersect during natural hazards, compounding pre-existing
vulnerabilities in the disaster context. A new body of research explores how marginalized
individuals may also exhibit specific capacities during and after disasters as a function of theirsocially marginal location. This paper explores how the adaptive capacities of a group of
diverse Japanese women were mobilized in response to the 3.11 disasters, and the ongoing
effects of this mobilization on understandings of community resilience and Japanese society.
The paper argues that Japanese disaster resilience manifesting in queer communities is adistinctly transformative process, creating new geographical connections and solidarities
across the gender and sexuality spectra, and moving beyond “bouncing back.” Supported bya series of semi-structured interviews with 12 Japanese queer women and one trans man, I
argue that queer activism in the post-3.11 context contributes to a unique constellation ofconnections, spatialities, and solidarities which are transforming Japanese society at multiplesocio-spatial scales.

Introduction
This paper discusses a series of civil society actions and reverberations that have taken place in Japan
since in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011 (“the 3.11 disasters”) fromthe perspectives of 13 members of a Japanese sexual and gender minority community. In the summerof 2011 I conducted a series of interviews with 13 individuals who identified as lesbian, bisexual ortransgender 1 all of whom were regularly frequenting nightclubs in the neighbourhood of Shinjuku Ni1

Given the endless diversity of individuals’ gender identity and sexuality, the available lexis in the English
language (including the ever-growing list of acronyms and various attempts to include and validate as many
identities as possible) inevitably falls short. My use of the term queer in this paper is an attempt to describe
individuals who may identify with the terms bisexual, lesbian, transgender, or other non-conforming gender orsexuality identifier. When individuals explicitly described themselves as lesbian or bisexual, I use their preferred

12Natasha Fox

Emerging Solidarities and Spatialities in Post-3.11 Japan

chome, Japan’s most well-known queer district located in central Tokyo. My intent at the time was toexplore the significance of an increasing number of women’s dance party events and nightclubs in NiChome, a neighborhood overwhelmingly dominated by establishments catering to gay men andtransgender women (Fox 2013). Because the fieldwork took place in the months following the 3.11
disasters, our semi-structured interviews inevitably veered towards the recent earthquake, tsunami andnuclear meltdown that had devastated so many communities in Japan’s northeastern region of Tohoku.
Several of my participants had either been born and raised in one of the disaster-stricken areas, or had
family members who lived in the disaster zone. Others expressed concerns related their sexuality, safety,
and privacy if a similarly large earthquake were to strike the Tokyo area, an event that is projected tobe highly destructive and likely to occur in the coming decades, if not sooner (Sorensen 2011).

In September of 2017, I contacted participants from the 2011 study in order to document their activities
over the roughly six years since our interviews had taken place. I also offered them the option to revisit their2011 interview statements in order to identify any changes in their views around sexualities and genders. Lastly,
I asked a short set of additional open-ended questions in order to survey their opinions on some recent changes
related to gender and sexuality in Japanese society. Given the increasing international visibility of public debates
about queerness, and growing list of countries legalizing same-sex marriage over the past six years, I expected tofind some participants’ views to have become slightly less conservative since we last spoke about these matters. 2
I did not anticipate the degree to which their views would change, nor their specific identification of the postdisaster context as a catalyst for social change around Japanese queerness. The participants articulated multiple
ways in which post-disaster activities are yielding new ideas about gender and sexuality in Japan, withreverberations that extend well beyond disaster planning and into the broader public sphere. These views were
further supported by a brief case study of an Iwate-based LGBTI support organization whose activities are
solidifying the relationship between disaster recovery and queer community-building.

The recent follow-up interviews revealed that during the period since we last spoke in 2011 manyof the participants have experienced profound changes which, I argue, are linked to activism anddiscourses that have emerged in conjunction with the 3.11 disasters’ aftermath and related impacts on
Japan’s human geographical landscape. This paper explores some of these linkages by highlighting theactivities and outcomes of civil society action around genders and sexualities in Japan since 2011. I
argue that participants are imagining and enacting new and alternative discourses of self, community,
and society at multiple scales. Creating new geographical connections and building new socio-spatialsolidarities across the gender and sexuality continuum in a way that is increasingly visible, their activities
constitute a process which I identify in this paper as transformative resilience.

Contested views of resilience and “transformational” vs.
“transformative”
An important ongoing debate in the study of humans’ relationships to disasters asks whether
resilience can provide an appropriate framework for theorizing the capacity to endure a natural hazard.
At the heart of this debate is disagreement about whether resilience describes the ability to “bounce

terminology. Similarly, when discussing specific organizations (such as in section 3.1) I use the organization’s
chosen vocabulary.
2
At the participants’ request, many of the 2011 interviews took place in locations that were deliberately
obscured from public view. Some were visibly nervous about being overheard talking about their sexuality andall but one were convinced that Japanese society would never recognize the existence of queer Japanese people
in their lifetime.

13

Natasha Fox

Emerging Solidarities and Spatialities in Post-3.11 Japanback” to pre-disaster conditions after a crisis, or the power to transform into something new and morecapable of supporting human wellbeing (Alexander 2013).
Initially applied in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields in the
1960s and 1970s, the application of the term resilience to the study of disasters spread significantly inthe 1980s with General Systems Theory in Ecology (ibid.), and later as a bridge between the social andnatural sciences in Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) Theory (Cote & Nightingale 2012). Recently
human geographers have argued that resilience as a concept in disaster studies is problematic because
it under-theorizes social, economic and political dimensions that underlie disasters by focusing on acommunity’s ability to “bounce back” rather than move away from pre-existing social vulnerabilities(ibid.; Brown 2014). Raven Cretney and others have also pointed to the ubiquity of resilience as a
buzzword used by economists to normalize discourses of individual responsibility, and the dominanceof market forces over human needs in constructing built environments and social networks (Cretney
2014; Cretney & Bond 2014). In line with these arguments, Juergen Weichselgartner and Ilan Kelman
have added that so-called resilience-building projects tend to uncritically accept universal assumptions
about the societies in which they take place, implementing one-size-fits-all techno-scientific solutions
where more nuanced and complicated realities of diversity and geographical differentiation should betaken into account (2015). For instance, local factors such as a society’s collective and legal definitionof a “family” (as exclusively heterosexual opposite-sex couples and their biological children, forexample) may determine who has access to shelters in the emergency period.
This paper engages with these debates by attempting to “salvage” the disaster resilience concept byhighlighting activities taking place at the nexus of sexual and gender diversity, and community capacity
to cope with hazards. In line with arguments made by Dominey-Howes, Gorman-Murray and
McKinnon (2014), I define resilience as the cumulative adaptive capacities of an individual, family,community or society, which are generated through the realities of everyday social survival and may bemobilized in response to a crisis. The very process of mobilizing these capacities necessitates atransformation in the performativity of the self, the cumulative effects of which can be profound,reverberating across time and space and contributing to social change (Lee 2016). Societal
transformation necessarily begins at the level of the individual, and may arise even in cases where one’s
activities are not explicitly ideological or deliberately political. Indeed, even the effects of ordinary
actions without leadership or structure, particularly those in society’s margins, can yield socialtransformation. 3
The goals of mainstream disaster preparation and response include cultivating societies andcommunities that can withstand a natural hazard by improving and bolstering the effectiveness ofexisting social and infrastructural safeguards. In some cases these improvements can be thought of as“transformational” in that they effectively reform and improve what exists already. In the aftermath of
the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, for example, the central government of Japan implemented apolicy allowing more locally-driven, bottom-up community redevelopment (machizukuri) to take theplace of top-down approaches (Hyogo Prefecture 1995), a notable exception to the standard practiceof central-government-led planning (Edgington 2010). Working within existing parameters of what istherefore, can produce transformational ways of enhancing these structures. On the other hand, theKobe disasters’ aftermath also offers a “transformative” example in that it allowed civil society actors to
problematize an existing structure, and effect social change toward what could be. In this example, theFor example, the Black Lives Matter Movement, the Me Too movement, and others. For an elegant
discussion of the potential for everyday actions to become radically transformative, see Charles T. Lee, Ingenious
Citizenship: Recrafting Democracy for Social Change (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016).
3

14Natasha Fox

Emerging Solidarities and Spatialities in Post-3.11 Japan

existing structure was the status of NGOs in Japan, and the social change that resulted has been termed
the “birth of Japanese volunteerism” because of the rapid growth of, and reforms in relation to, civilsociety and Japanese NGOs (ibid.)
Returning to the discussion of resilience above, the utility of transformative resilience as a concept
lies in its power to prefigure a politics of Japanese identity, community, and society in which diversity
is an asset rather than a problem to be solved. The next section explains how the adaptive capacities ofdiverse Japanese people were mobilized in response to the 3.11 disasters, and how the interrelated
effects of this mobilization are yielding radical new forms of resilience that move beyond “bouncing
back” to pre-disaster conditions.

Post-3.11 Activism: Queer Possibilities on the Margins 4Foundational research on the social dimensions of disaster has highlighted the ways in which gender,
sexuality, income, race and other social demarcations intersect during natural hazards, compounding
people’s vulnerability in the disaster context (Wisner 2004; Pitt Enarson & Dhar Chakrabarti 2009).
A new body of research explores how marginalized individuals can also exhibit specific capacities during
and after disasters as a function of their socially marginal location (Pitt Enarson 2012). 5 Japanese queer
experiences of the 3.11 disasters also support this claim, and also offer evidence that the aggregate ofthese experiences may also have important implications for the socio-spatial landscape.
The Case of Iwate Rainbow Network
An example of this type of Japanese queer capacity-building is Iwate Rainbow Network, 6 an Iwatebased organization established on March 19, 2011 to create a supportive network for LGBTI (lesbian,gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex) disaster survivors. In the emergency period the network began
publishing a blog disseminating targeted information for LGBTI people to safely access resources,
information, and counselling. Currently the network engages in a number of activities that underscorethe significance of the post-disaster context in an emerging type of activism in Japanese rural queer
communities.
Iwate Rainbow Network (IRN) provides LGBTI peer counselling, organizes meet-ups with various
discussion topics such as LGBTI-related books and films, as well as educational workshops around
The title of this section is borrowed from Andrew Gorman-Murray, Sally Morris, Jessica Keppel, Scott
McKinnon, and Dale Dominey-Howes (2016) who describe the ways in which marginalized people may
exhibit specific capacities during and after disasters due to their location outside of societal norms. Their
analysis showed that the process of being marginalized due to ones non-conforming gender or sexuality had theeffect of creating certain strengths (uniting together to provide exceptionally effective support for one another,for example) that came into play during the 2011 Queensland floods.
5
Also for a discussion of how being marginalized can create specific resiliencies, see Andrew Gorman-Murray
et al., “Problems and Possibilities on the Margins: LGBT Experiences in the 2011 Queensland Floods,” Gender,
Place & Culture, February 2, 2016, 1–15. For specific firsthand examples, see Yamashita, Azusa, “Beyond
Invisibility: Great East Japan Disaster and LGBT in Northeast Japan,” FOCUS, n.d., accessed January 1 2018,
http://www.hurights.or.jp/archives/focus/section2/2012/09/beyond-invisibility-great-east-japan-disaster-andlgbt-in-northeast-japan.html
6Iwate Rainbow Network, May 2017, Iwate Rainbow Network’s Blog, accessed January 2 2018, https://ameblo.jp/iwaterainbownetwork/
415

Natasha Fox

Emerging Solidarities and Spatialities in Post-3.11 Japan

LGBTI-related issues. The network’s
activities illustrate a number of important
points about Japanese queer communities’changing
humangeography
andunderstandings of risk and solidarity whenfacing various natural and human hazards.
In the aftermath of the Orlando mass
shooting, the network disseminatedinformation for local people to accesscounselling through a sexuality and humanrights crisis hotline. The network also
distributed information about a prayer
gathering for victims taking place at a church
in the town of Hanamaki, Iwate. 7 In anotherinstance, the network collaborated with acosmetics company to co-organize afundraiser commemorating the International
Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia andBiphobia (see Figure 1) in which proceedsfrom sales of certain Lush products at their
Morioka location on May 3 would be
donated to IRN.
One interview participant explicitly
Figure 1. Sign for “Charity Party” at Lush Store, Morioka.
linked these activities to the changing human
Retrieved from https://ameblo.jp/iwaterainbownetwork/page-3.html
landscape of queer communities in Japan,
noting how IRN and similar organizations are creating relationships and networks that transcendphysical distances and regional boundaries. Ongoing earthquake preparation-related activities forsexual minorities not only in the Tohoku region but also across Japan include sending out group SNS
alerts via phone messaging lists, establishing support organizations in various locations throughout
Japan, offering telephone counselling, holding symposiums in various locations, and preparing disasterprevention guides.
An example of a disaster prevention guide connecting geographically distant places on the basis of
specific LGBTI needs is the relationship of IRN to another LGBTI support organization called Kochi
Help Desk. In 2017 representatives from IRN were invited to hold a series of workshops with Kochi
Help Desk supported by the Kochi prefectural government. The founder of the IRN secured funding
by applying to a feminist organization called the Mioko Fujieda Fund for Gender Equality andReconstruction from the Great East Japan Disaster. 8 When her application was successful, she traveledsome 1300 kilometers to Kochi prefecture in order to meet with other LGBTI groups there to sharestrategies for preparation for the earthquake and tsunami expected to strike Shikoku. After theworkshop, the organizations co-published their recommendations in a “Rainbow Disaster Risk
Reduction Manual” (see fig. 2) to highlight the needs of LGBTI people in disasters. The manual isavailable as a PDF on both organizations’ websites in both Japanese and English. It includes practicalAzusa Yamashita, 2016, “相談情報/info on LGBTI consultation service,” web log entry, June 15 2016,
accessed 22 December 2017, https://ameblo.jp/iwaterainbownetwork/page-3.html.
8
Azusa Yamashita, personal communication to the author, September 27, 2017.
716

Natasha Fox

Emerging Solidarities and Spatialities in Post-3.11 Japan

Figure 2. Rainbow Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Guide (English)
Source: https://ameblo.jp/iwaterainbownetwork/entry-12157544694.html

recommendations for LGBTI people themselves such as what to pack in an emergency kit, as well asrecommendations for disaster planners to make evacuation and sheltering processes safer and more
17Natasha Fox

Emerging Solidarities and Spatialities in Post-3.11 Japan

accessible for LGBTI people. These include listing one’s gender as an optional part of the shelter intake
forms rather than a requirement, and making gender-specific relief supplies such as sanitary pads
accessible in private rather than in the presence of other evacuees.
The process of producing this report is significant because it bridges two geographically distantlocations in Japan (Kochi and Iwate prefectures) on the basis of a shared LGBTI identity extending
across space. Furthermore, the feminist funding organization’s willingness to contribute to the manual’s
production reflects an emerging solidarity between women’s support and empowerment groups and
LGBTI organizations in Japan. Similarly, IRN’s mobilization of the LGBTI acronym itself is significant
because it positions gay men as well as trans and intersex people as allies in a way that has increasingly
surfaced in the post-3.11 context. Ikuko Sugiura has shown how queer women in Japan have long faced
the doubly-marginalizing experience of negotiating their non-heteronormative sexuality while also
bearing the responsibilities associated with being a woman, including childcare, caring for elderly
relatives, and the many related gender-specific social expectations (Sugiura 2012). In the past, theseadded burdens undercut the possibility for collaboration between gay men, lesbians, and trans people
and led to highly divisive debates within Japan’s lesbian community about what the political objectivesof a lesbian activist movement in Japan should be (ibid.) IRN’s activities thus offer one example oftransformative resilience blurring various geographical and social boundaries in the post-3.11 context
in order to accomplish their goals. This is significant because a number of bureaucratic roadblocks inlegal and political processes leading up to and following the 3.11 disasters have been cited as one reason
for the sluggish recovery. 9 The trans-prefectural publication of the Rainbow DRRM illustrates atransformative resilience approach that unsettles traditional hierarchical boundaries of municipal,
prefectural, and national administrations. My recent interviews with queer women from the 2011 study
further underscored how emerging human-geographic connections and solidarities in the post-disaster
context also connect to experiences of queer people in everyday life in Japan, highlighting theimportance of social changes in the non-disaster context.
The “feedback loop”
As stated earlier in this paper, participants in the 2011 study tended to be highly sceptical about thepossibility of popular liberalization around queerness in Japan in their lifetime. In 2015, Shibuya andSetagaya wards began issuing same-sex partnership certificates to couples who were residents of theward and chose to apply for the certificates. While the certificates are not legally binding and individuals
and companies may choose not to honour them, they did nevertheless offer same-sex couples an added

For example, post-disaster donation funds were not distributed promptly to victims of the disasters due tobureaucratic red tape. The central government decided that funds should be allotted according to the extent of
individuals’ damage. Accordingly, victims of the disasters were required to produce a certificate of damages
from the local government before they could receive funds. In many cases, the local governments were notproperly functioning in the initial months after the earthquake, having lost many members of their staff insome cases, so local government officials could not verify and issue the certificates of damage in a timely
manner. This process left victims at the mercy of a bureaucratic catch-22. For more detail on the locations
where snags affected the speed of the reconstruction, see the reconstruction agency website at http://www.
reconstruction.go.jp/
918Natasha Fox

Emerging Solidarities and Spatialities in Post-3.11 Japan

Figure 3. Map of locations of Japanese same-sex partnership certificates
Source: Prefectural map retrieved from Wikipedia commons (altered by author)

layer of legitimacy not seen in Japan prior to that time. Official acknowledgement by the ward of acouple’s commitment to a partnership thus marks a small but transformative change from the past.
The 13 participants from the 2011 study all expressed their utter shock to witness this taking place intheir lifetime. The partnerships claim to entitle same-sex couples to housing (critical because somelandlords can refuse to rent to same-sex couples, notoriously common in accounts of queer couples
trying to rent a living space). The certificates also entitle couples to hospital visits in case of emergency.
Importantly, however, it is yet unclear as to whether they have any effect on a cohabitating same-sex
couple’s right to shelter as a family in an emergency. One of my participants in Sendai attempted tocontact five different government officials in Shibuya and Setagaya but could not get a clear answer onwhat would happen in this case.
Another criticism of the partnership certificates is that they were limited to the very small andaffluent neighbourhoods of Shibuya and Setagaya. It is noteworthy, therefore, that similar certificateshave also been issued by a number of decidedly non-affluent and non-urban cities outside the Tokyo
metropolis (see fig. 3). These include Iga City in Mie Prefecture (April, 2016), Takarazuka City in
Hyogo Prefecture (June, 2016), Naha City in Okinawa Prefecture (July, 2016), and Sapporo City in
Hokkaido Prefecture (June, 2017).
At this point, it is important to note that it is not my intent to argue that post-disaster activism
alone is responsible for the emergence of the certificates, nor that the certificates themselves constituteanything more than a geographically-restricted symbol with little actual influence over the realities of19Natasha Fox

Emerging Solidarities and Spatialities in Post-3.11 Japanqueer Japanese people’s lives. Rather, as interview participants situated these certificates in a general
growing public awareness of queer people’s existence and needs in Japan, the certificates indicate ageographically-specific, but noteworthy change from pre-3.11 policy about these matters. Furthermore,
several of my participants from the 2013 study have modified their personal lives. Five participants
have gone from being highly secretive about their sexuality to publicly marrying their same-sex partners.
One who was privately struggling with both sexuality and gender identity issues has since transitioned
to openly living life as a man and is engaged to marry his girlfriend. The most striking example of thelatter is that of Masuhara Hiroko. 10
At the time of our 2011 interview, Masuhara was very protective over the privacy of the woman she
was dating and was very concerned that her partner’s identity not be exposed in any way. The year after
our interview, Masuhara and her partner Higashi Koyuki 11 made international news for their highprofile wedding at Tokyo Disneyland. 12 Higashi is a celebrity in Japan because of her time as aperformer in the Takarazuka revue from 2005-2006 and her outspoken advocacy for queer rights inJapan. The couple regularly make international headlines for their activism in Tokyo including bylobbying for the same-sex certificates that they hold in Shibuya ward.
Masuhara’s 2017 interview echoed that of others in the group in that she stressed the importanceof the post-disaster context in creating space for transformative ways of thinking about queerness inJapan. Another participant echoed this view: “We are seeing a kind of feedback loop in that the disasters
created the opportunity to talk about both gender and queer issues in Japan, and growing awareness ofqueer people enables discussion about specific needs in disasters too.” In line with this view, there isalso growing evidence that feminist activism around disaster planning and reconstruction is increasingly
finding commonality with queer activism. Of the 11 participants who had experienced some form ofqueer-related activism over the past six years, seven mentioned having collaborated in some capacitywith NGOs dedicated to the needs of women in general. Underscoring these perceptions, eightparticipants stated that the aims of both queer activism and feminist organizations have been
increasingly overlapping. All participants attributed this to a post-3.11 atmosphere of “opening” insome way (participants’ minds, the public discussion on various matters including sexuality and gender,
and ability for diverse people to speak out in different ways and locations than before). One participant
eloquently explained, “Internationally and domestically, I feel that there is a door wide open foraddressing enormous issues around gender and sexuality …through the lens of our personal experienceswith 3.11.” Clearly the participants in this study are determined to make sure that this door does not
close again.

Conclusion: Towards a Transformative Resilience
Transformative resilience is a useful concept for understanding contemporary social changes inJapan’s post-disaster context because it encompasses both the vulnerabilities and capacities ofindividuals living in society’s margins, illuminating processes of social change at multiple levels.
I use Masuhara’s real name because she is a publicly known and internationally recognized author, activist
and media figure who is well known for her visibility and activities inside and outside Japan.
11
Similarly, Koyuki Higashi’s public persona is commonly recognized in media, including on her Wikipedia
page, and she is an outspoken queer rights activist, author and actress.
12
Koyuki Higashi, 2012, "First Same-Sex Wedding at Tokyo Disney Resort," web log entry, March 5 2012,
accessed 3 December 2017, http://koyuki higashi.tumblr.com/post/44615604860/.
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Emerging Solidarities and Spatialities in Post-3.11 Japan

Prefiguring a reality in which disasters have less of an impact on marginalized populations, this concept
can offer a much-needed alternative approach to unsettled debates about the appropriateness ofresilience in studying disasters. Participants’ personal and civil society activities in the post-3.11 context
illustrate how connections across geographical boundaries and social categories in Japan are being
forged in new ways in the post-disaster period. Queer NGOs increasingly appearing in Tohoku are
more willing to collaborate across distant locations, and social barriers that separated cisgender
heterosexual women from lesbians, bisexuals, and trans women are becoming less significant as theirgoals increasingly overlap. Participants felt that Japanese feminist organizations are increasingly
working with queer networks and that queer organizations are contributing to developing strategies fordisaster preparation across multiple locations in Japan. While these examples may be on a very small
scale, they nevertheless offer a significant departure from dominant notions of sexuality, gender andrural Japan, seeming to hint at what Doreen Massey has termed a more global, progressive sense ofplace (1994). What gives a place like Tohoku or Japan its unique character is not a long, singularinternalized history, but the fact that it is being created and recreated out of a particular assemblage of
networks, articulated together at a particular location, with yet unknown effects on community
resilience and transformational place-making practices.

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Images of Japanese Women: An Analysis
of Language Use in Advertisements
Noriko Yabuki-Soh
Introduction
It has been nearly a quarter of a century since Tanaka (1994) examined the language of advertisements andexplored how women are specifically portrayed in the British and Japanese media. Dyer (1982), whoinvestigated advertising communications in the early 1980s, stated that advertisers are almost always men, andthat their target audience tends to be women. Tanaka observed that this trend remained the common situationin Britain and Japan during the 1990s. Through her analysis of data, Tanaka concluded that the image of theideal woman in both cultures was covertly manipulated by the advertisements’ creators. Two decades later,
statistics (JMPA) show that in 2010, 35 percent of advertising industry workers in Japan were women. Japan
has been experiencing some social and political movement in terms of the improvement of women’s rights.
However, has the use of covertly manipulated images of women in advertising that Tanaka observed in the
1990s changed since then? The present study investigates the language used in advertisements that portray thedesirable women found in the specific medium that appears to continuously attract young women in presentday Japan: women’s magazines.

Advertising Language
Relevance Theory and “Covert Communication”
In their Relevance Theory, Sperber and Wilson suggest that relevance is the key to human cognition.
According to their Principles of Relevance, “human cognition tends to be geared to the maximisation of
relevance,” and “every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal
relevance” (1995, 260). In her interpretation of Relevance Theory, Tanaka (1994) indicates that it is people’s
thoughts that are communicated when they try to achieve optimal relevance, and that the ultimate goal ofcommunication is to alter the hearer’s thoughts. In order to reach this goal, a communicator attempts to change
the cognitive environment of a hearer. Tanaka goes on to say that thoughts take the form of sets of assumptions
that hearers are capable of believing and entertaining. In the context of advertising communications, theultimate goal of advertisers is to change the thinking of uninterested customers and make them buy theirproducts or services.
According to Crystal and Davy (1983), there are two main functions in advertising: informing andpersuading. In the case of commercial advertising, the importance of persuasion exceeds that of information(Packard 1981). The advertisers’ task is to “persuade” their audience to buy their products or services, rather
than merely “inform” them of their products or services. In order for advertisers to catch their audience’s
23

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Images of Japanese Women: An Analysis of Language Use in Advertisements

attention and make them remember their products or services, certain strategies need to be employed in theirlanguage use. Bencherif and Tanaka (1987) note the effectiveness of a covert form of information transmission.
They observe that, as opposed to ostensive communication in which the speaker intends to alter the mutual
cognitive environment of the speaker and the hearer, covert communication is a case of communication inwhich the speaker intends to alter the hearer’s cognitive environment without making such intention mutually
manifest. Thus, the most economical means of communicating the speaker’s thought is to speak not literally
but “loosely,” and a covert form of information transmission is often more effective than an overt form. By
employing a covert form of communication, advertisers can make their audience forget that they are trying tosell them something and, more importantly, they can also avoid taking responsibility for the social consequencesthat may arise out of certain implications made in the advertisements, as shown in the following section.

Language and Images of Japanese Women in Advertisements
As part of her work on the analysis of language use in advertisements in Britain and Japan, Tanaka (1994)
takes a close look at the use of puns and metaphors in advertisements from the viewpoint of Relevance Theory.
In the case of puns, two or more interpretations are intentionally triggered by the creator of a pun, but theaudience rejects the most accessible interpretations in search of a more acceptable interpretation. As for the useof metaphors, the audience is invited to see resemblances between the promoted product or service and theobject or property featured in the metaphor. According to Tanaka, puns and metaphors thus require greater
processing effort than straightforward utterances and, as a result, they achieve “optimal relevance” because they
attract and retain the audience’s attention. Moreover, Tanaka observes that, by using covertly presented puns
and metaphors, advertisers could avoid taking responsibility for certain social consequences. For instance, when
the second interpretation to be recovered from a pun involves sexual innuendo, or when the weakly
communicated metaphor represents the notion of snobbery, advertisers can escape responsibility for any
negative social reactions that might emanate from the public, since the responsibility falls on the audience who
reaches such assumptions.
Tanaka also shows in her work how the meanings of certain key words and concepts are extended and alteredin advertisements that target women. She finds specifically that three words – intelligence, individualism, andfeminism – are frequently used in relation to women in advertising, and that these words are used in ways that
go beyond their standard meanings. Examples for each of those words analyzed by Tanaka are shown in (1),(2), and (3), respectively.
(1) 知的で上品なシルクブラウス。
intelligent-COP noble-COP silk blouse
An intelligent and noble silk blouse.

[Tokyo Blouse](2) 人生を個性的に楽しむ女性たちのために。
life-ACC individualistic-ADV enjoy woman-PL of sake for
For women who enjoy their life in an individual style.

[Guccini](3) 都市ガスってフェミニストね。
City gas-COMP feminist FP
City gas is a feminist, isn’t it?

[Tokyo Gas]

(Tanaka 1994, 110, 119, 126)
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Images of Japanese Women: An Analysis of Language Use in Advertisements

As represented in (1), Tanaka observes that such words as chisei “intelligence” and chiteki “intelligent,” whenapplied to women, tend to be employed in an extremely restricted and strange way, where intelligence indicates
one’s appearance rather than mental capacity. The example shown in (2), which roughly translates into “For
women who enjoy their life in an individual style,” reflects the association of individualism with fashion. Here,individualism means buying certain kitchen products from Italy, which is a country that in Japan is regarded asa producer of high quality fashion goods. The example in (3), “City Gas is a feminist, isn’t it?” is a well-known
advertising caption that was created in the early 1980s. This phrase was used in a series of Tokyo Gas
advertisements that promoted various devices that could be used to prevent gas leaks, and it was so successfulthat it won the prestigious Asahi Advertising Prize in 1984. This specific advertisement came with an illustrationthat depicted a woman who is obviously in a kitchen, wearing an apron and drying a dish with a dishcloth.
According to Tanaka,… the company is clearly being described as “feminist” on the ground that it has come up with thesevarious ingenious devices in order to help women with their work in the kitchen. The use of the particle
ne marks the utterance as feminine. The audience is encouraged to imagine a woman’s voice praising thecompany for improvements in gas equipment, which help women with their household duties and maketheir lives safer. The word feminisuto is apparently used to laud a desirable quality in men, in that thecompany is male dominated (Tanaka 1994, 127).
Through her analysis of data based on Relevance Theory, Tanaka concluded that despite the frequent useof words such as intelligence and individualism, which might on the surface indicate new images of women, acloser examination revealed the reinforcement of traditional roles for women. She suggested that these imagesof ideal women were covertly manipulated by advertisers.
Considering the recent improvements in women’s status in Japan, are such images of women found in thecurrent media different in any way? Based on Tanaka’s (1994) framework, the present study examines thelanguage used in the media that promotes various products aimed at young women in present-day Japan.

The Study
Data
Data were collected from advertisements for clothing and fashion-related items that appeared in five popular
women’s magazines published in Japan in August and September of 2017. Table 1 shows the publisher, chief
editor, and spring circulation of each magazine.
Magazine

Publisher

Chief Editor

April-June 2017 Circulation

CanCam

Shogakukan

Kaoru Shiotani

128,333

JJ

Kobunsha

Sayaka Hara

127,767

MORE

Shueisha

Rikako Tawara

190,000

non-noShueisha

Wataru Kobayashi

183,333

Ray

Shufunotomosha

Sayaka Tokida

80,400

Table 1. Women’s magazines used for data collection25Noriko Yabuki-Soh

Images of Japanese Women: An Analysis of Language Use in Advertisements

Targeted readers of these magazines are women in their twenties. Judging from their first names, all of thechief editors, except for the one for non-no, appear to be women.
Besides the authentic advertisements for products and companies that sell clothing, perfume, and cosmetics(see Fig. 1a), women’s magazines often use up one or two pages at a time in their main texts to introduce specificproducts or companies of the month, or provide fashion-related advice using different products together withthe company names and prices (see Fig. 1b). At the end of each issue there is a long list of distributors of those
products where readers can find company names and store locations. The language found in such texts that wasused to promote specific products was therefore included in the data. Some specific linguistic devices employedin those advertisements were identified and analyzed based on Tanaka (1994).
Results
 PunsFirst, the use of puns in the advertisements, which was the major linguistic device discussed in Tanaka(1994), was examined. A pun is defined as “the usually humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest two
or more of its meanings or the meaning of another word similar in sound” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Many
examples of puns such as “Change for Good” [UNICEF] and “でっかいどお。北海道 Dekkaidoo. Hokkaido” [AllNippon Airways] are found in everyday life, including in advertisements. According to Tanaka, puns are oneof the most common forms of wordplay.

(a)

(b)

Figure 1. Sample advertisements

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Images of Japanese Women: An Analysis of Language Use in Advertisements

However, in the case of women’s magazines, the use of puns was found to be extremely rare. Example (4)shows a pun that is used for the name of a skin care product (pore cleanser):(4) CARE-NAケア
care-COP/pores care[non-no]“Care-na,” obviously a made-up Japanese adjectival noun, sounds like ke-ana, pores, and it is written inromanized characters. This is followed by another instance of the word “care” in Katakana. It is a case of punsthat involve both English and Japanese words. It appears to be quite a brilliant way to convey two meanings in
one package without showing the word ke-ana in Kanji, which would not be very appealing to young women.
This was the only case of puns found in the advertisements examined. Tanaka (1994) observes that puns are
generally “assumed to have a low intellectual status” (59), and that might be the reason for their infrequentappearance in women’s magazines.
 Metaphors

According to Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams, and Hummel, a definition of metaphor is “[n]onliteral, suggestive
meaning in which an expression that designates one thing is used implicitly to mean something else, e.g., Thenight has a thousand eyes, to mean ‘One may be unknowingly observed at night’” (2013, 660). Metaphors are
similar to puns, but according to Tanaka (1994), a pun normally includes two or more “chunks” of information
where contextual effects are strongly communicated, whereas a metaphor tends to include a single expression
with a range of weak implications. In comparison to puns, far more cases of metaphors were found in theadvertisements that were examined. The first set of examples is presented in (5).
(5) やっぱり黒が、いちばん無敵！
after all black-NOM most invincible
After all, black is the most invincible!

[MORE ]

目元から攻略せよ！
around the eyes-from conquer-IMPERATIVE
Attack from around the eyes!

[Ray ]

秋、オトナで攻めるならモノトーンスタイルが◎。

[Ray ]

autumn mature-by attack-if monotone style-NOM good
In autumn, attack with maturity; monotone style is the answer.
チャーミングなドット柄を味方に。
Charming-COP dot pattern-ACC ally-for
Make the charming dot pattern your ally.

[CanCam ]夏ならではのリゾート柄で攻める！
summer-if-COP-TOP-GEN resort pattern-by attack
Attack with the resort pattern that is only (suitable) for summer!

[CanCam ]コスメお試し隊
cosmetics trial squad[CanCam ]27

Noriko Yabuki-Soh

Images of Japanese Women: An Analysis of Language Use in Advertisements

The cosmetics trial squad.
CARE-NAケアの救世主降臨！
[product name]-GEN saviour descendYour saviour, CARE-NA Care, has descended!

[non-no]One strong tendency found in these metaphorical expressions is to treat fashion as war. Along with the warrelated vocabulary such as muteki “invincible” and semeru “attack,” sentences often end with a noun or animperative form of a verb that is occasionally accompanied by an exclamation mark. As a result, the tone ofvoice in each message is surprisingly masculine, as if it is coming from a comrade in a battlefield. It appears thatthe reader is encouraged to see resemblances between fashion and war, something exciting and worth fightingfor.
Another set of examples is shown in (6).
(6) ボルドー＆ネイビーのおしゃれなとり入れ術
Bordeaux & navy-GEN fashionable accommodating technique
A technique for fashionably accommodating Bordeaux and navy.

[Ray ]

目線UPアイテムで「スタイル◎」なコーデに! [ JJ]
gaze up item-by style correct-COP coordination-to(Achieve) correct style coordination with “gaze up” items!

[ JJ ]

晩夏はイレヘムが正解！
late summer-TOP irregular hem-NOM correct answer
In late summer, irregular hems are the correct answer!

[Ray ]

着こなしRule
outfit rule
Outfit rules.

[Ray ]

足元におしゃれを仕込むならニュアンスソックスで決まり
feet-to fashion-ACC train-if nuance socks-with decided
If you are going to acquire fashion around your feet, nuanced socks will make it.

[non-no]

８月の買って正解服！
August-GEN buy-GER correct answer clothing
The right clothing to buy in August!

[MORE ]

コーディネート マンネリ問題
coordination mannerism problem
Coordinating mannerism problems.

[MORE ]

Another trend found in these metaphors is to treat fashion as an important lesson where you “learn” and“master” special skills or techniques, and there are “rules” to follow and “correct answers” to problems. Similar
to the metaphoric expressions related to war, words that indicate important lessons tend to appear as a predicate
of a sentence, often accompanied by an exclamation mark. The tone of voice appears to be that of a senior
member of a club or school, a senpai, who is giving the reader a piece of important advice on fashion.
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Images of Japanese Women: An Analysis of Language Use in Advertisements

In the case of both examples, metaphors are used to catch the reader’s attention and to require her to makeimaginative effort to comprehend each caption and eventually remember the products they promote.
 Borrowing and Variation

There are other linguistic devices that were found to be covertly employed in the language of advertisementsin these magazines. One of them is borrowing, which is defined as “the incorporation of a loan word from one
language into another (e.g., English borrowed buoy from Dutch)” (Fromkin et al 2013, 645). As Daulton
observes, most of the loanwords “are first introduced to the Japanese public by a very small number ofindividuals with most Japanese people having never heard or read the word before, and having no role to playin its borrowing” (2004, 285), and media personnel and copywriters are typically some of the active borrowers(Loveday 1996, 103). Loanwords in Japanese, especially those represented in Katakana, derive mainly fromEnglish words and are mostly used as nouns. When words are borrowed from another language into Japanese,a couple of linguistic changes can be observed. A phonological change such as from [θri] to [sɯɾi:] is a common
linguistic change, and sometimes a categorical change can occur as well, such as from the adjective “chic” to theadjectival noun shikku-na, or from the noun “Google” to the verb gugu-ru.
The language used in the advertisements for young women is full of loanwords. Some examples are presentedin (7).
(7) カジュアルだけど女性らしい黒のオープンショルダーブラウス。
casual-COP but feminine black-GEN open shoulder blouse
Casual yet feminine black open-shoulder blouse.

[CanCam ]大人なサマートーンをまとえばドラマティックな夏になりそう♥
mature summer tone-ACC wear-if dramatic summer become-seem
If we wear a mature summer tone, we can anticipate a dramatic summer.

[CanCam ]MIU MIU … レディなバッグたち
MIU MIU …lady-COP bag-PL
Lady-like bags.

[Ray ]

秋のはじめには“軽やかな”トップスがマスト！
autumn-GEN beginning-at-TOP “light”-COP tops-NOM must
For the beginning of autumn, (you) must (wear) “light” tops!

[Ray ]

ギンガムチェックはおしゃれガールのマストハブ！
gingham check-TOP fashionable girl-GEN must have
Gingham check is (something that) fashionable girls must have!

[CanCam ]今すぐ、トレンドボトムをGETしなくちゃ！
right now, trend bottom-ACC get must do
You should get trend bottoms right now!

[CanCam ]大ぶりなイヤーアクセでフェミニ度UP。
large-size ear accessory-with feminine-degree up.
Your degree of femininity (goes) up with large earrings.

[MORE ]

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Noriko Yabuki-Soh

Images of Japanese Women: An Analysis of Language Use in Advertisements

マニッシュなグレンチェックをMIXしておしゃれ度UP
mannish-COP Glen check-ACC mix do-GER fashion-degree up.
Your degree of fashion (goes) up if you mix (something with) mannish Glen check.

[non-no]

オンオフ使える・・・プチプラ服。
on off can use … petit price clothing
Petit price clothing that you can use on and off.

[MORE ]

Many of the loanwords are regular nouns, but a number of English adjectives (e.g., “casual,” “mannish”) areborrowed and changed into adjectival nouns (e.g., kajuaru-da, manisshu-na). Interestingly, a non-canonicalcategorical change—for instance, from the noun “lady” to the adjectival noun redii-na—is also observed in theadvertisements. Such categorical change is normally unacceptable in other contexts. In the same example, theplural form of the noun baggu “bag” appears as baggu-tachi, with the suffix -tachi that is normally attached tonouns that describe people. A number of examples of masuto and even masuto habu, which obviously came fromthe English “must” and “must have,” are also observed. These are used as a predicate of a sentence, which, again,
is normally unacceptable. English words such as GET, UP, and MIX are occasionally written in the upper-casealphabet. The last example, on-ofu “on-off” and puchi-pura “petit price,” sounds like wordplay. These uniqueways of using such loanwords appear to catch and hold the reader’s attention.
In addition to the use of loanwords as a whole, clipping of loanwords is often observed in the advertisements.
Clipping is a type of word formation that is defined as “the deletion of some part of a longer word to give ashorter word with the same meaning, e.g., phone from telephone” (Fromkin et al 2013, 647). Clipping can beused as a device to deliver the meaning of a word in an efficient way. There are two types of clipping in Japanese:
one is to leave out some parts of the words, as in changing suupaa maaketto “super market” to suupaa, and theother is to take the first two moras of each composite, as in changing rimooto kontorooru “remote control” torimokon. Examples of clipping found in the advertisements are shown in (8).
(8) アクセ ← アクセサリー ← accessory
イレヘム ← イレギュラーヘム ← irregular hems
エステ ← エステティック ← esthétique
キャミ ← キャミソール ← camisole
コスメ ← コスメティック ← cosmetics
コーデ ← コーディネーション ← coordination
コラボ ← コラボレーション ← collaboration
ジャンスカ ← ジャンパースカート ← jumper skirt
デニスカ ← デニムスカート ← denim skirt
フェミショル ← フェミニンショルダー ← feminine shoulder
フォトジェ ← フォトジェニック ← photogenic
ヘビロテ ← ヘビーローテーション ← heavy rotationマリクヮ ← マリー・クヮント ← Mary Quant
ワンピ ← ワンピース ← one piece
As observed in many other contexts, clipping often results in three- to four-syllable words that can be found in
fashion-related advertisements as well, but many of them are seen exclusively in women’s magazines. Some ofthese words are easy to guess, but others could be a nonce (i.e., one-time) borrowing, and therefore quite
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Images of Japanese Women: An Analysis of Language Use in Advertisements

challenging for those who are not familiar with the terms. The readers of the magazines are required tofamiliarize themselves with such vocabulary in order to comprehend the content of the advertisements.
 Compounding

Compounding, a word formation process in which two or more words are combined, is another linguistic
phenomenon often observed in the advertisements examined. There are mainly three types of compounds inJapanese: native (e.g., nomi-mizu “drinking water”), Sino-Japanese (booeki-gaisha “trading company”), andhybrid (anzen-pin “safety pin”) compounds. A wide range of unique compounding is found in theadvertisements for young women, as seen in (9).
(9) 甘カッコいい ama kakkoii “sweet-cool”[ JJ ]

新レディカジュアル shin redii kajuaru “new-lady-casual”[ JJ ]

フェミニンカジュアル feminin kajuaru “feminine-casual”[non-no]オトナっぽ可愛い otonappo kawaii “mature-ish cute”[Ray ]

シンプル可愛い simpuru kawaii “simple-cute”[MORE ]

ラフ可愛く

rafu kawaiku “rough-cute”[Ray ]

大人ガーリーotona gaarii “mature-girly”[non-no]大人かわいくotona kawaiku “mature-cute”[CanCam ]Hybrid compounding is commonly observed in these examples, which makes the words stand out. Close
examination of the compounded elements and meanings of these examples indicates that they often include a
combination of two semantically opposing members—such as amai “sweet” and kakkoii “cool” or redii “ladylike” and kajuaru “casual.” The message of each example appears to be “You can be cool but need to keep yoursweetness,” or “Be casual, but stay lady-like at the same time.” A combination of otona “mature” and kawaii“cute” also repeatedly appears in different advertisements in different magazines. The sentence shown in (10) is
a caption that was used to promote a specific fashion line in one of the magazines.
(10) “可愛い”と “大人” を両立させた親近感スタイルに大注目！
“cute” and “mature”-ACC compatible-CAUS-PASS close feeling style-to attention!

This sentence, which roughly translates into “Pay extra attention to the intimate style that has it both ways with‘cute’ and ‘mature’!” appears to explain the background of using the compounding of two antonymous words.
 Sentence-final particles

Finally, the use of sentence-final particles such as ka, ne, and yo used in the advertisements was examined.
Particles or postpositional markers in Japanese are used to represent case relationship or functions similar to
English prepositions, but when positioned after sentence-final verbs, they also represent the speaker’s attitude31Noriko Yabuki-Soh

Images of Japanese Women: An Analysis of Language Use in Advertisements

toward the content of the sentence (Kuno 1973, 5). Examples of sentence-final particles found in theadvertisements are shown in (11).
(11) フォトジェ服は新宿ミロードで見つかるよphotogenic clothes-TOP Shinjuku Mylord-at be found-FP
You can find (these) photogenic clothes at Shinjuku Mylord!

[non-no]

やっぱりピンク、LOVEだよね？
as expected pink love-COP-FP-FP?
As expected, pink is love, isn’t it?

[Ray ]

今年の秋は断然くすみピンクだよね♥
this year-GEN autumn-TOP definitely dusky-pink-COP-FP-FP
As for this year’s autumn, dusky pink will definitely do, won’t it?

[CanCam]マリクヮの新スキンケアが季節の変わり目にイイらしいゾ!?
[non-no]Mary Quant-GEN new skin care-NOM season-GEN change-for good appear-FP
It appears that Mary Quant’s new skin care is good for the change of seasons, I tell you!
These sentence-final particles used in advertisements directed at young women, the readers of the magazines,
were found to be quite masculine. Yo was a common one that is directly attached to the verb or copula. The
last example uses zo, which is supposedly a very masculine-sounding particle, but unlike Tanaka’s example ofTokyo Gasu tte feminisuto ne “City Gas is a feminist, isn’t it?” there were no examples of ne (which makes thesentence sound very feminine) directly attached to the noun. A closer examination of this “masculine-sounding”
use of particles reveals that they are often accompanied by an exclamation mark or a heart-shaped icon. The
particle zo is written in Katakana. Because of these additional devices, the tone of voice appears to become more
intimate, friendly, and playful.
Discussion
The language used for promoting specific clothing and fashion-related products in the women’s magazines
appears to employ covert communication strategies that are aimed at achieving “optimal relevance.” A readerof these magazines, when encountering a variety of metaphoric expressions or carefully tailored loanwords andcompound words in the advertisements, will likely make a processing effort to understand the message that theadvertisers intend to convey. If the advertisers are successful in altering the reader’s thoughts (i.e., the reader
decides to buy the products), the ultimate goal of the communication is achieved.
In the close community of women’s magazines, the advertisers or editors provide their readers with a unique
set of vocabulary and expressions and encourage them to be like the role models they present by purchasing the
products they recommend. Unlike Tanaka’s (1994) observations back in the 1990s on the language use createdin the male-dominant advertising industry, the voices of advertisers and editors of these magazines in presentday Japan sound like those of close and reliable comrades or senpai. The creators of those advertisements appear
to promote an amicable relationship between the advertiser/editor and audience by providing encouragement
and useful advice in the context of “fashion as war or life lesson,” yet the messages that they convey do not gomuch beyond the traditional qualities expected from women. The ideal woman portrayed in those
advertisements is someone who is “mature but still cute,” or “cool and yet feminine.”32

Noriko Yabuki-Soh

Images of Japanese Women: An Analysis of Language Use in Advertisements

Conclusion
After analyzing the data she found in advertisements targeted at women, Tanaka concluded that “Japanesesociety seems to have coped with potential threats from the introduction of concepts such as individualism andfeminism by interpreting them against the background of traditional values, or by removing some of thecontextual implications attached to the concept which contradict conventional ideas” (1994, 131). The resultsof the present study, which took place 23 years after Tanaka’s study, also showed that, despite the increasing
number of women involved in the creation of advertisements, images of the ideal woman in advertising inpresent-day Japan are largely defined as staying “cute” or “feminine” rather than becoming “intelligent” or“liberated,” although the language used in those advertisements is covertly chosen and employed in ways that
do not overemphasize the advertisers’ intentions. In conclusion, the study suggests that consumers could beheavily influenced in their daily lives by these images of women, and that language use in such media reflects
uncertainty with regard to positive change occurring in the lives of young Japanese women in the near future.

References
Bencherif, S., and K. Tanaka. 1987. “Covert Forms of Communication.” Paper presented at the Autumn Meeting of the
Linguistic Association of Great Britain. Bradford, UK.
Crystal, D., and D. Davy. 1983. Investigating English Style. Harlow, UK: Longman.
Daulton, F. E. 2004. “The Creation and Comprehension of English Loanwords in the Japanese Media.” Journal ofMultilingual and Multicultural Development, 25: 285-296.
Dyer, G. 1982. Advertising as Communication Studies. London: Methuen.
Fromkin, V., R. Rodman, N. Hyams, and K. M. Hummel. 2013. An Introduction to Language. 4th edition. Toronto:
Nelson Education.
JMPA （一般社団法人・日本雑誌協会). “Josei yangu insatsu busū kōhyō (女性ヤング誌印刷部数公表).” http://www.jmagazine.or.jp/magadata/?module=list&action=list.
Kuno, S. 1973. The Structure of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Loveday, L. 1996. Language Contact in Japan. New York: Oxford Press.
Packard, V. 1981. The Hidden Persuaders. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin.
Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary Online, s.v. "pun," https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pun.
Sperber, D., and D. Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tanaka, K. 1994. Advertising Language: A Pragmatic Approach to Advertisements in Britain and Japan. London:
Routledge.

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Tokugawa’s Environmental Philosophy
Jay Goulding
Introduction
In respect to Tokugawa scholarship, much appears on the neo-Confucian debates of Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠
(1666-1728) and Ito Jinsai 伊藤仁斎 (1627-1705). Much revolves around the incidents of Chūshingura 忠臣藏,the Treasury of Loyal Retainers (1701-1703). Much centres on the innovations of culture from the love storiesof Chikamatsu Monzaemon 近松門左衛門 (1653-1725) to the townsfolk tales of Saikaku Ihara 井原西鶴 (16421693) to the Buddhist poetry of Bashō 松尾芭蕉 (1644-1694) to the ukiyo-e 浮世絵 of Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾
北斎 (1760-1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重 (1797-1858). Noted scholars include Motoori Norinaga
本居宣長 (1730-1801), a progenitor of language and mythology as well as the tandem of Kaibara Ekken 貝原益
軒 (1630-1714) and Ishida Baigan 石田梅岩 (1685-1744), whose Daoist-inspired chōningaku 町人學 (townsfolk
learning) serves as an ethical creed for daily commerce (see Goulding 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2007,2008a, 2011, 2016a, 2016b).
Ironically, little attention goes to Tokugawa’s environmental achievements. In addition to accomplishments
in culture and philosophy, one of Tokugawa’s hidden gems is its ability to recycle. From tinkers to umbrella
sellers to used barrel buyers, Tokugawa generates an early form of a sustainable society. Beginning with the richcultural backdrop of Tokugawa as described above, the paper will review the findings of Ishikawa Eisuke 石川
英輔 (1933- ), an expert on Edo 江戸 ecology. The impact of Shinto, Buddhism and Confucianism are importantfor environmental policies in Tokugawa. Finally, the paper will revisit a fascinating argument by Watsuji
Tetsurō 和辻哲郎 (1889-1960) on the contrast between East Asian and Western civilizational views in Climate
and Culture (Fūdo 風土, 1935), a unique study influenced by Watsuji’s tour of Europe, and his detailed analysisof the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).

Ishikawa Eisuke
In Carin Holroyd and Ken Coates’ Japan in the Age of Globalization, I write about Edo’s ability to adapt for
the future.
The idea of Tokugawa [1603-1868] globalization might at first appear quite contradictory… Japan of the
Edo Period is not completely isolationist. Its philosophy is one of innovation, openness andaccommodation to many cultures. Sakoku [鎖国 “national isolation”] is a brilliant strategy which restricts
the flow of foreigners and foreign trading centers in Japan but does not close off Japan to the world. Its
purpose is to preserve traditions of Japanese civilization while engaging with European and Asian cultures.
By 1700, the Dutch and Chinese are allowed to trade exclusively at the port of Nagasaki. The impact of
this policy results in increasing the volume of trade. The restricted flow enhances interest in Japan and at
the same time slows the political and religious positions of Europeans (Jansen 1992, 35–41). The internal
struggles in Japan over strategies for dealing with the rest of the world are not without heated debate. At
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the end of the Ashikaga Shogun, many samurai (侍), weary from long periods of clan warfare are opposedto the development of any types of global policies. As to the fate of the newly constructed towns, folklore
has it that the famous warlord Oda Nobunaga (織田信長 1534-1582) announced: “If the canary does not
sing, kill him.” By this, he means that if the towns are to fail, stop them up immediately. Toyotomi
Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉 1536-1598) responds: “If the canary does not sing, make him.” By this, he meansthat the towns would need martial law in order to survive. Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康 1543-1616)
concludes: “If the canary does not sing, wait until he does.” By this, he means to give the towns a chanceover a period of time. By the end of the sixteenth century Tokugawa’s words of tolerance and delay become
the blueprint for the Edo Period that is much in need of new commercial interactions. The town culturesof Edo, Osaka and Kyoto see an influx of European and Asian traders. This culture is known as ukiyo (浮世 The Floating World) that includes teahouses, baths, brothels and theatres. Generating out of the
Floating World towns are paintings, poetry, literature, bunraku (文楽 puppet plays) and kabuki (歌舞伎)theatre that are both popular amongst the townsfolk and in turn exported to an inquisitive Europe. Despite
sakoku, Chinese junks continue to arrive at a welcoming Nagasaki port. Smuggling and offshore unloading
are common. Marius Jansen, a renowned historian, argues against Tokugawa’s false image of isolation
while instead concentrating on its true indebtedness to global relations. He writes: “Chinese influence rose
to a peak in the Tokugawa years. The rising tide of literacy meant that more Japanese could read and write
Chinese. The production of poetry in Chinese, something expected of every educated person, was so greatthat it may have exceeded the amount of verse composed in Japanese” (Jansen 1992, 4). Various
Chinatowns populate the coast from the Kii peninsula to Kyushu and in Yamaguchi, Matsuyama, Kawagoe
and Odawara (Jansen 1992, 7). In 1853, Matthew Perry’s “black ships” arrive in Japan from the UnitedStates of America, followed in 1856 by Townsend Harris, the first American consul. The resulting tradetreaties seem to end Tokugawa’s official seclusion policy. (Goulding 2011, 16-17)
By 1720, the overall population is 30 million with Edo reaching 1 million. In 1801, Edo is the largest cityin the world with London at 860,000. Unlike today’s reliance on imports for food, wood products, and energy,
Japan in the Edo Period is self-reliant. Because of scarcity, Edo made particularly good use of limited resourcesof coal and ash with many craftspeople making use of recycling for everyday products. Temple schools forcommoners would own their own books. One single arithmetic schoolbook was used for over 100 years.
The following is Ishikawa Eisuke’s list of daily examples of recycling in Tokugawa as outlined in the Japanfor a Sustainable Society Newsletter (2003):
•

•

•

•

Tinker (repairers of metal products)
Tinkers repaired old pans, kettles, and pots, even those rendered useless by holes in the bottom. They
had special techniques to use bellows to raise the temperature of charcoal fires and repair holes using
other metal pieces or by welding.
Ceramics repairer
These specialized craftsmen glued broken pieces of ceramics with starch extracted from sticky rice andheated for coagulation.
Truss hoop repairer
Until 40 to 50 years ago, people usually used wooden tubs and barrels to store liquids. Wooden tubs
and barrels were made of wooden slats fastened by bamboo hoops. When the hoops aged and broke orwarped, the craftsmen fixed the tubs and barrels with new bamboo fasteners. There were many otherkinds of specialized craftsmen to repair broken items, including paper lanterns and locks, replenish
vermilion inkpads, and refurbish old Japanese wooden footwear, mills, and mirrors, to name a few…
Used-paper buyers
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•

•

•

•

•

•
•

•

Tokugawa’s Environmental Philosophy

These buyers bought old shopkeepers’ books, sorted and sold them to paper makers. In those days,
Japanese paper (washi) was made of long fibres of over 10 mm, and specialized paper makers bought
and blended various kinds of used paper to make a wide range of recycled paper, from bathroom tissue
to printing paper.
Used-paper collectors
Some collectors were also specialized in used paper, but didn’t have the financial resources to buy it.
Instead, they picked up and collected trash paper by walking around the town and sold it to used-paper
warehouses to get daily cash income.
Used-clothes dealers
Until the end of Edo Period, clothes were more precious and expensive than today since all clothes at
the time were hand-woven. It is said that there were about 4,000 old clothes dealers in the city of Edo.
Used-umbrella rib buyers
Umbrellas in the Edo Period were made of bamboo ribs with paper pasted on. Used-umbrella rib buyersbought and collected old umbrellas and sold them to specialized warehouses. At the warehouses workers
removed oiled paper from the ribs and repaired the rib structures, and then other workers were
contracted to paste new oiled-paper onto the ribs to make new umbrellas. Incidentally, the oiled paper
from used umbrellas was removed and sold as packaging material.
Used-barrel buyers
When barrels became empty, specialized traders bought, collected, and sold them to specialized
warehouses. Japan today has private collection systems for beer and sake (Japanese rice wine) bottles,
and collection/recycling ratios are high. Some of today’s used-bottle dealers are descendants of those
who conducted this business in the Edo Period.
Singing collectors
Some traders walked around the town, singing, “let’s exchange, let’s exchange,” and offered small toysand candies to children in return for old nails and other metal pieces the children found while playing.
Candle wax buyers
Wax candles were a precious commodity. Specialized buyers collected the drippings from lit candles.
Ash buyers
Ash is a natural byproduct of fuelwood burning. During the Edo Period, buyers collected ash and soldit to farmers as fertilizer. Ordinary houses had an ash box, and public bathhouses and larger shops an“ash hut” for storage until buyers came by. Professor Takeo Koizumi, of the Tokyo University ofAgriculture, wrote in his “Cultural History of Ash” (“Hai no bunkashi”) that although other cultures in
the world also used ash, as far as his research shows, Japan is the only country where ash merchants buy
ash from the city for use in other parts of society.
Human waste dipper [scrounger, scouser]
Until around 1955, human waste (night soil) was the most important fertilizer source for farmers inJapan. In many parts of Europe, before construction of sewage lines, human waste was simply thrownfrom the window to the street below, and the plague occurred repeatedly due to bad hygiene conditions.
In contrast, in Japan human waste was treated as a valuable resource in those days. Farmers regularly
visited homes with whom they had contracts and paid money or offered vegetables they had grown, in
return for night soil to be used as fertilizer. As distribution channels became more established, specializednight soil warehouses and retailers emerged. Landlords with many tenants made good money from thenight soil produced on their premises. There are even stories of friction between landlords and tenants
about ownership of the night soil. Some farmers were very particular about their sources of fertilizer.
For example, certain areas were regarded as sources of highly-coveted night soil for growing exclusive
brands of Japanese tea. German chemist Justus von Liebig, often described as the father of modern
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Tokugawa’s Environmental Philosophy

agricultural chemistry, praised use of night soil as fertilizer, saying that it is an agricultural practicewithout peer in its ability to keep cropland fertile forever and increase productivity in proportion to
population increases. And there is a record that the first Westerner who saw the town of Edo wasshocked, having never seen such a clean city.
Ishikawa Eisuke, a writer and lecturer at Musashino Art University (Musashino Bijutsu Daigaku 武蔵野美術大学) (whose famous ancestor was Tokugawa Ieyasu’s 徳川 家康 [1543-1616] senior retainer) explains that muchof Edo society is run by solar energy. Plants transform solar energy into branches, wood, stems, and fruit. Edosociety is a sustainable society in which almost everything needed for living (food, clothing, and shelter) is
provided by solar energy of the past two or three years (Ishikawa 2000). Up until 1887, all lighting in Japancame from paper-made lanterns and wax candles using oil and wax. Oil for lighting came from sesame seeds,
camellia, rapeseeds, and cottonseeds alongwith whale and sardine oil. Even the oil cakeresidue after extraction becomes nitrogen
fertilizer. Wax is made by squeezing the resin
from sumac nuts. In short, all straw was used
and recycled back to the earth or used tomake braided hats, straw raincoats andsandals, and straw bags for rice. Farmers also
used straw to feed cattle and horses and cover
feedlots. In the area of shelter, straw was acommon building material for outside andinside the house, including the roof, tatami 畳mats and clay walls. Silk, cotton, and hemp
are used for clothes. Paper was made of thebark of kōzo 楮 trees. For warmth, charcoal
made from wood is used in hibachi 火鉢
braziers and kotatsu 炬燵 (a fireplace withcoverlet) (Ishikawa 2000).
Transportation in Tokugawa usuallymeans environmentally friendly cows haulingwagons or carts full of rice and vegetables
alongside peasant porters wearing yukatas 浴
衣 (light cotton kimonos) with carryingpoles, assisted by pack animals such as horses.
The haiku 俳 and senryū 川柳 (“river willow”)
poet and Buddhist monk Kobayashi Issa 小林
一茶 (1763 –1828) of the Jōdo Shinshū 浄土
真宗 (The True Essence of the Pure Land
Teaching) writes humorously of peasantsbowing before daimyō 大名 lords riding by
Figure 1. Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重 (1797-1858)
and finding unexpected fortune on the
Yotsuya Naito-Shinjuku 四ツ谷内藤新宿
ground in the shape of horse droppings to be
Source: 1857 series “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” (Meisho Edo
hyakkei 名所江戸百景). http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/
recycled to nearby farmers for a good price
196757/print(see Figure 1).

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陽炎や馬糞も銭に成にけり

kageroo ya ma-guso mo zeni ni nari ni keri
heat shimmers—
even horse dung
becomes money
Tr. David Lanoue (2013)
Although farmers would exchange money for excrement, they would also trade it for vegetables. As the cities
start expanding, greater demand befalls farmers. Hence, chronic fertilizer shortages lead to rising prices throughsupply and demand.
The pioneering anime アニメ director Miyazaki Hayao 宮崎駿 gears his most famous film Princess Mononoke(mononoke hime 物の怪姫) towards a pressing ecological statement (Goulding 2001, 2006a, 2006b, 2016a).
Miyazaki was captivated with the 14th to 16th centuries, a time of war where forests were depleted and iron ore
was smelted in massive quantities (see McCarthy 1999, 185). In the film, Miyazaki reminds audiences of agentler world with his idyllic return to the plush forests populated by tree spirit kodama 木魂 and ruled over by
a Shinto deer god:
Mononoke [物の怪] is a ghost term popular in anime [アニメ], referring to a pestilence wielding entity.
[There are a hundred terms in Japanese for ghost]. It is as dangerous as kodama [木魂, 木靈 tree spirits, echo
dryads] are harmless. In this film, we see clans of boars, apes and wolves (metaphors for ninja [忍者]) as
kami [神] trying to preserve their sacred forest against the onslaught of Lady Eboshi’s [Eboshi Gozen エボ
シ御前] progress [iron ore smelting] and Lord Asano’s [Asano Naganori 淺野長矩] war. The latter is possiblya reference to Chūshingura [忠臣藏]. Miyazaki had once attempted an animation of the Heian period [平安時代 (794-1185)]. Eboshi’s medieval courtesan robes conjoined with a noble’s black hat [eboshi 帽子]
seem to leave traces of that project (McCarthy 1999, 193, 200). The Forest Spirit [Shishigami 鹿神] tries
to prevent peaceful forms from turning demonic but we see massive transformations of mitama [御靈](souls of the dead) as they battle the cruelty of humankind. The all precious iron pellet as a shintai [神体](receptacle for kami) becomes an instrument of harm. Even the sly Buddhist monk [Jiko-bō ジコ坊],
dawned in a bear’s skin, wants to possess it all. Recalling the ancient story of the Nihon Shoki [日本書紀](Chronicles of Japan), the monk is on a mission for the emperor who wants to capture the head of theNight Walker [Daidarabotchi ダイダラボッチ (yokai 妖怪 bewitching spectre)] as it transforms. The
treacherous monk gets more than he bargains for, just as the emperor does in the original story (Ross 1965,
39). The ecological and humanist themes fold the past into the present throughout Princess Mononoke
which was the top box-office draw in Japanese history [now Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no
Kamikakushi 千と千尋の神隠し)] (Goulding 2016a, 162-163).
In Mononoke, Prince Ashitaka’sアシタカ red elk, Yakul ヤックル (Yakkuru) acts to break the stereotype of
nameless samurai horses. A prototype of this creature emerges in Miyazaki’s early manga 漫画 of 1983, The
Journey of Shuna (Shuna no Tabi シュナの旅) (see McCarthy 1999, 192). If we trust in the divine words of
kotodama 言靈, Miyazaki’s Shintoesque name, Miya (宮 a Shinto shrine) and Hayao (駿 ‘spirited horse’ in its
Chinese etymology) might be the personal origin of his fascination (Goulding 2006b).

