Japan’s Nuclear Village: Change and Continuity in Interest Group Politics after 3.11

The 2011 tsunami and following nuclear accident in Fukushima initially have been interpreted as a decisive moment for change in Japanese nuclear policy. Especially since an unprecedented series of demonstrations in 2012, civil society was expected by many observers to have a profound impact on policy in this field (e.g. Aldrich 2013). Five years after the accident it is time for a re-assessment of what has changed and what hasn’t in Japanese nuclear policy. While there have been far-reaching reforms of the nuclear administration with the creation of a new government agency under the supervision of the Environmental Ministry and long-lasting stop and re-inspections of all Japanese nuclear reactors, the national policy goals have remained rather stable since the establishment of the Abe-administration in late 2012. In my paper I look at a group of political actors aiming for continuity in nuclear power policy, the so-called nuclear village. I argue that the informal institutional base of these actors i.e. their public-private funding models, and their strong networks into the fields of bureaucracy, politics and journalism have given them a decisive edge over nuclear-skeptical civil society groups. While it has been argued that many Japanese civil society groups consist of “members without advocates” (Pekkannen 2006) I examine a couple of pronuclear NPOs and foundations actually consisting of advocates without members. The groups are organized in collaboration between actors from business, academia and bureaucracy and have until 2011 played an important role in keeping nuclear power on the Japanese political agenda. I trace the lineage of these groups from prewar moral suasion campaigns (Garon 2003) to the present arguing they were an important element for continuity in Japanese nuclear power policy. Secondly I try to assess whether their institutional basis changed after 2011 Fukushima accident and what these changes mean for civil society-politics interactions. I use mainly data from the online NPO database of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government as well as published reports and archive material to examine these NPO’s background, membership structure and financial funding models. Aldrich, Daniel (2013). Rethinking civil society-state-relations in Japan after the Fukushima accident. In Polity 45 (2): 249-264. Garon, Sheldon (2003). From Meiji to Heisei. The state and civil society in Japan. In Schwartz, Frank; Pharr, Susan (eds.). The state of civil society in Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 42-62. Pekkanen, Robert (2006). Japan’s dual civil society. Members without advocates. Stanford: Stanford University Press.