Japan
Written records of pollution and environmental problems in Japan can be found from as far back as the 1600s, but it was not until the latter half of the 1800s that such problems arose routinely in connection with economic activities, and that especially i
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Japan Enviromental Council (ed.), The State of the Environment in Asia © Springer-Verlag Tokyo 2000
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1. Introduction Written records of pollution and environmental problems in Japan can be found from as far back as the 1600s, but it was not until the latter half of the 1800s that such problems arose routinely in connection with economic activities, and that especially in the 1880s when the Industrial Revolution came to Japan. Already in the 1870s the Japanese word for "pollution" had been coined, and by the first two decades of the 1900s it was being used as a catch-all term for air, water, and noise pollution, vibration, unpleasant odors, and other things detrimental to public health. Some of the main instances of prewar pollution were water contamination by the Ashio copper mine, sulfurous acid gas from copper smelting in Besshi, Hitachi, and Kosaka, and air and water pollution in places including Osaka, Amagasaki, and Kawasaki. These and other frequently occurring problems made political waves at that time. Among mainly victimized farmers there was a great deal of opposition and they carried out campaigns for redress, in some cases lasting as long as 50 years. Thus already in the prewar years, antipollution movements had devised all the currently conceivable principles for dealing with pollution, such as stopping sources, dispersion and dilution using high smokestacks and other means, scattering factories instead of building in clusters, and emergency measures enacted as when meteorological conditions worsen. Especially in the late 1920s and 1930s there were advances in research on pollution control technologies. One landmark achievement was the world's first practical flue gas desulfurization by Sumitomo Metal Mining in 1934, which was induced by pressure from local citizens. Compensation won by pollution victims, which would amount to about 10 billion yen when converted to present monetary value, was all used to build public facilities for the local community instead of being divvied up among the victims for personal use. Quite unfortunately, however, the corporations and the national and local governments completely forgot about these valuable experiences during the economic growth period in the Second World War and thereafter, and neglected to take the necessary measures against pollution. As a consequence, many areas of postwar Japan became the scenes of serious pollution and environmental damage that were nearly unprecedented worldwide. Below we shall start by reviewing pollution and other environmental problems in postwar Japan.
2. Brief History of Environmental Problems in Postwar Japan Postwar Japan's environmental problems can be divided into five time periods, each of which is examined briefly below.
2·1 Rapid Growth and Serious Pollution (1954· 1964) After World War II, especially during the two decades beginning in 1954, Japan's economy took the express lane to establishing the heavy and chemical industries, and to building big cities. Although heavy pollutant emissions were naturally expecte
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