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Hōken Jīdai 封建時代
We might remember that the hardworking peasants are second only to samurai in the Tokugawa caste/classhierarchy of “spam”: samurai, peasants, artisans, merchants (Kassel 1996, 9-12). As Ishikawa relates:
A long time ago, when excrement was a precious fertilizer, it naturally belonged to the person who
produced it. Farmers used to buy excrement for cash or trade it for a comparable amount of vegetables.
Fertilizer shortages were a chronic problem during the Edo period. As the standard of living in cities
improved, surrounding villages needed an increasing amount of fertilizer. This resulted in further
shortages, and thus fertilizer prices were continually rising. Meanwhile, while inedible, harvested straw wasin great demand for various uses during the period. Realizing that straw was an important natural resource,
farmers chose to grow a particular type of rice that would produce a large amount of straw. In the Edo
Period, farmers were able to harvest rice that yielded about the same amount of straw in terms of weight.
Its greatest use was as fertilizer, with half of the amount produced used to make compost or barnyard
manure. About one third of straw produced was used as fuel. Straw burns easily and doesn't produce muchheat, but large amounts were sufficient for heating bath water or for boiling rice. When people needed
more heat, they often used straw as the kindling to start a stronger fire. The resulting straw ash was thenused as a high-quality potassium fertilizer. The remaining straw was used by farmers to make a wide variety
of straw products. They used these products at home or sold them to supplement their cash income. It is
no exaggeration to say that Japan in the Edo Period was full of straw products. About half of the men at
the time wore straw sandals. When moving to a new house, people usually wrapped their household goods
with straw mats, binding them with straw rope. Used straw products were burned in the cooking oven,which was found in every household, or used as fuel at public baths. Farmers and “ash traders” thenpurchased the ash. In this way, almost all of the nearly 10 million tons of rice and straw harvested every
year returned to the soil in some way or another. Carbon dioxide generated through fermentation or
combustion was absorbed by plants for photosynthesis and thus transformed back into living matter. Allof the energy required for this process was supplied by the sun. In other words, people in the Edo Period
didn't have to think about recycling. All they had to do was to live normally and the rice and straw they
produced (the key agricultural products) would end up back in the soil and sprout out again as riceseedlings next year. (2000, ch.4)
Heating sun water in a large bowl is a common Tokugawa practice. Gyouzui 行水 as open-air bathing or tub
bathing fits the bill for saving energy and fulfilling Shinto purification rituals. Unpaved roads are natural air
conditioners that are better than pebbled or asphalt paths, and wrapping onjaku 温石 (warm stones from a fire)in clothing is a neat body heater for cold winter nights. Craft guilds continually repair clothes, ceramics, metal
pots, and umbrellas in order to lengthen their life.
By 1700, the Shogunate halts deforestation with the Yamakawa Okite 山川掟 whereby money and labour
are invested into planting mountain trees. When Tokugawa children start reading elementary Chinese classics,
they learn the following: “A mountain without trees is of little worth however high it is, so is a big man without
wisdom” (Ishikawa 2000, ch.5).
As Ishikawa writes:
Japan in the Edo era had technologies to make it possible to mass-produce nishiki-e 錦絵 [“brocade
picture”], plate prints in multicolor. Nishiki-e is one of the most original art forms created by the Japanese.
Nishiki-e artwork was a creative commodity for the general public. It not only nurtured the Japanesepeople's sensitivity to art over the centuries, but also inspired French impressionists so much that its
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influence is still evident in today's visual art of the world. It was rare in those days to have a product where
so much value was added into one piece of paper that was being mass produced. However, because thewhole production process required only simple materials--paper and board and painting tools--the energy
consumption did not rise above the levels of solar energy obtained during the preceding few years. We callthis ability to rapidly create great value while best meeting consumer needs with only limited resources,
the “Nishiki-e Principle.” It is for certain this principle was the basis for leading a better-quality life while
only using scarce solar energy resources. All Nishiki-e materials, except for the blades of the woodblock
carving knives, were made from sustainable botanical resources. Other than the simple materials, only thedetailed work of human hands is required. The Japanese paper used for Nishiki-e were made from young
branches of paper mulberry matured in the preceding year or two at the most. Woodblocks were mainly
made from cherry wood and craftsman fully utilized this resource, by using both sides of woodblockboards. Except in the case where one whole side was one color, one woodblock would be carved for several
colors. It was typical to use only five woodblocks to print a Nishiki-e in ten colors. More interestingly,
professional craftsmen were hired specifically to shave used woodblock boards flat so that they could bereused over and over. Since the technology of Nishiki-e had made it possible to print complex colors andfigures easily, Nishiki-e became a popular local product of the Edo town, being also called “azuma-Nishikie” [吾妻錦絵] or simply, “edo-e.” [江戸絵]. As many Nishiki-e shops were built in several parts of Edo town
in the early 19th century, the Nishiki-e price fell down to an affordable 16 or 32 mon [文], often found inchildren's pocket money. (“Mon” is a monetary unit of the Edo Period. Sixteen mon is about U.S.$ 3-6.)
Just like today's children collect their favorite character goods, it appears that their Japanese counterpartsin the Edo era bought woodcut prints produced by their favorite artists such as Toyokuni [Utagawa
Toyokuni 歌川豊国; 1769-1825] or Kunisada [Utagawa Kunisada 歌川 国貞 1786–1865)] (popular Nishikie artists of the era). Those ordinary children who lived in the community flats along narrow streets wereplaying with picture cards created by artists who have become highly renowned and valued worldwide
today. (Ishikawa 2000, ch.8)
Today, the legendary frugality of Tokugawa spawns the mottainai 勿体ない ecological movement of “waste notwant not.” The origin of its eco-friendly battle cry shines way back on the Genpei War (Genpei kassen 源平合戦) (1180–1185) between the Taira (Heike 平家), and Minamoto 源 (Genji 源氏) clans during the late Heian(Heian jidai 平安時代) period, which results in the emergence of the Kamakura bakufu 鎌倉幕府 in 1192.
Without an author or a definitive place of publication (Shuppan chi fumei 出版地不明 [sine loco]), the Waseda
University Library 早稲田大学図書館 in Tokyo houses a spectacular copy of Genpei Seisuiki 源平盛衰記 (The Riseand Fall of The Genji and The Heike) (circa 1247) in 48 volumes, where the likely first instance of “mottainashi”
勿體ナシ (勿體無) appears in volume 36 on page 53 of the manuscript. In the famous story of the driving-arc(yumi-nagashi 弓流し), the legendary commander Minamoto no Yoshitsune 源義経 (1159-89) arrives at theisland of Yashima 屋島 where the Taira bait him to attack by mounting fans to the masts of their ships.
Yoshitsune orders a bowman to hit the fan at an incredible distance—a feat that impresses the Taira. A Tairawarrior dances in mock of the improbable shot and shockingly is felled by yet another arrow. This prompts afrenzied full-scale assault on Yoshitsune’s troops who quickly withdraw from the waterfront. Unfortunately,
upon retreating, Yoshitsune drops his bow in the water and is nearly killed while returning to fetch it with his
whip. His stunned retainers of Shinto and Buddhist virtues shout mottainashi! (what a waste), indicating that
his spiritual life is worth much more than this simple material bow. Later, Yoshitsune explains that he wishedthat his enemies not recover such a weak bow or all his troops would lose face (McCullough 1988, 369-370).
So far, this essay focuses on the rosy side of ecological inventiveness. What goes wrong? There are a numberof historical circumstances that prevent these innovations from continuing or divert their effectiveness. Famines,
floods, typhoons, epidemics, crop failure, and swarms of locusts put a big dent in Tokugawa’s ecological40

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movement. Between 1590 and 1867, there are over 2800 peasant uprisings (hyakushō ikki 百姓一揆), mostly inpoorer areas. As to more affluent bakufu 幕府 domains, 146 revolts occur between 1590 and 1750, and 401
between 1751 and 1867. Abandoning the home domain, mass petitioning, and violent acts become common.
Inflation and rising taxes are the main causes for the peasants’ unrest (Hane 1992, 53-55). Conrad Totman
explains that understanding ecology in Tokugawa is not so easy. At the end of Genroku 元禄 (1688-1704),
forests are depleted along with gold and silver mining. The population doubles within a century with the
opening up of affluent cities and towns (Totman 1993, 235). Famine and earthquakes are more regular as aretyphoons and monsoon rains. Hence, policies are implemented to “maximize the existing resource base” asTotman states:
Seventeenth-century land clearance increased demand for fertilizer even as it destroyed green fertilizer
sources. The rise of commercial cropping, notably cotton and tobacco, which consume soil nutrients
voraciously, reinforced the trend. As fertilizer demand grew, its market worth rose and substitution became
feasible, especially near cities and castle towns. Meanwhile, the manufacture of soybean products, sake,and vegetable oils was generating organic wastes such as seed hulls and pulp that had potential value as
fertilizer, and in the later Tokugawa period, the sale and use of such industrial byproducts became wellestablished. One of the most valued organic wastes was night soil, that is, human bodily waste (1993, 261).
In Kyūshū 九州, the third largest island of Japan, woodcutting villagers of centuries past begin to move tocoal seams to burn ground coal for fuel. Potters and salt and sugar makers from the Nobi Plain (Nōbi Heiya 濃尾平野) westward also substitute coal for wood (Totman 1993, 271). By 1720, Ogyū Sorai influenced by Ito
Jinsai’s Song 宋朝 (Song chao 960–1279) Confucianism, advocates a return to studying classical China in its
language, rituals and rites as a direct path to recovering “the Way” (Totman 1993, 285). As it was, samurai had
indulged in the pleasures of the city and fallen victim to the avarice of a rising merchant class. Whereas theoriginal intent of sankin kotaī 参勤交代 (alternate attendance) was to discourage civil revolts, it now had the
opposite effect. As Sorai relates, under the later bakufu 幕府 system (see Hall 1991, 160-226): “…the daimyō
are completely powerless and their poverty is very real, [so] it is inevitable that some relief from their compulsory
attendance in Edo should be granted” (quoted in Totman 1993, 287-288). If samurai abandoned their city
complacency and returned to living in the countryside, then their control of rice crops would restore therespectful social order of peasantry and merchants alike in regard to proper hōken jīdai 封建時代 (feudal period)
relationships (Totman 1993, 286-290, Yamauchi 2014, 337-357). Unfortunately, fires, floods, famines andtaxation distorted these positive efforts.

Watsuji Tetsurō: Fūdo 風土
After a one-year sojourn in Europe (1927-1928), Watsuji Tetsurō, professor of ethics at Kyoto
University who later teaches at Tokyo Imperial University, publishes a treatise in 1935 on climate,contrasting civilizational approaches between East Asian and Western culture:

My purpose in this study is to clarify the function of climate as a factor within the structure of humanexistence. So my problem is not that of the ordering of man's life by his natural environment. Naturalenvironment is usually understood as an objective extension of “human climate” regarded as a concrete
basis. But when we come to consider the relationship between this and human life, the latter is alreadyobjectified, with the result that we find ourselves examining the relation between object and object, andthere is no link with subjective human existence. It is the latter that is my concern here, for it is essential
to my position that the phenomena of climate are treated as expressions of subjective human existence and41

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not of natural environment. I should like at the outset to register my protest against this confusion. It wasin the early summer of 1927 when I was reading Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit in Berlin that I first came toreflect on the problem of climate. I found myself intrigued by the attempt to treat the structure of man's
existence in terms of time but I found it hard to see why, when time had thus been made to play a part in
the structure of subjective existence, at the same juncture space also was not postulated as part of the basic
structure of existence. Indeed, it would be a mistake to allege that space is never taken into account in
Heidegger's thinking, for Lebendige Natur was given fresh life by the German Romantics, yet even so it
tended to be almost obscured in the face of the strong glare to which time was exposed… In the main, thiswork is based on notes for lectures given over the period September 1928 to March 1929. This series wasgiven very soon after my return from my travels outside Japan with the result that, in that I had no leisure
to reflect in detail on the problems of time and space in human existence, I took up for discussion only
the consideration of climate (1961, v, vi).
Watsuji proceeds to explain Eastern civilization in light of Western container views of space. This is somewhat
ironic initially, since Heidegger’s position on non-Aristotelian time (reversibility of time) is quite close to the
Buddhist monk Dōgen Zenji’s 道元禅師 (1200-1253) uji 有時 (“being-time”; time is existence; existence is time)(see Heine 1985). And for Dōgen 道元禅師 (1200-1253), space (koku 虚空) is a form that time takes in the same
way that springtime manifests itself through blossoming flowers. Space is a thing itself; all things are time: “Takea pinch of empty space” (kokū wo sattoku shi 虚空を撮得し); This is reminiscent of Yagyū Munenori 柳生宗矩
(1571–1646), sword master to Tokugawa, when he speaks of the Void in The Book of Family Traditions and the
Art of War (Heihō ka densho 兵法家伝書) (1982):
There is a distinction between false voidness [koku 虚空] and real voidness [shinku 真空]. False voidness isa simile for nothingness. Real voidness is genuine emptiness, which is the emptiness of mind [shin 心,heart-mind]. Although the mind is like empty space insofar as it is formless, the one mind is the master ofthe body, so the performance of all actions is in the mind. The movement and working of the mind is thedoing of the mind. When the mind is inactive, it is void; when the void is active, it is mind. The void goes
into motion, becoming mind and working in the hands and feet. Since you are to hit the adversary’s hands
holding the sword quickly, before they move, it is said that you should “hit the void.”…Since the mind
has no form or shape, it is basically invisible; but when it clings and lingers, the mind is visible as such inthat condition. It is like raw silk: dye it red and it becomes red, dye it violet and it becomes violet. The
human mind also manifests visibly when it is attracted and fixated by things. (Yagyū 2005, 142, 156)
In 1927, Heidegger moves away from the Western preoccupation with measureable space (Immanuel Kant).
Heidegger retreats from (a) being in time as a spatial metaphor toward (b) being and time as occupying equal
planes of existence to (c) time and being as the essence of the turn, and finally to (d) time in being as a fullreversal. The latter is similar to East Asian philosophies of Dao 道 (time as Dao stands between moments) and
Zen Buddhism 禪 (time is Zen’s ‘sudden’ awakening) (Goulding 2005). Influenced by this, Watsuji makes aunique argument regarding space itself: “the space-and time-structure” of human existence is revealed as climate
and history: the inseparability of time and space is the inseparability of history and climate:
I use our word Fu-dō [風土], which means literally, “Wind and Earth,” as a general term for the naturalenvironment of a given land, its climate, its weather, the geological and productive nature of the soil, its
topographic and scenic features. The ancient term for this concept was Sui-do [水 土], which might beliterally translated as “Water and Earth.” Behind these terms lies the ancient view of Nature as man's
environment compounded of earth, water, fire, and wind. (Watsuji 1961, 1)
42Jay Goulding

Tokugawa’s Environmental Philosophy

Brilliantly, Watsuji recognizes three different types of climate cultures: monsoon, desert and meadow. Japan isa monsoon culture:
Japan, with its distinctive rainy season (the “plum rains”) and its typhoons, is particularly humid; her firstancestors recognized this when they called it instinctively the “Land of Rich Reed Plains and Fresh RiceEars”. However, this humidity is revealed also in Japan in the form of heavy snow falls. It is Japan's fate tosuffer very facile and drastic seasonal variations. Hence the distinctive monsoon characteristics, passivity
and resignation, can be expected to undergo further specific limitation in the case of Japan. (Watsuji 1961,
20)
While “desert” applies to Arabia, Africa and Mongolia, “meadow” applies to Western Europe:
The Japanese word makiba [牧場] is a translation of Wiese or meadow. But it is quite inappropriate. Maki[牧] is an enclosure for livestock; but Wiese is for the cultivation of grass fodder for livestock, and is,further, general grassland. But again, the Japanese word for grassland (sogen [草原]) does not have theintimate relation with livestock fodder that Wiese has. In fact, Japan has no term corresponding to thelatter. So, translators of the late nineteenth century used the word makiba (with its livestock connotation)in the sense of sogen (grassland). Here I shall follow this now normal usage. The fact that there is no termin Japanese corresponding to the word Wiese indicates that there is nothing in Japan to correspond to
Wiese. Japan's sogen has no utility value—it is, in fact, discarded land. However, Wiese, while in fact
grassland (sogen), has a similar function to hatake [畑] in that while hatake produces food for humanconsumption, livestock fodder is grown on Wiese. Wiese is not titled where hatake is; yet the two are of
the same nature in that both provide a nutritional crop. There are both natural and artificial Wiese, butthey can always be turned into hatake. The artificial Wiese corresponds to one phase in the normal rotationof crops of the hatake; it is the exact equivalent of the wheat hatake in the year when it is sown to clover.
(Watsuji 1961, 59)
Watsuji goes on to say:Drought in the summer; here we come face to face with “meadow”. There are no weed-grasses in Europe;
this indicates, in other words, that summer is the dry season. Weed-grasses have no nutritional value forlivestock but they grow, and spread very rapidly and can overrun and choke pasture grass. These weedgrasses are what the Japanese know as “summer grasses” and, as the term implies, the essential conditions
for their growth are heat and humidity. In May they begin to sprout at roadsides, on embankments, inwaste land and in dry river beds; then in July, nourished by June's “plum rains”, they grow to a height ofseveral feet almost as you watch. These grasses are tough and obstinate, tough enough even to flourish on
the parade ground. Whether the ground be cultivated, or even part of a residential area, if neglected for ayear or two, this sort of weed-grass takes possession and turns the place into a complete jungle. But it is
this combination of heat with moisture—the “plum rains” and the subsequent sunshine-that gives thisweed-grass such tremendous vigor. However, Europe's dry summer fails to provide this moisture just whenweed-grasses need it, so that they cannot sprout. (1961, 67)
In the long run, Watsuji makes a cosmological argument that owes much to Heidegger when he writes about
the essence of the person in-between (Being and Time’s in-zwischenheit):
Man does not reach constantly into the future within individual consciousness alone; rather, it is the
betweenness that reaches into the future. Temporality of the individual consciousness is a mere abstraction
43

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Tokugawa’s Environmental Philosophy

that is only rendered possible on the basis of historicality [Geschichtlichkeit] of betweenness. Third,transcendence also means standing out climatically. In other words, man-as-betweenness discovers itself inclimate. From the standpoint of the individual, this becomes consciousness of the body, but in the context
of the more concrete ground of human existence (ningen sonzai [人間存在]), it reveals itself in the forms ofcreating communities, and thus in the forms of constructing language, the forms of production, the stylesof buildings, and so on. Transcendence, as the structure of human existence, must include all these aspects.
(1961, 12)Conclusion
In retrospect, we might think of Watsuji’s cosmological adaptation of space to Japanese human climate as aparallel to Ogyū Sorai’s return to a hōken rectitude where right action helps restore healthy social relations andthe environment to boot. Watsuji adapts his climate theory to Japanese aesthetics. Reading love poems from
Kojiki 古事記 and Nihon Shoki 日本書紀 through to Tokugawa yields “…a calm love concealed behind a violenceof passion, a love that is at once fighting yet selfless and acquiescent…Yet, at the same time these loves have atyphoon savagery and a fighting power of a kind that could exist neither in India nor in China.” Watsuji
continues that: “In the same way, the lovers' suicide, the favourite theme of Tokugawa literature, did not rest
purely on a spiritual belief in the other world; rather, it displays the affirmation of love through a denial of life;
the heart yearning for an eternity of love is crystalized in this momentary exaltation” (1961, 138-139). This‘typhoon savagery’ and ‘fighting power’ exemplifies all of Tokugawa from Chūshingura to ukiyo-e to strategies
of ecology. Together, these melding body phenomenologies remind us of the contemporary neo-Confucian
philosopher Cheng Chung-ying’s 成中英 benti 本體 (origin-substance as onto-cosmology) whereby originary
human substance finds manifestation in the world as a whole (Goulding 2008b, 135-155). This itself is theresilience of long term Japanese culture: the ability to bounce back. Fittingly, Watsuji writes:
The problem of climate affords a pointer for any attempt to analyze the structure of human existence. The
ontological comprehension of human existence is not to be attained by a mere transcendence which regards
the structure as one of temporality, for this has to be transcendence in the sense of, first and above all, thediscovery of the self in the other and the subsequent return to absolute negativity in the union of self andother. Therefore, the ‘betweenness’ of man and man has to be the locus for transcendence. That is to say,the betweenness as the basis for discovering the self and other must be originally the place that ‘stands out’
(ex-sistere). (1961, 12)

References
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http://www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kotenseki/html/bunko20/bunko20_00412/index.html.
Goulding, Jay. 2001. “Tokugawa Traces in 21st Century Japan.” In Japan in the Global Age: Cultural, Historical andPolitical Issues on Asia, Environment, Households and International Communication, edited by Masao Nakamura,
159-174. Vancouver: The Centre for Japanese Research, UBC Press.
———. 2002. “‘Three Teachings are One’: The Ethical Intertwinings of Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism.” In
The Examined Life: Chinese Perspectives, Essays on Chinese Ethical Traditions, edited by Jiang Xinyan, 249-278.
Binghamton: Global Scholarly Publications, Binghamton University.
———. 2005. “Kuki Shūzō and Martin Heidegger: Iki and Hermeneutic Phenomenology.” In Why Japan Matters! vol.
2, edited by J. F. Kess and H. Lansdowne, 677-690. Victoria, BC: Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives, University ofVictoria.

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27-31. Tokyo: Japan Foundation.
———. 2006b. “Crossroads of Experience: Miyazaki Hayao’s Global/local Nexus.” Asian Cinema, 17 (2): 114-123.
———. 2007. “New Ways toward Sino-Western Philosophical Dialogues.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 34 (1): 99125.
———. 2008a. “Wu Kuang-ming and Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Daoism and Phenomenology.” In China-WestInterculture: Toward the Philosophy of World Integration, edited by Jay Goulding, 183-206. New York: Global
Scholarly Publications.
———. 2008b. “Cheng Chung-ying’s Onto-Cosmology: Chinese Philosophy and Hermeneutic Phenomenology.” In
The Imperative of Understanding: Chinese Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy, and Onto-Hermeneutics: A
Tribute Volume Dedicated to Professor Chung-ying Cheng, edited by Ng On-cho, 135-155. New York: Global
Scholarly Publications.
———. 2011. “Pioneers of Globalization: Tokugawa’s Cross-Cultural Communications.” In Japan in the Age of
Globalization, edited by Carin Holroyd and Ken Coates, 15-30. London: Routledge.
———. 2016a. “Anime アニメand Popular Culture.” In Japan: Shining a Light on the Land of the Rising Sun,
Proceedings and Essays of the 20th Annual Glendon College International Studies Symposium, edited by Matthew
P. Farrell and Kelly Lui, 150-176. Toronto: Independent Study Committee on Japan.
———. 2016b. “Chūshingura’s [忠臣藏] Innovation: From kaishaku [介錯] (execution) to kaishakugaku [解釋學](hermeneutics).” In Japan Studies Association of Canada, 27th Annual Conference Proceedings, Designing Japan:
Innovation in a Post-Growth Society, edited by Jim Tiessen, 8-18. Toronto: JSAC.
http://journals.library.ryerson.ca/jsac/article/view/2.
———. Forthcoming. “John O’Neill’s Phenomenology: The Copper Rule.” In Scholarship as a Re–Source of Hope:John O’Neill’s Body of Work Re-Joyced, edited by Jay Goulding and Mauro Buccheri, 1-35. Toronto: Founders
College.
Hall, John Whitney. 1991. Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies,
University of Michigan.
Hane, Mikiso. 1992. Modern Japan: A Historical Survey. 2nd edition. Boulder: Westview Press.
Heine, Steven. 1985. Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dōgen. New York: SUNY.
Ishikawa, Eisuke 石川英輔. 2000. Considerations on Edo Ecology (O-edo ekoroji jijō 大江戸えころじ－事情), trans.
by Japan for Sustainability. Tokyo: Kōdansha 講談社. http://www.japanfs.org/en/edo/index.html.
———. 2003. “Japan’s Sustainable Society in the Edo Period (1603-1867).” Japan for Sustainability Newsletter 7(March). http://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_id027757.html.
Kassel, Marleen. 1996. Tokugawa Confucian Education: The Kangien Academy of Hirose Tansō. Albany: SUNY.
Lanoue, David. 2013. “Haiku and Senryu: Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 in Edo.” In Edo: The Edopedia A Project of theDaruma Museum, Japan, edited by Gabi Greve. https://edoflourishing.blogspot.ca/2013/12/bafunkaki.html.
McCarthy, Helen. 1999. Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press.
McCullough, Helen Craig, trans. 1988. The Tale of the Heike. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Totman, Conrad. 1993. Early Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Watsuji, Tetsurō. 1961. A Climate: A Philosophical Study. English trans. (from Fūdo 風土) by Geoffrey Bownas.
Tokyo: Printing Bureau, Japanese Government.
Yagyū, Munenori 柳生宗矩. 1982. Nihon budō taikei. Bekkan. Heihō Ka densho 日本武道大系. 别卷. 兵法家伝書[Japanese Martial Arts Collection. Supplement. The Book of Family Traditions and the Art of War] 2 vols. Original
work circa 1632. Kyōto: Dōhōsha.
Yagyū, Munenori. 2005. The Book of Family Traditions and the Art of War (Heihō ka densho) In Miyamoto Musashi,
The Book of Five Rings: A Classical Text on the Japanese Way of the Sword, 96-166. Boston and London:
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Yamauchi, Tomosaburō. 2014. “The Confucian Environmental Ethics of Ogyū Sorai: A Three Level Eco-Humanist
Interpretation.” In Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought, edited by J. Baird Callicot and James
McRae, 337-357. Albany: SUNY.

