Thomas Feldhoff

JAPAN'S REGIONAL AIRPORTS: CONFLICTING NATIONAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL INTERESTS

Abstract Globalization is currently a hotly discussed topic, and one of the most important means of linking modern industrialized and globalized societies is air transport. Since the late 1950s Japan has been expanding its airport infrastructure all over the country. The current peculiarities of the airport system cannot be attributed solely to natural and regional economic features, however. A particularly interesting and revealing question relates to the actors involved in Japanese airport policies and their strategies and interests. This paper will therefore focus on the politicians, ministerial bureaucrats and businessmen who form Japans so-called “iron triangle”. We will look at airport policies in hopes of gaining insights into the networks of relationships between these actors, their power structures and how stable these networks and structures are under the conditions resulting from the recent political reforms.

Post-Fukushima energy paths: Japan and Germany compared

Japan’s March 2011 triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown shattered the country’s nuclear-dependent energy policy. Questions about the long-term consequences of Fukushima still linger, but a political and economic re-evaluation of the costs and benefits of this high-risk technology is long overdue. Concerns about the future role of nuclear power are part of the larger international debate about energy security and climate change. Germany is frequently seen as leading the way toward a clean-energy future with its nuclear exit and renewables expansion, but both Japan and Germany have managed to maintain a secure energy supply with dramatically reduced—or even zero—nuclear power since 2011. A comparison of similarities and differences between Japan and Germany helps to explain each country’s responses to Fukushima and to draw out key lessons for future energy systems. Energy policies that scrutinize vested interests of the industry and allow for more decentralized energy systems, relying on more renewable energy sources and more programs for emissions reductions, are key in shaping the inevitable big shift.

Asset-based community development in the energy sector: energy and regional policy lessons from community power in Japan

ABSTRACT While promoting the expansion of alternative energy resources from the bottom-up, community ownership of assets is an important means to strengthen community resilience through local stakeholder engagement. This article argues that asset-based community development in the energy sector (ABCD-E) is a useful concept to frame our understanding of current Japanese community power initiatives which aim to reduce local dependencies on core executive decision-making and resource distribution, hence to reconfigure state–society and intergovernmental relations. Based on a case study of renewable energy projects in the City of Iida, located in Nagano Prefecture, empirical evidence for this multi-sectoral, place-based policy approach from Japan is provided. However, the tradition of central state authoritarianism, the interdependence and overlapping jurisdictional boundaries in the energy and regional policy areas, and vested interests of powerful interest groups pose strong barriers to energy-related ABCD functionality in the context of multi-level governance constraints.

Landes- und Regionalentwicklung zwischen Wachstum und Schrumpfung: Regionale Disparitäten und Räumliche Planung in Japan

Since the early 1950s, the Japanese government has followed a paradigm of ‘balanced regional development’ that is based on comprehensive planning approaches characterized by very high levels of central government control. However, the intended regional economic growth failed to occur and regional disparities continued to widen. Today, as Japan faces demographic changes as a regional challenge, the pressure to overcome traditional top-down planning policies is even greater. The degree of social acceptance of regional disparities is determined not least by normative decision-making in spatial planning and politics. In reality, the demands of these rural-peripheral and old industrialized regions that suffer a decline in population and thus their functional capability are politically highly sensitive. However, new spatial visions and strategies related to a ‘paradigm of shrinking’, as well as new forms of regulation including bottom-up approaches that challenge vested interests are still in question.