Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Triggers For Policy Change: The 3.11 Fukushima Meltdowns And Nuclear Policy Continuity, Daniel P. Aldrich, Summer Forester, Elisa Horhager

Daniel P Aldrich

Review Of Koichi Hasegawa's Book Beyond Fukushima, Daniel P. Aldrich

Daniel P Aldrich

All Politics Is Local: Judicial And Electoral Institutions’ Role In Japan’S Nuclear Restarts, Daniel P. Aldrich, Timothy Fraser

Daniel P Aldrich

Rethinking Civil Society-State Relations In Japan After The Fukushima Incident, Daniel P. Aldrich

Daniel P Aldrich

The 3/11 combined disaster in Japan focused both Japanese civil society and government decision makers on the issue of nuclear power. Whereas surveys over the post war period indicated that many Japanese supported the growing role of nuclear power in Japan’s overall energy policy, the current crisis has resulted in a sea-change in public opinion. Even though some scholars have depicted Japanese civil society as comparatively weak and poorly organized, the disaster has stimulated citizen science, prompted large protests, and spurred many to challenge governmental authority. This article investigates the ways that Japan’s relatively stable patterns of state-and-civil-society relations have …

A Normal Accident Or A Sea-Change? Nuclear Host Communities Respond To The 3/11 Disaster, Daniel P. Aldrich

Daniel P Aldrich

While 3/11 has altered energy policies around the world, insufficient attention has focused on reactions from local nuclear power plant host communities and their neighbors throughout Japan. Using site visits to such towns, interviews with relevant actors, and secondary and tertiary literature, this article investigates the community crisis management strategies of two types of cities, towns, and villages: thosewhich have nuclear plants directly in their backyards and neighboring cities further away (within a 30 mile radius). Responses to the disaster have varied with distance to nuclear facilities but in a way contrary to the standard theories based on the concept …

Post-Crisis Japanese Nuclear Policy: From Top-Down Directives To Bottom-Up Activism, Daniel P. Aldrich

Daniel P Aldrich

Over the past fifty years, Japan has developed one of the most advanced commercial nuclear power programs in the world. This is largely due to the government’s broad repertoire of policy instruments that have helped further its nuclear power goals. These top-down directives have resulted in the construction of 54 plants and at least the appearance of widespread support for nuclear power. By the 1990s, however, this carefully cultivated public support was beginning to break apart. And following the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011 and resulting nuclear crisis in the Fukushima nuclear complex, the political and social landscape for …

Hatoko Comes Home: Civil Society And Nuclear Power In Japan, Daniel P. Aldrich, Martin Dusinberre

Daniel P Aldrich

This article seeks to explain how, given Japan’s “nuclear allergy” following World War II, a small coastal town not far from Hiroshima volunteered to host a nuclear power plant in the early 1980s. Where standard explanations of conten- tious nuclear power siting decisions have focused on the regional power utilities and the central government, this paper instead examines the importance of historical change and civil society at a local level. Using a microhistorical approach based on interviews and archival materials, and framing our discussion with a popular Japanese television show known as Hatoko’s Sea, we illustrate the agency of municipal …