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Yusuhara: Regional Autonomy,
Revitalization, and Green Energy
Sachiyo Kanzaki
Abstract. In the mountainous regions of Japan, where depopulation threatens the survival ofrural communities, the town of Yusuhara is famous for challenging this all-too-frequentnarrative through its green energy policy. The town of Yusuhara, designated as anenvironmental model city by the central government, has a population of only 3,600 and its
percentage of elderly residents (kōreikaritsu: percentage of people older than 65) is 40%.
Although Yusuhara is relatively isolated from the main city of Kochi by a two-hour drive, about
three hundred thousand people still visit this town every year. Many rural revitalization experts
ask: is it possible to develop a town through green energy? In this paper, I will address how thissmall town is fostering community resilience through the use of green energy, and explore its
vision for sustainability.

Yusuhara
In the mountainous regions of Japan, where depopulation threatens the survival of rural communities,
the town of Yusuhara in the Kochi Prefecture is famous for challenging this all-too-frequent narrative. As
if the national hero of the Bukamatsu Period, Sakamoto Ryōma, imbued the air with his own
1
determination and resourcefulness when he passed through on his way to Honshu (Iwata 2015), thissmall municipality is a very ambitious one. It is also known for its innovative use of different sources ofgreen energy, such as wind and solar power. 6,936 people from 235 public organizations and 332 privategroups participated in renewable energy observation trips to this town between June 2013 and March2017 (Yano 2014a). As for tourists, Yusuhara counts almost 0.3 million people yearly, and aims toincrease this to 0.5 million (ibid.).

The Eco-Town that Stopped Population Decrease
Like other rural communities, Yusuhara had suffered from population decline and its percentage ofelderly residents, those older than 65, stands at a high 40% (Statistics Bureau 2017). However, it recently
1

Yusuhara Town promotes tourism in the town by using this historical fact.

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Yusuhara: Regional Autonomy, Revitalization, and Green Energy

succeeded in stopping population decrease during a time when other towns and cities in Kochi Prefecture
continued to lose their population steadily. For the fiscal year 2014, Yusuhara only decreased by 1 person,
thanks to the migration of 43 people to the town in addition to the increase of the number of students
entering Yusuhara High School (Kochi Shinbun 2015). Indeed, Yusuhara has been very successful inincreasing its younger population. All of this is, of course, not an accident, nor a near-stagnation situation.
It is a significant turn of events. Since the town is also famous for its green energy, some are wondering
whether it is possible to develop or revitalize a town with green energy. In the following text, the use ofgreen energy in Yusuhara and the philosophy behind its success will be explored.

Population Increase Policies
Yusuhara encourages people, particularly young families, to settle in town to increase its population.
They offer free childcare with the possibility of longer daycare from 7:30 am to 6:30 pm, free school
lunch, and no charge for medical expenses up to 15 years old. A temporary infant daycare services at thereasonable price of 1,000 yen a day and 500 yen for a half day is also available. Subsidies are provided forthe purchase of uniforms, desks, and chairs for school children, as well as for transportation expenses.
They also offer support for dorm life in amount of 1,500 yen per month as well as support for studying
abroad. 2 Also, all residents can use the pool for free all year round (Yusuhara Town 2017a).
The town also offers construction and renovation subsidies to attract people to settle. Yusuhara offers
a subsidy of up to two million yen for the construction of a house using local wood. A family under theage of forty can receive another one million yen in subsidies, and up to one million yen for a renovation
project (ibid.). In addition to this, there are grants for introducing renewable energy sources to the house.
For those who want to try Yusuhara before they migrate, some renovated houses can be rented for 10,000
to 15,000 yen per month (Yusuhara Town 2017b). In rural communities suffering from depopulation in
Japan, poor housing is often an obstacle for people wanting to come and settle there. Yusuhara clearly
understands this and is trying to resolve the problem. Also, the town will help new settlers to find a job
by offering job placement services at the municipal bureau, free training courses for level 2 home helpers,
and different kinds of financial support for projects related to creating businesses and human resourcesin the town (ibid.).

Modern Sustainable Wooden Buildings
When visiting Yusuhara, people are surprised by their modern public buildings. Despite its distancefrom major cities, Yusuhara has an impressive municipal bureau, designed by famous architect Kengo
Kuma and constructed in 2006 (Yusuhara Town 2017c). It is not only stylish, but also convenient: its
front part can open widely so as to serve as a shelter base in case of disasters. There are also three othermodern buildings designed by the same architect. 3 They are all of “modern” taste, inside and outside.
Studying in the United Kingdom or Australia for three weeks will cost only 70,000 yen.
The building containing a hotel and a restaurant called Kumo no ue no Hotel constructed in 1994, a wooden
bridge shaped art gallery called Kumo no Ue no Gallery constructed in 2010, and a community market and hotel
named Machi no eki Yusuhara constructed in 2010.
2
3

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Yusuhara: Regional Autonomy, Revitalization, and Green Energy

People come to visit Yusuhara only to see those buildings. We could say that Yusuhara challenges the“rural, therefore good old” image of the town. In addition, their modern buildings are perceived as“Japanese modern” thanks to their use of wood, particularly Japanese cedar. One might wonder whether
it is worth building such impressive buildings successively, but the municipality in fact has a very goodbudgetary structure. Every year, Yusuhara shows a surplus in its books. 4
There are other buildings and constructions that attract people to Yusuhara, such as the Miyuki Bridge
constructed in 2002 and the Yusuhara Bridge reconstructed in 2007. All the recently constructed modernbuildings of this town, including those designed by Kengo Kuma, are made with wood produced in thetown. As for the Miyuki Bridge, it was an old stone bridge before its reconstruction with wood in 2002,
as was the case for the Yusuhara Bridge as well. The latter has been an important bridge for villagers andtravellers for a long time. The concrete was replaced by wood in modern times; when it was time forreconstruction in 2006, they chose wood from the town to rebuild it (Yusuhara Town 2011).
The Regional Community Centre of Ochimen District, which was the former Ochimen Primary
School’s gym, was also constructed in 2004 using 1,000 m3 of locally produced wood. Even the pool,called Kumo no ue no Pool, constructed in 1998, uses wood produced in the town. Today, they are also
making and replacing other smaller public constructions such as handrails and lampposts using wood
(Yusuhara 2011).
Mountains cover 91% of the town, and therefore its major industry has been forestry. However, theJapanese forestry industry had been declining since the 1970s because of the import of cheaper foreign
timber. Therefore, the use of the town’s wood is key to the survival of the town’s industry. In fact,
Japanese forestry has been steadily recovering since 2000, the year that marked the lowest self-sufficiency
rate of 18.9% (MAFF 2017a). In 2016, the Japanese wood self-sufficiency rate was 34.8% (MAFF
2017b). Therefore, the efforts of Yusuhara are reflected in the national tendency. In addition, woodbuilding materials, having advantages over traditional building materials, have been recently reconsidered
and labelled as sustainable and renewable by architects and builders.

Designation as Environmental Model City in 2009
In 2009, the town of Yusuhara was designated as an environmental model city by the central
government (Cabinet Secretariat 2009). If we look at the other places with this designation, apart from
Shimokawacho in Hokkaido with a population of 3,379 (Statistics Bureau 2011), all are rather big cities
such as Yokohama City, Chiyoda Ward, and Kyoto City. So, the environmental model cities are notnecessarily small rural municipalities with natural resources, but rather cities where advances in green
policies are made.
Yusuhara was chosen for its use of woody biomass as a means of reducing CO2, which was consideredan advancement in green energy technology. The town opened a woody pellet factory (as a semi-public
corporation) in 2008 in collaboration with Yazaki Corporation, a company producing biofuel heating
and cooling systems. A woody pellet factory uses branches, tops, stumps, and other woody debris from
Yusuhara’s Keizai shūshi hiritsu (ratio of current expenses to current income) has been less than 80% and is
one of the lowest in Kochi (Yusuhara Town, 2017d; Statistics Bureau. 2017). The reduction of administrative
expenditure is pursued and the number of governmental employees has been reduced successively and resulted in
one of the lowest Laspeyres indices in Kochi prefecture by far (Kochi Prefecture, 2017).
4

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Yusuhara: Regional Autonomy, Revitalization, and Green Energy

commercial operations. A pellet factory creates an employment opportunity, but it should also be viable,
so the factory was designed to be operated by only one single employee if the pellet demand is low. Also,
to cut the cost of transportation, the factory tries to find its market nearby (Asahi Shinbun 2008). Today,
it provides pellets for the boilers used by municipal pools, municipal hospitals and nursing buildings, andtargets to expand the market within Kochi Prefecture. As for the pellet ashes, Yusuhara uses them as afertilizer and neutralizer in agricultural lands and forests (Yasui 2012).
In fact, as a landmark of an Eco-Model City, the municipal bureau building mentioned above does
not have an air-conditioning system, even though the building houses banks, as well as the Japan
Agricultural Cooperatives and Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s offices. It is one of the raremunicipal bureaus in Japan not to have one. The space between the roof and the ceiling is designed to let
in fresh air from outside. During the winter, solar heat warms the circulating air. During summer, theheat pump water heater makes ice using surplus electricity at night. The ice is kept underground and the
air cooled through the ice is circulated in the building during the day. Also, its roof is equipped with solar
cells that produce 40% of the total energy needed for the building (Iwamoto 2009). The rest of the energy
costs for the building are covered by the rent of its tenants. Therefore, the construction of a new town
hall actually contributed to the reduction of maintenance costs.

Innovative Ideas: Branding
To promote forestry, prior to the opening of the woody pellet factory in 2008, Yusuhara implemented
forest development practices and streamlining operations that were certified in 2000 by the Forest
Stewardship Council based in Germany, a first for the industry in Japan. Also, forestry agencies haveadvocated what is traditionally called Shinrinyoku (forest bathing) as “forest therapy” and a practicalapplication of new forest resources.
The Kubotani area was designated as the forest-therapy quarter and forest-therapy path by the Forest
Therapy Steering Committee, composed of the Forestry Agency and the Japan Wellness Foundation, in
2007. In collaboration with Kochi University’s medical school, Yusuhara’s Municipal Hospital presented
its therapy program and healthy meal program (Gibo 2010). The medically proven effects of the programs
attract many visitors to the town.
Even before the designation of eco-town based on its woody biomass project, Yusuhara had alreadyshown innovative ideas for the survival of its community. Yusuhara has a tanada, a rice terrace, describedby famous writer Shiba Ryōtarō as “the agricultural pyramid of Japan” (Yusuhara n.d.). However, likeother rice terraces situated in the mountainous regions of Japan, it had been threatened by land
abandonment. In 1992, Yusuhara started what it calls the “Tanada ōnā (rice terrace ownership) system”
for the first time in Japan (Toyota 2011). A more correct term, however, would be “tenure system”, as
the participants in the ownership system, the owners (ōnā), are not owners, but tenants. By paying 40,010
yen for 100 m2 a year, they rent the agricultural land, and cultivate it while receiving guidance from true
landowners or local support groups. In Japan, it was generally prohibited by agricultural legislation tolease farm lands out to non-farmers until 2003, but with this new ownership system, non-farmers had
the opportunity to access agricultural land. The ōnā, tenants, participate only in some special occasions
throughout the year, like sowing, transplanting, weeding or harvesting the rice when paddy fields needmanpower. All the work in between is carried out by either the landowners or the local support groups.
50

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Yusuhara: Regional Autonomy, Revitalization, and Green Energy

The ōnā receive the rice crop at the end of the year. It created an urban-rural coalition, where non-farmers,
usually city dwellers, engage in farming activities, and thus contribute to the revitalization of the ruralsociety and preservation of the traditional cultural landscape. This system became very popular in Japanand has spread throughout the country.

Wind Power Station
In recent years, to promote forest management and introduce “new” renewable energy sources, thetown used the revenue from the sale of wind power. They undertook a wind condition study in 1996,
which showed that Mezurudaira on the crest of Shikoku Karst, 1,400 metres above the sea, was one of
the best locations in Japan for wind power generation. They introduced two wind turbines from Denmarkin December 1999. Yusuhara Wind Power Station generates 3 million kWh yearly, which supplies about
20% of the local electricity needs (Yano 2014b). Between 1999 and 2010, their maintenance fee was 16.2
million yen yearly, and they sold 35.6 million yen yearly; therefore, they earned 19.4 million yen yearly(Kochi Prefecture 2012a). It cost 450 million yen for the construction, and they received 123 million yen
in subsidies by NEDO for the introduction of this new energy resource. Therefore, it actually cost 327
million yen for the construction.
Before the triple disaster of Fukushima, the government did not encourage wind power, so they
established the buying price at about 10 yen per kW, compared to 48 yen for solar energy. Under thiscondition, the wind power station’s construction would be paid off in 20 years. After 2011, thegovernment revised the pricing, and doubled the buying price to 22 yen per kW; therefore, the town’s
revenue from its wind power station also doubled from 35.6 million yen to 60 million yen. With the5profits from its wind power station, Yusuhara created an environmental fund for the town.

Distribution of Profits Among Citizens Through the Environmental Fund
Yusuhara’s environmental fund is used for distribution of profits among citizens in the green energy
sector. By using revenue from the sale of wind power, the town provides a subsidy of 100,000 yen perhectare to forest owners who thin their land, helping the forest industry in the process. The town supports¼ of the costs associated with the installation of pellet stoves and other appliances for the residents.
Also, a household can receive subsidies of 200,000 yen per kilowatt for the installation of solar panels,
up to 4 kW. In addition to this, the central government also grants 140,000 yen. Therefore, the residents
of Yusuhara can receive up to 940,000 yen in total to introduce solar panels. This is currently the highest
grant in Japan.
Schools in Yusuhara all introduced renewable energy resources, such as solar panels and heating andcooling system using woody pellets, in addition to the use of a small hydro power station providing
6
electricity to their junior high school. The town introduced a small hydro power generator in YusuharaRiver in March 2009. With a fall of six metres, it generates a maximum of 53 kW, and provides 90% ofNamed Kazazuruma kikin, literally ‘pinwheel fund.’The Yusuhara Board of Education implemented eco-education into the curriculum of their junior high school(Yusuhara Board of Education 2011).
5
6

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Yusuhara: Regional Autonomy, Revitalization, and Green Energy

the electricity needed for Yusuhara junior high school during the daytime and lights up 82 street lamps
at night (METI 2014). The yearly electricity surplus that is generated is sold to Shikoku Electric Power
Company for 1.3 million yen (Nasu 2013). The construction of this hydropower system cost 201.6
million yen, and its maintenance fees cost 3.99 million yen yearly (Yusuhara 2011). Profits for the town
are not high, but it helps the younger generations to understand electric power systems. The town’s
residents are proud of the fact that public commodities such as the LED street lamps are powered byelectricity generated from their own Yusuhara River. By 2010, some 30% of Yusuhara’s energy
consumption was covered by its local renewable energy sources. Yusuhara further plans to construct smallscale hydro power stations and aims at achieving zero CO2 emissions.

Involvement of citizens and the use of revenue from wind power
generation
After the COP3 in Kyoto in 1997 and the adoption of the Act on Promotion of Global WarmingCountermeasures in 1998, many municipalities have undertaken the creation of a “New Energy
Vision’’(Baba et al 2001). In this context, Yusuhara created its own New Energy Vision in 1999. The
town wanted to involve its people in the decision-making process. 15 inhabitants of different generations
participated in creating the 5th Comprehensive Development Plan for Yusuhara, adopted in 2001 (MAFF2013). In this plan, they established three main policy areas where the town should take action:
environment (kankyō), health (kenkō), and education (kyōiku), which is referred to as “the 3 Ks” inJapanese. Related to this, the town encourages the introduction of new green energy resources. It clearly
indicated in its plan its intention to use revenue obtained from wind power generation to promote green
energy. This transparency motivated citizens to pursue the town’s plan as well as facilitating further
collaboration.

Revenue from green energy as a heritage of the Zero Public Imposition
Plan during the Meiji era
Yusuhara is now planning to construct a new wind power station. In the discussions surrounding thisproject, we can find some important factors to consider when trying to develop the town through green
energy. To implement new wind turbines, new roads would be needed, as well as considerable investments
for their construction. If the municipality put the construction of the power stations in the hands of otherinstances, it would not need to put much effort into their management and would only receive revenues
from property taxes. However, the profit of the power stations would be zero, and the local allocation tax
grants from the central government would decrease accordingly. Therefore, the most important thing isthat the municipality builds and operates the power stations itself. This is different from fossil fuel or
nuclear power stations, because the municipality would not have the choice to be the main actor.
Concretely, for the 3,300 million yen construction project, the town would receive a total of 150
million yen as property tax in 15 years. The profit of the power station is 240 million yen a year, which
is more than the revenue from property tax in 15 years. Therefore, it is more profitable for themunicipality to undertake the project by itself. However, the costs of construction are considerable for a52

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Yusuhara: Regional Autonomy, Revitalization, and Green Energy

small municipality. This is why most municipalities don’t usually take the initiative to build power
stations (Kochi Prefecture 2012b).
In the past, Yusuhara had aimed to become “a town without tax revenue” for its residents when the
new town system was implemented by the new Meiji government. First, they tried to realize this by using
revenues from forestry, and later, entering the Showa era, with the revenues from three hydro power
stations built in the town (Nasu 2013). Unfortunately, management of these three hydro power stations
7
was transferred to the prefecture and to the Shikoku Power Supply Company in 1936 because of wartime
measures. Today, Yusuhara tries to introduce renewable power generation and a sense of community
development via initiatives based on this zero public imposition philosophy (Okusa 2013).
In Yusuhara today, each of its six districts has a council consisting of a total of 56 settlement
8
community groups (Cabinet Office 2016). An annual meeting is organized to regroup the town
governor, the chiefs of the six district councils, the representatives of the 56 settlement community groups
and different local organizations, as well as national and prefectural employees. Considering the scale ofthe town, residents can actively participate in the decision-making process of Yusuhara (Cabinet Office2016). In addition, in 2010, the municipal staff visited each household to survey the residents’ needs andthe result was reflected in their Town Comprehensive Promotion Plan adopted the following year
(Yusuhara Town 2015).

