The Ethics of Japan's Global Environmental Policy
The Ethics of Japan's Global Environmental Policy

Author: Midori Kagawa-Fox

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-06-12

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1136481729

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines the Japanese government policies that impact on the environment in order to determine whether they incorporate a sufficient ethical substance. Through the three case studies on whaling, nuclear energy, and forestry, the author explores how Western philosophers combined their theories to develop a ‘Western environmental ethics code’ and reveals the existence of a unique ‘Japanese environmental ethics code’ built on Japan’s cultural traditions, religious practices, and empirical experiences. Kagawa-Fox’s discussions show that in spite of the positive contributions that Japan has made towards the global environment, the government has failed to show a corresponding moral obligation to the world ecology in its environmental policy. The book argues that this is a result of the integrity of the policies having been compromised by vested interests and that Japanese business and politics ensure that the policies are primarily focused on maintaining sustainable economic growth. Whilst Japan's global environmental initiatives are the key to its economic survival in the 21st century, and these initiatives may achieve their aims, they do however fail the Japanese code of environmental ethics. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Environmental Studies, Environmental Policy and Ethics, Japanese Politics and Japanese Culture and Society.

Japan at Nature's Edge
Japan at Nature's Edge

Author: Ian Jared Miller

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2013-07-01

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0824838777

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Japan at Nature’s Edge is a timely collection of essays that explores the relationship between Japan’s history, culture, and physical environment. It greatly expands the focus of previous work on Japanese modernization by examining Japan’s role in global environmental transformation and how Japanese ideas have shaped bodies and landscapes over the centuries. The immediacy of Earth’s environmental crisis, a predicament highlighted by Japan’s March 2011 disaster, brings a sense of urgency to the study of Japan and its global connections. The work is an environmental history in the broadest sense of the term because it contains writing by environmental anthropologists, a legendary Japanese economist, and scholars of Japanese literature and culture. The editors have brought together an unparalleled assemblage of some of the finest scholars in the field who, rather than treat it in isolation or as a unique cultural community, seek to connect Japan to global environmental currents such as whaling, world fisheries, mountaineering and science, mining and industrial pollution, and relations with nonhuman animals. The contributors assert the importance of the environment in understanding Japan’s history and propose a new balance between nature and culture, one weighted much more heavily on the side of natural legacies. This approach does not discount culture. Instead, it suggests that the Japanese experience of nature, like that of all human beings, is a complex and intimate negotiation between the physical and cultural worlds. Contributors: Daniel P. Aldrich, Jakobina Arch, Andrew Bernstein, Philip C. Brown, Timothy S. George, Jeffrey E. Hanes, David L. Howell, Federico Marcon, Christine L. Marran, Ian Jared Miller, Micah Muscolino, Ken’ichi Miyamoto, Sara B. Pritchard, Julia Adeney Thomas, Karen Thornber, William M. Tsutsui, Brett L. Walker, Takehiro Watanabe.

Japan's Environmental Politics and Governance
Japan's Environmental Politics and Governance

Author: Yasuo Takao

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-11-03

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1317517784

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Environmental issues stretch across scales of geographic space and require action at multiple levels of jurisdiction, including the individual level, community level, national level, and global level. Much of the scholarly work surrounding new approaches to environmental governance tends to overlook the role of sub-national governments, but this study examines the potential of sub-national participation to make policy choices which are congruent with global strategies and national mandates. This book investigates the emerging actors and new channels of Japan’s environmental governance which has been taking shape within an increasingly globalized international system. By analysing this important new phenomenon, it sheds light on the changing nature of Japan’s environmental policy and politics, and shows how the links between global strategies, national mandates and local action serve as an influential factor in Japan’s changing structures of environmental governance. Further, it demonstrates that decision-making competencies are shared between actors operating at different levels and in new spheres of authority, resulting from collaboration between state and non-state actors. It highlights a number of the problems, challenges, and critiques of the actors in environmental governance, as well as raising new empirical and theoretical puzzles for the future study of governance over environmental and global issues. Finally, it concludes that changes in the tiers and new spheres of authority are leading the nation towards an environmentally stable future positioned within socio-economic and political constraints. Demonstrating that bridging policy gaps between local action, national policy and global strategies is potentially a way of reinventing environmental policy, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Environmental Studies, Environmental Politics and Japanese Politics.

Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement
Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement

Author: Simon Avenell

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2017-04-01

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 0824874382

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What motivates people to become involved in issues and struggles beyond their own borders? How are activists changed and movements transformed when they reach out to others a world away? This adept study addresses these questions by tying together local, national, regional, and global historical narratives surrounding the contemporary Japanese environmental movement. Spanning the era of Japanese industrial pollution in the 1960s and the more recent rise of movements addressing global environmental problems, it shows how Japanese activists influenced approaches to environmentalism and industrial pollution in the Asia-Pacific region, North America, and Europe, as well as landmark United Nations conferences in 1972 and 1992. Japan’s experiences with diseases caused by industrial pollution produced a potent “environmental injustice paradigm” that fueled domestic protest and became the motivation for Japanese groups’ activism abroad. From the late 1960s onward Japanese activists organized transnational movements addressing mercury contamination in Europe and North America, industrial pollution throughout East Asia, radioactive waste disposal in the Pacific, and global climate change. In all cases, they advocated strongly for the rights of pollution victims and people living in marginalized communities and nations—a position that often put them at odds with those advocating for the global environment over local or national rights. Transnational involvement profoundly challenged Japanese groups’ understanding of and approach to activism. Numerous case studies demonstrate how border-crossing efforts undermined deeply engrained notions of victimhood in the domestic movement and nurtured a more self-reflexive and multidimensional approach to environmental problems and social activism. Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement will appeal to scholars and students interested in the development of civil society, social movements, and environmentalism in contemporary Japan; grassroots inter-Asian connections in the postwar period; and the ways Asian countries and their citizens have shaped and been influenced by global issues like environmentalism. An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher.