The Right to Demand: Citizen Activism and Environmental Politics in Japan

Abstract

Growth-oriented government policies in postwar Japan created high levels of domestic pollution. These conditions gave rise in the 1960s and 1970s to widespread public protests, spearheaded by locally based environmental "citizens' movements. "However, decreasing pollution levels, a weak tradi tion of citizen political participation in Japan, and the low environmental awareness of the average Japanese citizen all combined to weaken the in fluence o f thesegroups in the 1980s. Although some groups, especially anti nuclear movements, have had limited success, Japanese grassroots environ mental groups are still considerably smaller and less influential than their Western counterparts.