Long-Term Vision
In the case of Yusuhara, the main benefit of running the town with green energy lies in its actual use.
It is important to determine the “policy fields” to use. Hydro energy and wind power energy stations do
not create many long-term employment opportunities. They are renewable energy sources, and therefore
create few employment opportunities after their construction. An electrical engineer is needed, but he or
she does not need to be in town. That is why Yusuhara outsourced these positions outside of the town.
The maintenance of the power board can be done in town, as well as the configuration of the solar panels,
but again it does not create many employment opportunities.
Therefore, employment opportunities mostly result from job creation around the branding of green
energy initiatives, with activities such as forestry, tourism, and forest therapy. As such, the town is always
seeking new innovative ideas to promote the mountains, their own renewable resource. With this,Yusuhara is successful in attracting people looking to settle in the green environment and sustainablecommunity it has transformed itself into. In order to successfully achieve sustainability, the town willneed to continue to promote good ideas, deploy continuous efforts, and count on the local population’s
collaboration. This is the key to the present success of Yusuhara.
Now, the next step for Yusuhara will be to balance its now hourglass-shaped population structure.
The residents tend to leave after high school graduation, only to come back many years later, leaving a
gap in the “20 years old to middle-age” bracket of their community.
Shikokuhaiden, which became today’s Shikoku Electric Power Company in 1951.
As of March 2014, 1) Shimagawa District: 13 settlements, 583 people; 2) Ochimen District: 7 settlements,
572 people; 3) Nishi district. 8 settlements, 624 people; 4) Higashi District: 15 settlements, 1,477 people; 5)
Hatsuse District: 7 settlements, 142 people; and 6) Matsubara District: 6 settlements, 292 people (Cabinet Office2016).
7
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Sachiyo Kanzaki

Yusuhara: Regional Autonomy, Revitalization, and Green Energy

References
Business Kochi. 2008. “Yusuhara Pellet Company.” Accessed October 10, 2017. https://www.asahiarea.com/bk/closeup/cc17.htm. [In Japanese.]Baba, Kenshi, Kazumasu Aoki, and Osamu Kimura. 2001. “Chihōjichitai ni okeru kankyō enerugī seisaku kaitei[Analysis of Environmental and Energy Policy Processes in the Local Governments],” No: Y05025, CRIEPI(May 2001). [In Japanese.]
Gibo, Miki, et al. 2010. “Effects of Forest Therapy on Participants’ Health.” Journal of Shikoku Public HealthSociety 55, no.1 (February 2010). [In Japanese.]
Iwamoto, Naoya. 2009. “Kochiken Yusuhara hatsu kōminkyōdō niyoru ‘ikimono ni yasashii teitanso na
machizukuri’ sengen.” Bunkengata shakai wo hiraku jichitai no kokoromi to NPO no tayō na chosen 7: 4758. [In Japanese.]Japan: Statistics Bureau. 2017. “Kokusei chōsa [Population Census] – 2015.” Accessed October 10, 2017.
http://www.stat.go.jp/data/kokusei/2015/index.htm. [In Japanese.]———. n.d. “Tōkei de miru todōfuken shichōson no sugata. From 2000 to 2014.” Accessed 10 October 2017.
http://www.stat.go.jp/data/ssds/. [In Japanese.]Japan: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries [MAFF]. 2013. “Dai 4 shō, Chiiki shigen wo ikashita nōson
no shinkō kasseika [Chapter 4: Promotion and Revitalization of Rural Areas by Developing Local Resources].”
Heisei 24 nendo Shokuryō nogyō nōson hakusho [Annual Report on Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas inJapan FY2012], June 11, 2013. [In Japanese].
———. 2017a. “Annual Report on Forest and Forestry in Japan (Fiscal Year 2016).” Forestry Agency. [InJapanese.]———. 2017b. “Mokuzai jukyūhyō [Wood Self-Sufficiency Rate].” Forestry Agency, September 2017. [InJapanese.]Japan: Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry [METI]. 2014. “Chūshōsuiryokuhatsuden keikaku dōnyū notebiki.” Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, February 2014. Accessed October 10, 2017.
http://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/category/electricity_and_gas/electric/hydroelectric/download/pdf/ctelhy_017.p
df. [In Japanese.]Japan: Cabinet Office. 2009. “Kankyō moderu toshi kōsō [Eco-Model City Project].” January 22, 2009. [InJapanese.]———. 2016. “Chiiki no kadai kaiketsu wo mezasu chiiki unei soshiki saishū hōkoku.” Chiiki no kadai kaiketsu
no tameno chiiki unei soshiki ni kansuru yûshikisha kaigi, December 13, 2016. [In Japanese.]Japan: Statistics Bureau. 2011. “Population Census.” Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Accessed
April 20, 2017. https://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/estat/eStatTopPortal.do. [In Japanese.]
Kochi Prefecture. 2012a. “Kōchi saisei enerugī jigyōka kentō kyōgikai.” Dai 1 kai fūryokuhatsuden kentōbukai,
Yusuhara, Kochi, Japan, January 16, 2012. [In Japanese.]———. 2012b. “Yusuharachō niokeru fūryoku hatsuden kihon kōsō.” Kōchi saisei kanō enerugī jigyōka kentōkyōgikai. February 2012. [In Japanese.]———. 2017. “Shichōson no kyūyo teiinkanri fukuri kōsei jigyō no jōkyō.” Sōmubu shichōson shinkōka.
Accessed 30 Dec. 2017. http://www.pref.kochi.lg.jp/soshiki/111701/files/2013020800114/29kouhyou.pdf.
[In Japanese.]
Kochi Shinbun. 2015. “Yusuharachō jinkōgen ni hadome.” June 25, 2015. [In Japanese.]
Nasu, Toshio. 2013. “Shizen enerugī ni yoru kyōsei to junkan no machizukuri.” Journal of JWEA 37, no.2: 252255. [In Japanese.]54Sachiyo Kanzaki

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Iwata, Mitsuyo. 2015. “Kōchiken yusuharachō shikoku no yama no ekotaun ni sundemiru.” In Mō tōkyō wa
iranai: chiikiryoku o takameta kokonotsu no chiisana machi no ōkina hanashi, 21-68. Tōkyō:Nihonkeizaishinbunshuppansha. [In Japanese.]
Okusa, Tomohiro. 2013. “Mirai wo tsukuru Nippon no genba ‘Kochi Yusuhara Tosayama’ hen Part 1.” Colocal,
Earth Radio 33, Story I-01, January 11, 2013. Tokyo: Magazine House. Accessed October 10, 2017.
http://colocal.jp/topics/rebirth-project/earthradio/20130111_14131.html. [In Japanese.]
Toyota, Yosuke. 2011. “Dai 7 shō: Kōchiken yusuharachō mori no megumi wo ikashita chiikizukuri.” In Chiiki
shigen wo ikasu ondanka taisaku, 96-106. Kyoto: Gakugeishuppansha. [In Japanese.]
Yano, Tomio. 2014a. “Chiikishigen wo ikashi jiritsu suru chiisana kyoten yusuhara zukuri [Creation of Small
Autonomous Base of Yusuhara by Developing Local Resources].” Meeting on October 8, 2014. Machi hito
shigoto sōsei honbu, Kihon seisaku kentō chīmu, Cabinet Office. [In Japanese.]———. 2014b. “Dai 2 kai kongo no nōsan gyoson ni okeru saisei kanō enerugī dōnyū no arikata ni kansurukentōkai.” October 27, 2015. Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Japan. [In Japanese.]
Yasui, Keita. 2012. “Tokushū 1: Inochi ni yasashii denryokuwo chiiki shigen wo ikashita machizukuri.” Itsudemo
genki no. 243, MIN-IREN (January 2012). [In Japanese.]
Yusuhara Board of Education. 2011. “Eko sukūru no naiyō.” Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science andTechnology [MEXT], 2011. Accessed October 10, 2017.
http://www.mext.go.jp/component/a_menu/education/micro_detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/02/17/130121
6_2_13.pdf. [In Japanese.]
Yusuhara Town. 2011. “Kankyō to kyōsei no machizukuri.” Chihō kōkyō dantai jikkō keikaku jirei shōkai
seminā, Matsuyama shimin kaikan, Ministry of the Environment, November 25, 2011. Accessed 10 October,2017. https://www.env.go.jp/policy/local_keikaku/jimu/data/sem_shikoku/yusuhara1.pdf;
https://www.env.go.jp/policy/local_keikaku/jimu/data/sem_shikoku/yusuhara2.pdf. [In Japanese.]———. 2015. “Yusuhara chō machi hito shigoto sōsei sōgō senryaku – chiisana kyoten yusuhara zukuri.”November 17. [In Japanese.]———. 2017a. “Shien taisei.” Accessed October 10, 2017. http://www.town.yusuhara.kochi.jp/town/support/.
[In Japanese.]———. 2017b. “Yusuhara kurafuto.” Yusuharachō kikaku zaisei ka kikaku teijū taisaku gakari. Accessed October
10, 2017. http://www.yusuhara-iju.jp/house/. [In Japanese.]———. 2017c. “Kengo Kuma’s Works in Yusuhara Town.” Accessed October 10, 2017.
http://www.town.yusuhara.kochi.jp/kanko/kuma-kengo/eng/town-hall.html.
———. 2017d. “Zaisei jōkyō shiryōshū. Kikaku zaisei ka. From 2005-2015.” Accessed October 10, 2017.
http://www.town.yusuhara.kochi.jp/town/kakuka/zaimu.html. [In Japanese.]———. n.d. “Kanzaiko no senmaida.” Accessed October 10, 2017.
http://www.town.yusuhara.kochi.jp/kanko/spot/entry-720.htm. [In Japanese.]55Green Space and Suburban
Planning in JapanTom Waldichuk
Abstract. The idea of green space in suburbs can take the form of green belts, municipal parks,
planted trees, and depending upon the location, nearby farmland and natural vegetation. Preserving
green space in suburbs is important for maintaining the quality of life of residents. The purpose ofthis paper is to examine historically how green space has been incorporated into planning Japanese
suburbs. Through a review of literature and government websites, I examine green space in thecontext of suburban population growth, and an aging and declining population. I also include
examples of green space management from Ushiku, a satellite city of Tokyo. My findings show that
homes in many suburban developments from the 1970s, 80s and 90s lacked green space due to small
lot sizes. Fragmented farmland within suburbs has played an important role as green space. The
Productive Open Space Act encourages the continued farming of this land. Related to this, as the
population of Japan decreases, farmland can expand into abandoned suburban areas, thus increasing
the amount of green space. Ushiku City, while proposing to revitalize aging suburbs, has developed
green roads connecting neighbourhoods and their green space. The principal conclusion is thatfarmland and natural vegetation function as green space in suburbs, and in the future more
farmland—and green space—is likely to appear as suburbs contract.

Introduction
Green space is important for maintaining the quality of life of residents in suburbs. In particular, it isimportant for maintaining and contributing to the health and culture of cities (MLITT 2004). There is a welldeveloped literature on the benefits of green space to city residents in general and suburban residents inparticular (see Rupprecht 2017). More recently there has been concern about global warming and climatechange, and the impacts on residential communities. The heat island effect, which is warming caused by heatradiating from built-over surfaces, has been an issue in Japanese cities (CABE Space 2003; MLITT 2016a).
Thus, the function of green space providing shade has become important. Finally, green spaces function asplaces of evacuation in times of disaster (CABE Space 2003), in particular, when there are earthquakes, floods,
or landslides. Thus, the management of green space has become a national policy issue in Japan (CABE Space
2003).
Most of this concern is focused on urban areas where a greater percentage of the landscape is built over. But
suburban housing developments, which multiplied during the period of high economic growth, have also led
to a decrease in green space. In the 1990s when the economic bubble burst, suburban growth started to leveloff, which one can argue has slowed the decline of green space.

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Green Space and Suburban Planning in Japan

Still, Japanese communities
arelackinggreen
space.
Calculating the area of green
space is location- and scaledependent; however, on a percapita basis Tokyo has less green
space than London, England: 6.1
square metres versus 26.9 square
metres (CABE Space 2003, 16).
Japan overall has 8.5 square
metres per capita.
A declining economy has led
to a reduction in funding for
public projects, such as building
or maintaining urban orsuburban parks. Moreover, interms of policy, the needs of a
growing elderly population seem
Figure 1. Satellite image of Tokyo and general location of Ushiku City
to outweigh the needs ofSource: Google Maps
maintaining
green
space.
However, elderly people need green space to maintain their quality of life. The problem is trying to pay for
those green space facilities. For those living in suburbs, where there is abundant greenery and a group of
volunteer seniors willing to preserve and promote green space, there is a chance to maintain and promote green
space. This is especially true where farmland near suburbs is preserved and where abandoned suburban homes
in disrepair are torn down and replaced by green space.
Whether the amount of green space has increased or not depends on how one defines green space, which
has changed over the years in Japan. At a large scale, one can define green space as green belts and forests, andat a smaller scale as household gardens. However, according to the City Green Space Act (Toshi Ryokuchi Ho),
until recently, in principle, farmland was not considered green space (MLITT 2004). Rocks could be consideredgreen space, as could golf courses and water bodies. Adjacent patches of farmland could also be considered green
space. Thus, the City Green Space Act has defined green space rather rigidly; however, as I show in the paper,
this is changing.
The purpose of this paper is to examine historically how green space has been incorporated into planning
Japanese suburbs. The paper is based on a review of the literature and government websites. I examine threetime periods while focusing on the Metropolitan Tokyo area at the large scale, and the dormitory communityof Ushiku (Fig. 1), which is about 50 km northeast from the main Tokyo train station, at the small scale. In
the first period, I talk about the history of the Green Belt around Tokyo, starting before World War II andcontinuing until the 1960s. Second, I examine green space policy in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s as
suburbanization was reaching its maximum extent. I also give examples of green space management in Ushiku,
a city with approximately 85,000 people. Finally, I talk about green space in the third period—the 21st century.
I show that as the population ages and declines, suburban green space may actually increase through theactivities of senior volunteers and the demolition of abandoned dilapidated homes, which can be replaces withgreen space.

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Green Space and Suburban Planning in Japan

Period #1: Green space from before World War II until the 1960s
There were planners in Tokyo who admired the green belt around London, England, and were interested
in attempting to build a similar belt around Tokyo (Morita et al. 2012). In 1939, the Tokyo green space plan
was devised. In 1946, the first green belt was attempted in Tokyo (Watanabe et al. 2008), but it failed. In 1956,
the green belt was attempted again as part of the First Capital Region Plan of 1958 (Morita et al. 2012). But
the plan failed again (Sorensen 2000, 252) due to the opposition from landowners and municipalities(Nakabayashi 2006; Watanabe et al. 2008) that could profit from increasing urban development. In 1968, theSecond Capital Region Plan was devised (Morita et al. 2012; Nakabayashi 2006). The proposed green belt of
the First Capital Regional Plan changed to a “Suburban Development Area” (Morita et al. 2012). Threatened
green space in this “Suburban Development Area” became “Suburban Green Space Preservation Areas” (Morita
et al. 2012). Areas of “Suburban Green Space Preservation Areas” in need of preservation were designated as“Suburban Green Space Special Preservation Areas” (Morita et al. 2012). Green space was thus becoming moredifferentiated, while the unpopular idea of a green belt was being abandoned.
Around the same time, new legislation for green space was emerging (Table 1). In 1956, the Urban Parks
Act (Act. No. 79) came into being (MLIT 2007a). Starting in 1966 Metropolitan Suburban Green Space
Preservation areas (Shutoken Kinko Ryokuchi Hozen Kuiki) were devised (MLITT 2016b). Near Ushiku City,
452 ha of Ushiku Lake and adjoining areas were designated in 1969 (MLIT 2016c). This Suburban GreenSpace Preservation is mentioned in the 2011 Ushiku master plan (Ushiku Shi 2011). Also, natural areas insuburbs, including mountainous areas, were preserved for biodiversity (Ando 2006). Thus, although the green
belt was not approved, several pieces of legislation were enacted that governed sections of green space in thesame area of metropolitan Tokyo.

Period #2: Green space from the 1970s to 1990s
This was the period of rapid suburban population growth. Homes in many suburban developments lacked
green space due to small lot size (Sorensen 2001). Land was cleared of vegetation before development. In 1973,
the Urban Green Space Act (Act No. 72) (City Planning Act n.d., 8), which provides for green spaceconservation zones (article 5 of the act) andspecial green space conservation zones (article 12of the act), came into being. In 1977, authorities
were beginning to develop master plans for green
space (MLIT 2014).
Some fragmented farmland within urban andsuburban areas became known as productive
open space (seisan ryokuchi) in 1974 owing to theintroduction of the Productive Green Space (orOpen Space) Act (Act No. 68) (City Planning
Act n.d.; Watanabe et al. 2008, 22; see also Fig.
2). This land is in city planning areas, more
specifically urbanization promotion areas (UPA)(City Planning Act n.d., 8). This designationencourages farming to continue due to lower
taxation. The goal is to preserve UPA farmland Figure 2. Productive green space (seisan ryokuchi) in Ushiku City.
as long as farmers are willing to farm it Source: author
58

Tom Waldichuk

Green Space and Suburban Planning in Japan(Watanabe et al. 2008, 27). Farmers have to agree to farm their land for 30 years to receive the lower farmlandtax rate (Watanabe et al. 2008, 27; OECD 2008, 91). In 1992, the legislation was revised to limit the legislation
to farmland that was 500 square metres or more (OECD 2008, 91).
Local governments really emphasized public involvement in the management of typical (formal) green spacestarting in the 1990s as part of the machizukuri movement (Sugita and Doi 2012, cited in Rupprecht 2017, 1).
Green space became popular in the early 1990s. For example, in Ushiku City a Japan Agriculture co-op
newspaper’s headline from 1993 was “Guri-n Green.” Also, in Ushiku there was a plan for preserving andenhancing green space—this was a 20-year plan called Green Harmony Ushiku (Ushiku Shi 1990a), which
unfortunately did not come to fruition. Ironically, at the same time (1992) a large residential tract development
was being built (Fig. 3), which involved removing much of the natural vegetation.

Figure 3. The future site of Ushiku Hokubu Danchi, residential tract development, 1992-3.
Source: author

In 1992, all municipalities had to come up with a master plan based on article 18-2 of the City Planning
Law (Sorensen 2002, 302). As well, green space was protected in district plans (Ando 2006), which are plans
for municipal neighbourhoods. These master plans were to give local governments more planning autonomy.
The Basic Green Plan system for municipalities was established in 1994 (MLIT 2014) (Table 1). Thus, local
governments were becoming more responsible for planning green space.

Period #3: Green Space in the 21 s t Century
Suburban populations grew rapidly until the 1980s. But then the economic bubble burst in the 1990s, andmunicipalities had to deal with smaller budgets to manage green space. In 2003, a report in Tokyo proposedincorporating business-like management practices and other changes (CABE Space 2003). There was to begreater involvement of the community, especially volunteer groups, and there was to be better enforcement ofbylaws. The goal was to create more green space in built-up areas (this was more of an issue in urban areas rather
than suburbs.)
As indicated in Table 1, the Urban Green Space Act merged with the Urban Park Act in 2004 (MLIT 2014).
In 2004, the Urban Park Act was revised to allow temporary green space on roofs or on unused private space(CABE Space 2003). Local governments were to be involved in organizing temporary green space contracts
with property owners. Green space was to be protected and promoted at the same time. Buildings on large-scale
sites were obliged to have green space (Ando 2006). The Urban Green Space Act also led to (and continues to59Tom Waldichuk

Green Space and Suburban Planning in Japan

YEAR

ACT

INFORMATION SOURCE:

1956

Urban Parks Act, Act no. 79

MLIT (2007a)

1973

Urban Green Space (or Urban green space conservation) Act, (Actno. 72) N.B., MLITT does not include “conservation” in the title

MLIT (2007a)
City Planning Act (n.d., p.8)

1976

Urban Parks Act revised

MLIT (2014)1977

Outline for developing master plans for green space

MLIT (2014)1994

Urban Green Space Act revised—basic plans for creating greeneryin municipalities were initiated (Basic Green Plans)

MLIT (2014); Echizen Shi (n.d.)

1995

Urban Green Space Act revised—the beginning of civil green space& green space management functions

MLIT (2014)

2001

Urban Green Space Act revised—established “Management
Agreement System” & “Greening Facility Development Plan
Authorization System”

MLIT (2014)

2004

Revision of Urban Green Space Act (Act No. 72):
- integration of the Urban Green Space Act & the Urban Park Act(protect green space & create urban parks)- new urban green space law- measures to protect green space in suburbs

Ando (2006); MLIT (2014)

2004

Act for the Conservation of Urban Green spaces revised (renamed
Urban Green Space Act)

MLIT (2014)2004

Urban Park Act revised (Opposed the development of city parks
based on “Basic Plans for Greening” (plans for providing green
space))

MLIT (2014)2004

Landscape Act (Act No. 110) was enacted

MLIT (2014)

Table 1. Green Space Acts Concerning All of Japan

lead to) preserving important trees (MLITT 2007a). The Landscape Act of 2004 also has designated important
trees. The definition of green space did not change after the amendment to the 2004 urban green spaceconservation act (Toshi Ryokuchi Hozen Ho, 2 jo (article)) (MLIT 2004, 3). But the Urban Green SpaceConservation Act changed to the Urban Green Space Act (MLIT 2014).
The Urban Green Space Act currently involves central government level policies as well as prefectural andmunicipal level bylaws (MLITT 2017a). Under the auspices of the Japanese transportation ministry (Kokudo
Kotsusho) (MLIT 2013), there is a suburban green space preservation plan (kinko ryokuchi hozen keikaku) for
both the metropolitan Tokyo area and the Kinki area, the old capital preservation plan (koto hozon keikaku),
and state-run park maintenance (kokuei koen no seibi).
According to MLIT (2013), green space is preserved under the Urban Green Space Act (Toshi Ryokuchi Ho)
within the following areas: Special Green Space Preservation Areas (Tokubetsu Ryokuchi Hozen Chiku), Green60

Tom Waldichuk

Green Space and Suburban Planning in Japan

YEAR

ACT

INFORMATION SOURCE:

1968

2nd National Capital Region Plan

Morita et al. (2012)

1969

Metropolitan Suburban Green Space Preservation areas(Shutoken Kinko Ryokuchi Hozen Kuiki)

MLITT (2016c)

Table 2. Green Space Acts Concerning Metropolitan Tokyo

Space Preservation Areas (Ryokuchi Hozen Chiiki), Citizen Green Space (Shimin Ryokuchi), and areas covered
by District Plans (Chiiki Keikaku), which are subject to green space preservation bylaws (Ryokuchi Hozen Jorei).
There are other laws involved in green space preservation: Historical Natural Features Special Preservation Area
(Rekishiteki Fudo Tokubetsu Hozon Chiku), Productive Green Space (Seisan Ryokuchi Chiku), tree preservation
system (Hozonju seido), and local government regulations (Jichitai Dokuji no jorei).
Prefectural and Municipal Level Green Master Plans
At the regional level, prefectures are supposed to have their own wide area green space plan (ken koiki
ryokuchi keikaku) and municipalities are supposed to each have a green space basic plan (Midori no kihon
keikaku) (MLITT 2017a). The larger scale green space prefectural plans are linked to the basic green plan
(MLIT 2013 & 2017a). All of these plans are supposed to provide landscape preservation and promotion. At
the local level, residents and non-profit organizations are supposed to support the various policies and become
involved in managing green space (MLITT 2017a).
As of the end of fiscal year 2015, 23 prefectures had completed wide-area green plans, and eight prefectures
were in the process of finishing them (MLITT 2017b). 19 plans have been made public. The oldest green planis from 1992 in Miyagi Prefecture, whereas the green plan for Chiba, which is next to Ibaraki, was developedin 1997, and the one for Metro Tokyo was created in 2005. Interestingly, as mentioned above in Table 1, basic
green plans were not enacted until 1994 (MLIT 2014). Thus, these prefectural plans preceded the municipal
basic green space plans.
Basic Green Space Plan (Midori Kihon Keikaku)
In 1994 the basic plan for green space was enacted (MLIT 2014) as article 4 of the Urban Green Space Act(Echizen Shi n.d.). The basic green space plan involves both preserving and creating green space (MLIT 2013).
These basic plans for green space can involve green space protection regions, regions where green space ispromoted (MLIT 2013 & 2017a), the use of district plans, and the creation of city parks (Ando 2006). Eachmunicipality is responsible for creating a basic green plan (MLIT 2013, 2017a, 2017c, 2017d). They create
policies based on local conditions (MLITT 2017d). For example, there is local green space policy for parks thatis part of master plans (MLITT 2017e; 2017f). The creation of the plan involves incorporating the opinions ofresidents, which are recorded at hearings (MLITT 2017c). Public groups (chiho kokyo dantai) with a strong
residential connection become involved in green space-related initiatives (MLITT 2017d). There is usually an
official announcement of the plan. Larger scale green space plans (ko iki ryokuchi keikaku) are linked to the basic
green plan (MLIT 2013 & 2017a). All of these plans are supposed to provide landscape preservation andpromotion.

