Nature and the Environment in Postwar Japan

by About Japan Editors

Background Information.

After World War II and especially during the decades of high-speed economic growth, Japan’s manufacturers were prodigious, largely unregulated polluters and Japan gained an unenviable reputation as the world’s most toxic country. Paul Ehrlich described Japan as the developed world’s “canary in the coal mine,” a nation so profoundly polluted that it functioned as a test case of how high human tolerance levels could be.   The air pollution in Tokyo was legendary: Mount Fuji was obscured behind a perpetual fog of exhaust and particulate matter, pulmonary complaints skyrocketed, and traffic police were equipped with oxygen tanks on particularly hazardous days. Japan’s rivers, lakes, and coastal waters were filthy, polluted by untreated sewage, highly toxic industrial wastes, and the run-off of agricultural chemicals. Fisheries suffered, often dramatically, as did people, most famously the residents of Minamata, a small village with a large chemical factory that dumped huge quantities of methylmercury into the local bay for decades. Other examples of environmental crisis were almost countless from the 1950s to the 1970s, including the rapid subsidence of major cities from the unregulated pumping of groundwater, fatal red tides, PCB contamination of cooking oil, arsenic in milk cartons, and the rampant logging of old-growth forests.

Starting in the mid-1960s, public outcry rose over the mounting levels of industrial pollution and the larger issue  of the costs (social, environmental, health, and cultural) of Japan’s rapid postwar economic development. The efforts of the Minamata victims to gain redress, played out in the courts and in the media, galvanized other sufferers from pollution-related illnesses (including cadmium poisoning and severe forms of asthma) to press corporations and the government for action. Public demonstrations in favor of tighter environmental regulation surged, fanned by left-wing political parties, active local environmental groups, and inspiration from environmental movements abroad. In response, the so-called “Pollution Diet” of 1970 passed a sweeping set of fourteen new laws that, at least on paper, constituted the strictest antipollution regime in the world. The new statutes made polluters financially responsible to their victims under civil law, provided for mediated dispute resolution, amended and tightened existing laws concerning air and water pollution, traffic and noise pollution, toxic waste disposal and the National Park system. From 1970 to 1975, central government spending on environmental issues went nearly doubled in real terms, while local government expenditures increased threefold and business investment in antipollution measures rose up to 40% annually. Such efforts led to rapid improvements, especially in air and water quality, and Japan was acclaimed internationally for its success in pulling back from the brink of environmental catastrophe.

Today,  Japanese attitudes toward nature and the environment still appear contradictory to many observers. Japan hosted the 1997 Kyoto Conference on global climate change and has been active in promoting international adoption of the Kyoto Protocol. Grass-roots environmental groups have flourished in Japan in recent years and many Japanese corporations are world leaders in the development of environmentally sensitive technologies. At the same time, Japan still has a reputation as an “eco-outlaw,” exporting many of its environmental problems to other countries (for example, by moving dirty production facilities to Southeast Asia) and engaging in many questionable environmental practices (including whaling, the trade in ivory, deep-sea dumping of toxic waste, and drift net fishing). Environmentalists also criticize Japan’s aggressive public works programs (which led to the paving of many watersheds over recent decades) and forestry policies (which have weakened forest diversity through monoculture plantations). Understanding how the Japanese venerate nature while still systematically exploiting the environment remains elusive to many Western observers, yet the Japanese are hardly alone among the residents of industrialized nations (including the United States) in professing a love for nature while simultaneously pursuing environmentally unsustainable lifestyles.

Learning Goals.

1.  Students will articulate the extent of the industrial pollution crisis which Japan faced in the 1960s and 1970s.

2  Students will understand the social protest movements which grew out of Japan’s environmental crisis and the belated response of the state to pollution problems.

3.  Students will understand how a profound and widespread belief in a uniquely Japanese appreciation for nature coexists with an equally profound and widespread proclivity to exploit and degrade the natural environment.

Standards.

 

Common Core Standards
College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading

 

• Standard 1.  Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
• Standard 4.  Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
• Standard 7.  Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Writing

• Standard 11.   Develop personal, cultural, textual, and thematic connections within and across genres as they respond to texts through written, digital, and oral presentations, employing a variety of media and genres.

College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Speaking and Listening

• Standard 1.  Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively. 

McRel Standards
World History

 

1.  McRel Standard 44.  Understands the search for community, stability, and peace in an interdependent world.

2.  McRel Standard 45.  Understands major global trends since World War II.

 

 

 

Language Arts

1.  McRel Standard 4.  Gathers and uses information for research purposes.

2.  McRel Standard 5.  Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process.

3.  McRel Standard 6.  Uses reading skills and strategies to understand and interpret a variety of literary texts.

 

 

 

Geography

1.  McRel Standard 14.  Understands how human actions modify the physical environment.

 

 

 

Health

1.  McRel Standard 2.  Knows environmental and external factors that affect individual and community health.

Key Concept.

Modern Japan's complex attitude towards the environment stems from the inherent tension in reconciling a tradition of reverence and a self-proclaimed affinity for nature with the degredation that can accompany rapid economic growth.

Essential Question.  

Primary Source.  

Thought Questions.

Activities

Focus Activity Ideas.

Ask students to answer, either orally or in paragraph form, the following questions: What is the government's role in protecting the environment?  What role do ordinary citizens play? 

Main Lesson Activity Ideas.

• Why did this episode attract so much attention, nationally and internationally? 
• Was this just about the plight of the poisoned and suffering residents of Minamata, or was it about also about larger issues? 
• Consider the uproar over Minamata as part of a backlash against untrammeled economic growth at any cost and national economic glory at the expense of individual wellbeing in postwar Japan. 
• Consider it also as an important example of a popular protest movement representing the disenfranchised in Japanese society against powerful corporate and government interests. Note how the protestors characterize the corporate executives (and, reflectively, themselves) in “We Citizens: Sit-In Strike Declaration.” It has often been said that environmental protests in Japan are typified less by outrage against the human devastation of nature than by the search for redress for the health and economic costs of environmental damage. Does this seem to be the case in the Minamata protests?

• How do these pollution incidents and protest cases relate to the Minamata example? 
• What does this variety of cases tell us about (1) attitudes toward the environment, (2) popular participation in political discourse, and (3) public attitudes toward the status quo and “iron triangle” government in postwar Japan?

3. Read and discuss the poems by Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko. As one would expect, the Emperor and Empress present very traditional perspectives on nature and the environment, suggesting (mainly implicitly) that the Japanese have a sophisticated appreciation for the environment and a historical love for the natural world. These poems could be supplemented by pictures of traditional Japanese art and gardens, and premodern nature poetry (such as haiku), all of which are available readily online. Note that the Japanese have a strong, historically rooted aesthetic sense of nature, but that that they have also shown a traditional willingness to manipulate nature (as with bonsai miniature trees or garden design).

4. Read and discuss Chapter 1 from Alex Kerr’s Dogs and Demons. According to Kerr, how “environmentally sensitive” are Japanese people and the Japanese government today? What is the “construction state,” how did it develop, and what are the consequences for the environment? 

Summative Activity Ideas. Have students list three examples of Japan's respect for nature, then three ways Japan has degraded the environment.  Can the students come up with any theories to reconcile this seemingly contradictory attitude?  Are similar contradictions found in the United States?

Resources.