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According to MLITT (2017d), the following items make up a green basic plan: urban park maintenancepolicy (toshikoen seibi hoshin), special green space preservation areas (tokubetsu ryokuchi hozenchiku), promotionof green space in select areas (ryokka chiiki), policies based on the urban planning system, adding greenery to
public facilities, green space agreements (ryokuchi kyotei) with landowners, citizens participating in green space
activities, and policies not dependent on the city planning system (toshikeikaku seido ni yoranai shisaku).
There is also mention of the expansion (increased number) of the basic green plans (Midori no kihon keikaku
or Midori no master plan) that are undertaken by municipalities (MLITT 2017e). According to MLITT (2017d)
at the end of fiscal 2015, 49.1% of municipalities had finished basic green plans—a total of 674 municipalities
out of 1,374 (MLITT 2017d, 2017f). 14 municipalities were in the process of making plans. According to table
1 from the MLITT (2017d) document, in Ibaraki, out of 44 municipalities, 12, or 27.3%, had completed basic
green plans, whereas 51 out 57 municipalities in Tokyo-To (89.5%) had completed basic green plans.
Other Recent (2017) Changes to Green Space Preservation & Promotion
There are some other changes in green space policy from 2013 to 2017, apparent from viewing the ministryof transportation documents. 1 The introduction of the 2017a document talks about depopulation and an“aging counterplan” while the 2013 document does not. Another 2017 MLITT document mentions that there
are places with small per capita areas of park land (MLITT 2017e). This is partly due to the tendency forfarmland to be cleared for residential development (and not left for green space.) Existing parks are aging(rokyuka), the charm of them is declining, and there are requests for more park space (MLITT 2017e). On theother hand, the purpose of vacant land (akichi) is changing (MLITT 2017e). Suitable city farmland is treatedas green space (MLITT 2017g), whereas in the early part of the 21st century (MLITT 2004) farmland was notconsidered as part of the definition of green space by the transportation ministry. Six laws have changed,
including the urban green space law (MLITT 2017f). Green space is now known as “open space” (MLITT
2017g). In specific terms, the MLITT (2017a) document mentions the preservation of forests (jurin), unlike
the 2013 document, which mentions just trees (ju). MLITT (2017a) also mentions green space preservationaccording to scenic areas (fuchi chiku seido) unlike in MLIT (2013).
The changes to the green space law appear to be focused on declining finances and labour to manage green
space, as mentioned previously, and almost 15 years ago, by CABE Space (2003). Local groups are limited byfinances and human resources (MLITT 2017e), such that groups cannot properly maintain green space or
update facilities. Also, there seems to be more involvement of the private sector in park management, e.g.,
extending leases to manage business facilities in parks from 10 to 20 years (MLITT 2017e; 2017f). This maylead to more urban development of green space, e.g., there is a 2016 Japanese cabinet decision regarding thepossibility of establishing nursery schools on city park land (MLITT 2017e; 2017f). There is also the relaxationof the building to land area ratio (kenpeiritsu) for facilities being constructed on green space (MLITT 2017e;
2017f). Private business people are recruited in an open competition to manage revenue-generation facilities,e.g., cafes or restaurants (MLITT 2017e; 2017f). In general, private business people will collectively assist withpark renewal (MLITT 2017e; 2017f).
There is government assistance for managing green space. There are capital loans (shikin kashitsuke) andsubsidies (hojo) for the maintenance of open space (hiroba) (MLITT 2017e; 2017f). There is also mention offacility maintenance subsidies (MLITT 2017e).
The government is allowing the preservation of urban farmland. There is a 2016 Japanese cabinet decision
regarding the guarantee of the existence of city farmland (MLITT 2017e; 2017f). The requirements for
productive green space (seisan ryokuchi) can be lowered by a municipality to 300 square metres from the normal
1

I reviewed the MLIT 2013 document with several 2017 MLITT documents.

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Green Space and Suburban Planning in Japan

500 square metres (MLITT 2017e; 2017f). It is also possible to establish a vegetable market or a farm restaurant
on seisan ryokuchi (MLITT 2017e; 2017f). A rural residential land-use category has also been created for seisan
ryokuchi. There is also a policy of inserting (kumikomi) farmland as green space.
There is an increased dependence on citizen involvement in green space management through machizukuri(MLITT 2017f). At the same time, there is less involvement from the prefecture. The establishment of a citizen’s
green space (shimin ryokuchi) management plan is authorized by the head of the municipality, whereas in thepast it was authorized by the prefectural governor (MLITT 2017e; 2017f). Managers have tried to capitalize on
individual people’s energy to promote the maintenance and preservation of green open space in order to realize
what roughly translates as “lush and aesthetically pleasing machizukuri” (MLITT 2017e; 2017f). Between 2017and 2021, it is predicted that there will be about 100 cases of using citizens to revitalize parks (in 2017, there
were five.) Also, over the same 2017 to 2021 period, it is predicted that there will be 70 instances where aprivate core group maintains citizens’ (shimin) green space (there were 5 cases in 2017). As well, companies
involved in machizukuri can be designated to manage green space (MLITT 2017e; 2017f). Committees(kyogikai) have been established to deal with the revitalization of parks (MLITT 2017e; 2017f).
Ushiku City, Ibaraki Pref. Case Study Example
In the early 1990s (about 1992) site-level green space requirements for housing lots was described in a
diagram on p.5 in a machizukuri bylaw pamphlet, produced by Ushiku City Midori Ka (1990b). This site levelplan has been more or less reproduced in 2017 on the Ushiku City green section website (www.city.ushiku.lg.jp/
page/page000428.html).
But Ushiku does not have a basic plan for green space. In the 2011 Ushiku master plan there is muchreference to green space. On p.40 of the plan, for example, the plan mentions that there is a guarantee of green
space in the sphere of daily existence. Furthermore, on the same page of the plan green space-related objectives
are laid out: e.g., residents help to maintain small local parks and green areas, and satoyama and yatsuda
landscapes are preserved and maintained.
Aging Suburbs, Declining Populations, and the Growing Importance of Informal Green SpaceIn recent years, as mentioned above, suburbs have been aging, and residents have been aging in place. The
population has been declining in urban areas (MLIT 2007b). The Japanese population started to decline in
about 2005. In the context of declining populations, a lack of green space, and reduced municipal revenues,
Rupprecht (2017) has explored the idea of informal green space for Japanese cities. He states that some cities’
populations may decrease by 10% or more, but they are still lacking green space. There is also a declining budget
due to less tax revenue. Municipalities cannot afford to create new parks. But less land is needed to house people.
Could informal green space, e.g., vacant lots with vegetation or grass growing up through sidewalks, supplement
formal green space such as parks in shrinking cities?
Rupprecht (2017) studied four shrinking cities: Sapporo, Nagano, Kyoto, and Kitakyushu. In an online
survey he found that recreation and urban agriculture are preferred types of informal green space. In myquestionnaire study of landscape preference on the edge of Ushiku (Waldichuk 1995), I found that people were
not interested in untamed nature or green space as a place to live—Arne Kalland (2002) calls this nature in the
raw. Rather, respondents were interested in human-modified green space, which Kalland calls cooked nature.
Now the focus is on making cities more compact as the population shrinks—this involves a reorganizationof urban space (MLIT 2007b). Hirosaki in Aomori, for example, is a city that is being transformed into a
compact city. What will happen to green space in a compact city?
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Green Space and Suburban Planning in Japan

Probably green space will expand: There will be more garden plots, more informal green space, e.g., fallow.
If cities are left as is, much abandoned land can be made into green space, similar to cities around Detroit,
Michigan, which have been depopulating.
Large Scale Changes in Green Space
Yokohari and Bolthouse (2011) argue that due to the declining population in suburban areas, there will be
more vacant lots, enabling more farmland, and community gardens and thus more green space. Also, wooded
areas in the suburbs around Tokyo have been, and will continue to be, restored. Most of the people involved inthis work are retired baby boomers. Historically, agricultural land was much closer to the urban settlements ofTokyo (Edo). At the same time Morita et al. (2012) argue that it is time again to try to implement a new green
belt around Tokyo since farmland will likely expand as cities contract.
Small-Scale Changes in the Ushiku Case Study Example
In our case study example of Ushiku, the 2010 population of people 75 and over was 6, 129 (population
data source Rupprecht 2017, 2), whereas in 2040 it is estimated grow to 14,967. In Ushiku the city is proposing
to revitalize aging suburbs. It wants to develop green roads connecting neighbourhoods, and Ushiku Lake shore(Ushiku Master Plan 2011, p.32). Eight circular areas have been created around Ushiku, each of which iscentred around an elementary school. This green road network is highlighted in the 2011 master plan. One of
the first areas to be revitalized is the main road running east of the Ushiku railway station. This is known as
Keiyaki Dori, and involves lining the road with keiyaki trees. This is part of the machizukuri effort at city halland involves much public participation, including citizen and expert participation on a committee for the citywide project (Ushiku Shi 2011 & 2012; Pers. Comm., Ushiku City planning section).

Summary & Conclusion
A large-scale green belt was attempted twice after World War II and each time the plan failed, as there was
opposing to preserving so much green space, because it was on land that was in demand for urban development.
Farmland, such as productive green space and natural vegetation, functions as green space in suburbs. There
will be an increase of informal green space as populations decline and suburbs contract. There is a growing
importance of informal green space, which is cheaper to maintain than formal green space, e.g., in urban parks.
Finally, more green space is needed to protect an aging population living in a hotter Japan. The preservationand promotion of green space remains a national policy issue.

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Japanese Smart Communities as
Industrial Policy
Andrew DeWit
Abstract. This paper outlines two dueling narratives on Japan’s post 3.11 1 energy and environmental
policy. One narrative champions community power and maintains that Japan is a laggard on
renewables due to central-government reluctance. By contrast, the other narrative is technocratic, anddescribes a country forging ahead with a nationwide deployment of smart communities and smart
energy systems. The paper asks which narrative is based on greater evidence, and finds the latter tobe more credible. We also show that Japan’s technocratic policymaking aims to cope with the factthat Japan confronts the developed world’s most bracing combination of dependence on energy
imports, rapid ageing and depopulation, climate-change hazards, comparative economic decline,
fiscal crisis, and other stressors. All of these challenges are addressed by its well-financed and very
ambitious “Society 5.0” industrial policy. This paper argues that one of the key pillars of Japan’sSociety 5.0 is smart communities, as these are the locus for coping with energy, ageing, disaster threats
and related societal problems. Smart communities are also where energy, spatial, and other planningintersect. The paper also demonstrates that Japan’s technocratic industrial policy displays a striking
level of coordination across critical infrastructure networks, policy domains, agencies, business andcivil society, and even multipurpose dam systems.

Introduction
Many academic and activist observers of Japan believe the country’s energy-environmental policy isdominated by top-down, siloed governance and rent-seeking bureaucrats, who squander scarce public resourceson porkbarrel projects. They either ignore or deride smart communities as unrealistic or corporate-dominated,
and assert that Japanese policymakers are generally averse to renewable energy (ISEP 2017, 12; Green Watch
2016; Oshima and Takahashi 2016, 34; Takao 2016). This paper refers to them as “populists,” not in apejorative sense, but because their vision of aggressive environmental action is rooted in popular movements.
They also argue that Japan has poor targets and performance on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, minimal
carbon pricing and trading, and lacks an aggressive approach to replacing nuclear and fossil fuels with renewableenergy.

“3.11” refers to the natural and nuclear disaster that followed the massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11,
2011.
1

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Japanese Smart Communities as Industrial Policy

This paper does not disagree with allof these criticisms, not least because nocountry on Earth is doing an adequate
job of confronting the enormity ofclimate change. But I do assert the needto re-examine Japan in light of the fullrange of evidence rather than the items
critics, especially the populists, tend to
centre on. One example of this evidence
is the industrial policy mechanisms
outlined by scholars such as Carin
Holroyd in her Green Japan (Holroyd
Figure 1. Japan’s Dueling Narratives on Energy-Environmental Policy2018).
Below, I outline these narratives as stories, rather than exhaustively detail the populist critique and thenprovide extensive detail concerning what the technocrats are doing on integrated planning, fiscal, and regulatory
reforms. It is more apt to compress them into stories due to space restrictions and because the narratives are
told by two waves of policy entrepreneurs. The first wave, which includes former Democratic Party of Japan(DPJ) Prime Minister Kan Naoto, continue to argue that “Japan is a laggard.” The second wave is the“technocratic resilience” school. They built the smart community, national resilience, and Society 5.0
programmes and continue to elaborate them.
Figure 1 lists the main themes of these narratives. In the face of climate change the populists champion
mitigation, particularly by renewables (especially solar power 2). The populists are also resolutely anti-nuclear.
By contrast, the technocrats lead with adaptation and look to a broad portfolio of decarbonizing energy inputs(including nuclear), tools for efficiency and conservation, and synergies from broad collaboration. Second, thepopulists focus their analyses on subsidy mechanisms, especially the Feed-in Tariff, whereas the technocrats
incorporate such mechanisms into a larger, integrated industrial policy. In terms of agency, the populists
generally distrust the state and thus look to NGOs, local governments, and small business. By contrast, thetechnocrats include NGOs, local governments and business in a larger “whole of government” or indeed “wholeof nation” approach. And last, the populists look to “community power” initiatives as the spatial locus for leadthe “energy shift,” while the technocrats centre on smart communities as the locus of a larger, more inclusivetransition that encompasses transport, communications, water systems and other critical infrastructures (DeWit
2018).
It does not seem inapt to suggest that the populists’ approach is a species of the “folk politics” described byprogressive intellectuals Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams:[F]olk politics privileges the local as the site of authenticity (as in the 100-miles diet or local currencies);
habitually chooses the small over the large (as in the veneration of small-scale communities or local
businesses); favours projects that are un-scalable beyond a small community (for instance, general
assemblies and direct democracy); and often rejects the project of hegemony, valuing withdrawal or exit
rather than building a broad counter-hegemony. Likewise, folk politics prefers that actions be taken byparticipants themselves – in its emphasis on direct action, for example – and sees decision-making as
something to be carried out by each individual rather than by any representative. The problems of scale
Some authoritative visions for Japan, built with Japanese collaboration, insist solar energy could compose over 85%
of all energy by 2050. On this, see The Solutions Project (2017), whose main scientific advisors are Stanford University’s
Mark Jacobson and others (Hanley, 2018).
2

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and extension are either ignored or smoothed over in folk-political thinking” (Srnicek and Williams 2015,31).
The technocrats, by contrast, are rooted in established institutions and material infrastructures. They seek
to build on these, which necessarily limits their capacity propose and undertake radical, transformative change.
Their openness to compromise is surely a handicap in the face of a phenomenon as dynamic as climate change,
whose acceleration has helped engender a new geologic era. Scientific evidence strongly indicates the global
climate system has transitioned from the relatively placid Holocene era to an increasingly uncertain
Anthropocene (Hamilton, 2017). This change poses worsening hazards for human communities, their criticalinfrastructure, agriculture, and other crucial elements of the built and natural environments.
The key question is which approach - populist or technocratic - has led to more fruitful results.

The Populists: Japan is a Laggard
The first wave of policy entrepreneurs was in power when 3.11 occurred. Some of these policy entrepreneurs,such as former DPJ PM Kan Naoto, had regarded nuclear power as an important means of mitigation. But
3.11 saw them do an about-face and become core elements of a powerful anti-nuclear lobby that pressed for an
aggressive drive towards renewable energy. The populists continue to argue that the adoption of a robust feedin tariff, which pays a premium price for solar, wind and other renewables, will generate an energy revolution.
They highlight German, Danish and other successes, and imply that this price mechanism (along with carbon
pricing) could and should be the main driver in displacing nuclear as well as coal and other fossil fuels from thepower mix. They declare that rolling out renewable energy, especially through community-led initiative, willboth mitigate climate change and bolster civil society. Their narrative’s focus is thus climate change anddependent local communities. They believe distributed, renewable energy can help resolve climate change andre-invigorate local community.
In general, the populist model of governance is a particular vision of Germany. In Germany, they see a
country with ambitious plans for renewables, denuclearization, and emissions reductions, all fostered by suchpolicies as the feed-in tariff. Their rhetoric clearly indicates that they want Japan to be more like this idealizationof Germany, in mitigation policy as well as a “bottom up” activist civil society. They also distrust Japan’s central
state, which they see as top-down and sectionalist. They view the central government’s fiscal initiatives as
inherently wasteful and its regulatory reforms as largely biased towards the status quo. They therefore look to
local governments and NGOs as the ideal locus of governance. The case studies they privilege include Iida
City’s Ohisama mechanism for fostering community renewables. They display little interest in criticalinfrastructure and smart communities. 3
Thrown out of policymaking by the 2012 return of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), under PM Abe
Shinzo, these actors insist that renewable energy is being sidelined. They deride Japan’s current energy policy
as being focused on nuclear restarts rather than renewables. Their claim was disseminated internationally by

For example, on May 14 of 2016, Japan’s Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (ISEP) and 74 other green
organizations released their first “Green Watch Community Power Environmental White Paper.” Their document’s 128
pages completely ignore the role that policy integration plays in fostering such technology as microgrids and smart
communities. Instead, it depicts a top-down (tatewari gyousei) sectionalist state that favors big business (Green Watch
2016, 63-4) at the expense of the citizens, the latter allegedly being excluded from policymaking (Green Watch 2016,
63-67).
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Figure 2. Japan is Not Germany
Source: author

such organizations as the international environmental NGO German Watch, in its Climate Change
Performance Index 2017. German Watch ranked Japan’s climate performance as 60th, just above Saudi Arabia(German Watch 2016). 4
After 3.11, the community-power advocates soon became stymied by inconvenient truths. The abrupt shutdown of all nuclear plant coupled with the world’s most generous subsidies for renewable power (especially solar
panels) led to an expensive boom in solar but minimal investment in wind, hydro and other renewables. And
in place of nuclear, fossil-fuel generation (coal, natural gas and oil) surged. The populist emphasis on theGerman model generally overlooked the fact, as outlined in Figure 2, that Japan is an archipelago with nointernational power and gas networks through which to balance intermittent wind and solar. Their focus on
the seismic risk to nuclear also came at the expense of a more comprehensive framing of geologic and climate

Figure 3. People Power Projects in Japan

Based on interviews with the populists, German Watch represented Japan’s current energy policy as a story of nuclear
restarts rather than renewables
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hazards. They therefore overlooked the opportunity to pursue mitigation by leading with adaptation, a sharp
contrast to what the technocrats began doing.
Focused on expanding the role of renewables, the populists’ analyses also generally downplayed (or simply
ignored) the fact that, unlike Germany, Japan’s population is shrinking and ageing faster than anywhere else in
the world. Japan’s demographic shifts are particularly striking outside of Tokyo and in areas that have been hit
by disasters. Yet these demographic and spatial factors are especially important in an isolated archipelago thatcannot import and export power to balance intermittent renewables. Moreover, building an energy shift including new heat and power generation, transmission and distribution, and storage capacity – is an enormous
undertaking anywhere. But it is especially challenging when there is no clear idea of how many customers, andwhat kind of industry, will be in a given city or town a decade hence. That uncertainty is yet another reason it
is imperative to craft energy policy in tandem with spatial planning, disaster planning and other policies. It is
not enough to adopt very high feed-in tariffs and other subsidies and then rely on price signals to accomplish
the transition.
The populists’ reliance on community power also seems to have been inadequate, as indicated by theevidence adduced in Figure 3. The Figure displays the total capacity of Japan’s people-power projects identified
through a survey undertaken by Japanese environmental NGO Kikonet (Kikonet 2017). Kikonet is a core actor
in the populist network, resolutely anti-nuclear and anti-coal. So it is all the more instructive that Kikonet’s
own survey reveals how limited has been the impact of community groups. If one includes projects undertaken
before 3.11, community power has led to over 1000 projects nationwide. But its annual increase in initiatives
peaked in 2014 at 214 projects, falling back to 52 in 2016. Most of the projects are solar or wind, meaning thatmost of the total capacity of just under 90,000 kW (less than 1/10th of a single nuclear reactor). And worse yet,the power actually generated by these intermittent projects is only 12% (solar) or 20% (wind) of their total
capacity. 5
It would appear that in consequence of their idealization of foreign, especially German models, the populists
lack a credible industrial policy. Their work lacks a serious analysis of Japan’s powerful “Not in My Backyard”(NIMBY) problem, which blocks onshore wind, geothermal, hydro, and even local solar projects. Relying on
an idealized concept of individual rationality, they assert that local ownership of renewable projects is thesolution to NIMBY. But they conveniently ignore the myriad cases where public projects have been opposed. 6
It is very unlikely that people-power will engender a green revolution in Japan, given the scale of the challenge
in changing a modern industrial economy’s energy system. An energy transition certainly requires a lot morethan the solar panels and windmills that civil-society (even together with business) can put in place. At least inJapan, civil society lacks organizational coherence, energy literacy and financial resources to lead an energy
revolution. It is not even able to establish a Green Party. That should be obvious, but a lot of Japanese activists
and academics have a powerful commitment to community-based energy revolution. It is not even able toestablish a Green Party. That should be obvious, but a lot of Japanese activists and academics have a powerfulcommitment to community-based energy.

The IEA undertakes comparative studies on average generation capacity factors (meaning the percentage of energy
output versus rated capacity). Its survey of output between 2008-2012 indicates that Japan’s aggregate Figure for bothsolar and wind is 15 percent, far less than the 27 percent recorded for the United States, the 26 percent seen in Canada,
and the 18 percent Figure for China (IEA, 2015).
6
Indeed, when the robust feed in tariff was introduced in 2011-12, Japan’s “Wild Bird Society” (https://www.wbsj.org) and others mobilized to stop the spread of wind power. They succeeded in convincing the Ministry of
the Environment to adopt even more stringent environmental assessments for wind power than for coal (Looop Way,2017).
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Figure 4. Europe and Japan’s Power Grids
Source: METI, 2018

Technocratic Resilience
The competing “technocratic resilience” narrative is expressed in hundreds of reports on energy, disaster,
spatial and other planning. But it is conveniently distilled in a book edited by Kashiwagi Takao, titled “TheSuper Smart Infrastructure Revolution” (Kashiwagi 2016). Kashiwagi is Director of the Advanced Energy
Centre at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and a key policy entrepreneur in Japanese energy, spatial planningand other domains. The Kashiwagi book includes contributions by LDP Secretary General Nikai Toshihiro,
several central agencies, and the business sector. It describes an ambitious agenda on smart communities,
distributed energy and the critical infrastructure for a low-carbon society. Kashiwagi has been advocating smart
communities and smart energy for years, telling the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism(MLIT) in 2010 that they needed to shift the focus of public works from roads and bridges to smart energy
networks. Kashiwagi’s chaired many of the committees and other initiatives that have designed Japan’s energy
networks and the subsidies that finance them. Kashiwagi has also compiled over a dozen volumes on thisparadigm, including the 2012 “Smart Energy Revolution” book with Softbank CEO Son Masayoshi and
Masuda Hiroya. The latter is former Governor of Iwate Prefecture and former minister of General Affairs. Like
Kashiwagi, Masuda is a key policy entrepreneur on demography and compact spatial planning, and theirintersection with smart energy. 7
Indeed, as Governor of Iwate, Masuda oversaw the installation of 43 wind turbines in Kamaishi City, and hence
learned of the need for large-scale system and policy integration in order to cope with intermittent renewables (Masuda,
772Andrew DeWit

Japanese Smart Communities as Industrial Policy“Technocratic resilience” does not ignore the need to mitigate. Kashiwagi and his collaborators routinely
emphasize decarbonization. But the technocratic paradigm centres on adaptation to climate change as well as arange of other hazards. Its scientific assessment of climate risks, particularly hydrologic hazards, is more up todate than the IPCC’s rather optimistic projections. It asserts that building hard and soft resilience in the face of
these hazards fosters public goods and positive externalities. These public goods include enhanced domestic
disaster resilience, increased energy autonomy, revived local economies, and the potential to expand smart city
infrastructure exports.
Interestingly, like the populists, the technocratic model of governance also looks to Germany. But thetechnocrats see German local government and their public corporations, or stadtwerke, as the proper locus forbolstering local resilience. It also emphasizes a “whole of government” approach, one that builds on horizontal
collaboration across ministries as well as with business, academe and civil society. It accepts the feed-in tariff
and other policy supports, particularly as means to foster local revitalization via redistributing income fromurban centres to rural areas. The technocrats’ smart community projects include heat and power microgrids,
renewable inputs, storage, and plenty of other disaster-resilient critical infrastructure. They also include
municipal power projects and ambitious energy-environmental plans.
Figure 4 compares the European and Japanese power grids, to further illustrate how different Japan is as
well as highlight the structures that concern the technocrats. The Figure shows that Germany is part of a larger
EU system that is both synchronous (ie, the same 50 Hz electrical frequency across the system) and has twice
the power flows of the Japanese (Germany and France together equal Japan). The Figure shows there is ample
scope for power trading across countries, allowing intermittent renewable generation (eg, solar and wind) to bebalanced with hydro and other baseload power (meaning generation that is available 24/7).
I noted earlier that Japan is an energy archipelago. The Figure shows that it is not only isolated but still quite
balkanized internally. Japan has no truly national power grid structure, as it is separated in spatial and frequency
terms. West Japan runs on 60 Hz and East Japan is 50 Hz. That problem cannot be solved by simply building
more transformers and transmission links, which are quite expensive, require several years of planning andconstruction, and routinely confront NIMBY opposition. Added to these factors, Japan’s demographic, disasterand other risks undermine the economics of building a large, networked synchronous grid as in Europe or eventhe less integrated North American network.
At the same time, Japan’s roughly JPY 700 trillion worth of roads, waterworks, and other infrastructures ofthe built environment generally exceed what it needs in the face of ageing and depopulation (OECD 2016).
Lower population densities and per-capita incomes erode the fiscal capacity to afford the per-hectare costs ofmaintaining and replacing infrastructure networks. These kinds of variables have to be included in any analysisof the energy economy, because the structure of the built environment is a major determinant of per-capita
energy demand. Moreover, the built environment’s elements can be drawn on as new sources of energy
generation and storage, something the technocrats are doing for example with water networks.
It is also important to keep in mind that Japan’s rising per-capita infrastructure maintenance costs come ina general context of rising resource costs as well as increasing burdens for healthcare, pensions, food, and theravages of climate damage. Worse yet, all of these factors exacerbate one another. For example, an adverselychanging climate accelerates the wear and tear on the built environment, adds to the medical burdens of aging,and increases the cost of agriculture.
To cope with these challenges simultaneously, the Japanese emphasize integrated planning for thecommunity, including local heat and power networks. The expansion and integration of these projects areaccelerated by the coordination of energy policy, spatial planning and disaster planning, ICT-IoT investment,
harvesting of heat from sewers, and bolstering dam networks. Japanese policymakers seek to in order to2011).

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maximize the productivity of extant assets, cope with the daunting crisis of scarce human resources, raise energy
self sufficiency (from a perilously low 8%), monitor accelerating disaster risks, shrink the spatial and carbon
footprint of communities, and enhance the country’s export opportunities. The multiplicity of interlinked
imperatives facilitates broad, pragmatic collaboration.
In contrast to China as well as the EU countries and North America, Japan has limited prospects for large
investment in macro grids. A declining and aging population, coupled with several other factors (such as Japan’s
comparative isolation), means that ordinary market incentives are weakened. As we have seen, future energy
demand is difficult to assess (even as negawatts and other “energy services” rather than simply megawatts and
Btu’s). Nor can excess intermittent power be shipped, for example, to Scandinavian dams for temporary storage.
The technocratic response to this nexus of challenges has been to diffuse smart and clean energy byintegrating it with spatial planning, disaster planning, the diffusion of ICT-IoT, and other related areas. This
integration multiplies the co-benefits of action, clarifies demand profiles, and integrates other criticalinfrastructures (eg, the 470,000 km sewerages that have huge energy and disaster resilience potential).

Smart Communities
Let us turn to the smart communities that are the focus of technocratic policymaking. Figure 5, taken froma Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) publication, portrays how smart communities grow in the
midst of a typical Japanese city. Roughly 70% of Japan is mountainous, with half the population and threequarters of the assets concentrated into the 10% of land that is coastal flood plains. Hence it is appropriate thatthe city is on a coastal flood plain, with mountains in behind. Japan has some of the world’s worst seismic andhydrologic hazards, so many of this typical city’s schools, welfare facilities, municipal offices and other buildings
are designated as disaster shelters. This disaster designation makes the community facilities ideal anchor points
for the diffusion of smart energy systems that maximize the deployment of renewable energy.
The METI Figure makes it clear that deploying smart microgrids and renewable energy is a primary purposeof the smart community. The rings in the Figure demarcate areas where power and heat networks maximize theeffective use of distributed energy resources such as solar, wind, biomass, and battery storage.
In other words, within the overall urban landscape (or in rural areas), the smart community can be a clusterof residences, public facilities, factories, 8 commercial buildings, or indeed a mix of these. The key element is asufficient density of demand, within the community, for smart energy and disaster-resilience. In other words,
the Japanese smart community is a spatially-defined locus wherein disaster-resilience, energy efficiency and the
exploitation of renewable energy endowments are fostered by smart-energy systems.
These systems are networks. They include power microgrids, district heating and cooling networks, andhome/building/factory/community/mansion energy management systems (HEMS, BEMS, FEMS, CEMS,
MEMS). The networks also incorporate advanced energy storage, LED lighting, waste-heat recovery, and otherinfrastructure. All of these components represent the ongoing convergence of energy, new materials, ICT-IoT,

One example is the Toyota F-Grid project, outlined in a January 31, 2018 video (in English): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjnAargowNE
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Figure 5. Japanese Smart Communities
Source: METI, 2016.

and AI robotics. Japanese policymakers use smart communities to increase disaster resilience, economic
revitalization, energy security, socioeconomic equity, and related public goods (Kashiwagi 2016).
The integration of these discrete smart-community districts is how Japanese policymakers envision building
the overall smart city (Murakami 2017).
Smart communities are not trendy regional revitalization. They are written into Japan’s Society 5.0 industrial
policy, its 2016 “Energy Innovation Strategy,” and other core policies (Kashiwagi 2016; METI 2016). Smart
communities also Figure prominently in Japan’s disaster resilience and spatial planning (EcoNet Tokyo 62
2016, 13).
Japan’s smart-community industrial policy aims to reshape the energy economy and its criticalinfrastructures. The policy includes reducing reliance on the conventional power grid and other sprawling andvulnerable critical infrastructure.
As we have seen, Japan’s populists often deride integrated technocratic industrial policy as top-down,
porkbarrel politics and uninterested in renewable energy. But the fiscal, administrative and other evidence
indicates that Japanese governance is quite responsive and collaborative. Polling and other data described below
will show there are good grounds to conclude that the Japanese public, local governments and other stakeholders
both powerfully support the technocratic model and have prominent roles in it.
Japan’s technocratic approach centres on new networks. Figure 6 illustrates why networks are critical tomodern industrial policy. Smart networks are – as networks - comparable to the roads and conventional power
grids that were core networks in the Fordist economy as well as the railroads that were fundamental to
globalizing commodity trade during the steam-based economy. Nicholas Stern, the leading economist on75

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Figure 6. Networks in in Economic History
Source: Stern, 2015bclimate change and energy, highlights the role of networks during past and present waves of innovation. He
argues in his 2015 book Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change that:[e]conomic history tells us that networks, be they power grids or railways, played a central role in pasteconomic transformations: grids enabled great surges of creativity and innovation and led to opportunityand growth across the economy…More effective temporal and spatial management of the energy system,
for instance with smart technologies or increased flexibility of the energy markets, could aid in the
management of low-carbon generation, reduce the need for extra infrastructure, and unlock the potential
for renewable energy to meet both base and peak demand for energy (Stern 2015a, 48-9).
Building the transformative networks outlined by Stern is a massive undertaking. Japanese policymakers
were, in fact, quick to use 3.11 to accelerate the deployment of energy management systems, microgrids, andother networks. For example, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) undertook 290
smart network projects in 67 local communities (and community alliances) in the disaster-stricken Tohoku
region between 2011 and 2017 (MIC 2018). The MIC has also undertaken these projects throughout Japan,
and in collaboration with other agencies (as part of Society 5.0) is rolling out the 5th generation communications
networks that are essential for handling the massive flows of data from real-time monitoring and control ofmultiple parameters associated with mitigation and adaptation. MIC’s comparative surveys of Japanesecompetitiveness in smart energy and smart communities suggest that the Japanese have managed to hold asignificant share in a rapidly expanding global race. The most recent MIC (2018) data rank Japan second (witha comprehensive score of 57.1 in 2016) overall in Internet of Things (IoT) and Information andCommunications (ICT) markets globally, behind the front-rank US (67.7) and ahead of the Chinese (55.8).
The Germans, meanwhile are ranked fifth (47.9).
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Figure 7. Minamisoma’s Smart Community Plan
Source: Adapted from Minamisoma City (nd).

Japanese Examples of Smart Communities and Policy Collaboration
These collaborative investments are bearing significant fruit, in Tohoku and nationwide. One example of aJapanese smart community initiative is seen in Minamisoma City (pop 63,000), whose project is portrayed in
Figure 7. The city is very close to Fukushima, so emphasizes renewable energy and efficiency (along with electricvehicles and other smart-energy projects). The city started from 4% renewable in its power mix in 2011. It aims
for 65% by 2020, with a longer-term goal of 140% by 2050. I chose Minamisoma deliberately, because it is in
the disaster-stricken Tohoku region. The point is to show that the region is not at all being overlooked in what
is a collaborative and nationwide rollout of smart communities. One might just as readily have chosen otherexamples from Tohoku, including the very advanced smart community/smart city projects underway in Higashi
Matsushima City, Aizuwakamatsu City, Kamaishi City and many others.
Japanese policymakers are not only determined to use smart communities to maximize the diffusion ofrenewable energy and efficiency; they also integrate them with policies that encourage densification. This policy
integration is evident in Aomori Prefecture’s Hirosaki City. Figure 8 portrays the community energy system (amulti-role smart network) at the core of the city’s Smart City Vision. The system is to link up localized heat,
power and information networks as well as an array of decarbonizing inputs.
Phase 1 of Hirosaki City’s project ran between FY 2013 to 2017 and centred on the deployment of extant
technologies and disaster resilience. The city installed LED lighting, some solar, energy management networks,77Andrew DeWit

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Figure 8. Hirosaki City’s Smart City Vision 2017
Source: Hirosaki City 2017

advanced waste treatment, and other technologies. But in 2017, Hirosaki’s smart city plan was 4 years old. It
required updating because of massive and rapid technological changes.
Phase 2 of the smart city plan is to deploy the “community energy system” to link these projects. Hirosaki’s
community energy system is thus key to further reducing energy consumption, meaning both thermal andelectricity. It will also help cut reliance on electricity and fuels imported into the city. The incentives are huge:in 2010 JPY 36.3 billion yen flowed out of the city to regional utilities and other suppliers of energy and fuels.
By way of comparison, the city’s total revenues in FY 2013 were JPY 85 billion yen, of which local taxes totaled
JPY 20 billion and national subsidies amounted to JPY 37 billion.
Similar to other cases, Hirosaki City’s smart city plan includes creating a local power firm to institutionalize
cutting this outward flow of monies and keep it in the community. The local power firm uses the smart networks
and distributed energy as the basis for a business (Hirosaki City 2017).
Hirosaki is not a story of a local government acting in the face of central-agency opposition. Rather, central
government agencies extend fiscal, administrative and regulatory support for Hirosaki City’s ambition, just as
they do in all the other smart community initiatives. This fiscal and other support for local-community-led
power and thermal initiatives is characteristic of the long-term, collaborative planning that has evolved in post
3.11 Japan.
Figure 9 displays Hirosaki City’s spatial planning, or the “Locational Optimization Plan.” This plan is
explicitly integrated into the city’s smart city plan. As in virtually all Japanese smart community projects, policy78

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integration between energy and spatial planning has led to robust, collaborative, well-funded programmes tofoster densification. The policy integration centres on coping with depopulation and ageing in the context ofaccelerating climate change and other hazards. These Locational Optimization Plans are already guiding therelocation and densification of hospitals, schools, elderly care, and other public services. Density increases thecost-benefit performance of smart energy networks and inputs at the same time as it reduces energy use. For
example, densification reduces the need for motorized (especially single-car) transport in favour of public transit,
cycling, and walking. The reduced spatial footprint of the community also cuts the energy used to move wateraround. It also reduces the per-capita costs of maintaining roads and other critical infrastructure. This
integration of spatial planning with energy has accelerated over the past three years, with the number of cities
adopting spatial plans rising from 62 in December of 2014 to 384 in December of 2017. The initiatives havelinked most of the central agencies together, in the Compact-City Design Assistance Team, enhancing theeffectiveness of planning and spending through reducing overlap and other sources of administrative
inefficiency (MLIT, nd). 9

Figure 9. Hirosaki City Locational Optimization Plan
Source: Hirosaki City 2017

The MLIT-led Compact-City Design Assistance Team (CCDAT) was developed in March of 2015 under the
auspices of the Comprehensive Strategy for Regional Development, which itself was given Cabinet assent on December
27, 2014. The CCDAT is centred on the MLIT, but also includes representation from the Cabinet Secretariat, theReconstruction Agency, MIC, MOF, The Finance Agency, MEXT, MHWL, MAFF, METI, and MOE. This broad
representation is deliberate because designing the compact city includes addressing disaster resilience, regional
cooperation, urban farming, education, health and welfare, urban revitalization, local transport, revising local facilities,
residential areas, and schools. The CCDAT’s role is to deliberate with the specific local government concerning suchmatters as issues relating to the relocation of local facilities. The CCDAT then integrates how to relate policies (eg,energy, transport, disaster resilience) into an overall package of institutional reforms and fiscal measures to achieve
greater densities in tandem with better livability.
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Smart communities and national resilience are also powerfully supported outside the technocratic planners.
All levels of government and the general public appear more supportive of adaptation than mitigation.
For example, a March 2014 Japanese METI survey of smart communities showed that 82.2% of surveyed
local governments listed resilience against disasters as their top priority for undertaking a smart community
project (Ogura 2014).
Moreover, Japan’s most recent annual and authoritative “Environmental Consciousness Survey,” showedthat the country’s strongest level of consensus for any initiatives related to energy and the environment was the
77.8% support for using public funds to build resilience in the face of climate change (NIES 2016, 20).
Another example of this support for resilience is seen in Table1. The table reproduces the most recent resultsof Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s (TMG) annual survey of 3000 residents concerning the priorities theywish TMG to pursue. The results indicate that disaster risk reduction (DRR) was ranked #1 from 2012 to2014, then dipped to #4 in 2015, but rose again to 2nd place in 2016. In 2017, it returned to the top, just above
public safety (ie, policing etc). Environmental measures (Enviro) routinely score far lower, being 7th in 2017(chosen by 23.2% of respondents as a priority).
Rank

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

1st

DRR (54.9)

DRR (52.7)

DRR (49.4)

Aging (49.8)

Aging (49.8)

DRR (49.4)

2nd

PS (47.5)

PS (48.1)

PS (47.7)

PS (48.7)

DRR (48.6)

PS (48.2)

3rdAging (43.6)

Aging (42.2)

Aging (46.5)

Med. (41.9)

PS (48.1)

Aging (46.7)

4th

Med. (41.5)

Med. (38.0)

Med. (43.1)

DRR (41.6)

Med. (41.7)

Med. (41.5)

5thEnviro (25.8)

Enviro (25.8)

CA (26.5)

Trans. (23.1)

Admin (27.1)

Admin. (31.2)

Legend: DRR = Disaster Risk Reduction; PS. = Public Safety; Med. = Medical Services and Sanitation; Enviro. =Environment; Admin. = Administration and Finance; CA = Consumer Affairs; Trans. = Transportation
Table 1. Tokyo Metro Resident Survey of Priorities, 2012-2017
Source: TMG 2017

This survey indication that TMG residents strongly support spending on resilience, much more than
explicitly environmental measures, is one reason to look for how policymakers link their energy projects to the“resilience” theme. In TMG, the approach is evident in the use of the sewerage network as an anti-flood system(integrated with advanced radar and supercomputing) as well as a means for boosting TMG energy and cutting
its GHG emissions (sewer operations result in 35% of TMG greenhouse gas emissions). 10 TMG’s FY 2018budget projects spending JPY 88.7 billiomn on the smart city, an increase of JPY 16 billion over the previous
year. Given the above, it is no surprise that mitigation measures (including EVs, solar, Hydrogen Stations) arebudgeted at JPY 12.7 billion while adaptation measures (bolstering river levees) are budgeted at JPY 76 billion(TMG 2018).

TMG’s use of its sewerages to adapt and mitigate is described in its excellent series of short videos (in Japanese),“Tokyo JOBs,” released in May of 2017. The system integration with advanced radar and computing is described in“Real-time rainfall information” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPaf3SDBrX4) and the use of sewerages toincrease renewables and reduce demand is outlined in “Effective use of energy” (https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=tqmbz8zDV9g)
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In short, the evidence suggests that Japanese local governments and the public are quite amenable tochanging the built environment as an adaptation response.

Conclusions
The evidence indicates that, at least in Japan, the technocratic narrative is more credible and that its approachproduces more robust results. Smart communities are clearly the core of an impressive, and expanding, energyenvironmental policy regime. That said, the populist narrative is certainly correct that Japan could and shouldhave more ambitious targets for renewable energy and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But the populists
downplay the crucial role of collaborative agency and critical infrastructure, even though a rapid shift torenewables surely relies on both. That is, they do not ask whether civil society-centred governance has theorganizational discipline to lead a cost-effective and competitive energy-environmental revolution in a country
beset with an unparalleled array of demographic, fiscal, climate and other challenges. Their literature insteademphasizes reforms to the feed-in tariff, enhanced grid access, and other regulatory measures that they believe
would increase community-power projects. But they shy away from discussing how one actually incentivizes
the massive and rapid rollout of the critical infrastructures, such as smart networks, that allow the local political
economy to maximize its exploitation of renewable endowments while minimizing energy consumption. And
their interest in hazards extends only to seismic risks to nuclear facilities. They rarely, if ever, discuss the fullslate of hazards and the urgent imperative of adaptation to climate change.
Indeed, the populists appear to perceive adaptation as coming at the expense of mitigation. Yet the global
specialist debate now recognizes the urgency of doing both and the fact that they often overlap. 11 Abundantevidence indicates the potentially decarbonizing impact of resilient adaptation, especially when coordinated at
the national level to maximize public goods and positive externalities. For example, compact cities and green
infrastructure are inherently mitigating as well as robust in the face of mounting risks of flood, fire and otherdisasters (Bay and Lehmann 2017). So too are the smart distributed energy networks that are growing fromwithin vulnerable, carbon-intensive conventional power and heating systems (MIT 2016). Japanese technocrats
and their adaptation-led smart communities thus deserve more attention. They appear to offer valuable lessons
in linking institutions, infrastructures, and actors towards resilient and equitable decarbonization.

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83About the authors
Joseph Caron is former Ambassador of Canada to Japan
Natasha Fox is a Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia
Noriko Yabuki-Soh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics,
York University
Jay Goulding is a Professor in the Department of Social Science, York University
Sachiyo Kanzaki is a Lecturer in the School of Modern Languages, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)
Tom Waldichuk is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies,
Thompson Rivers University
Andrew DeWit is a Professor in the School of Policy Studies, Department of Economics, Rikkyo University

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