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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Japan's December 14 general election is essentially a rigged referendum on Abenomics. Despite the dismal economic news, team Abe can hardly lose against the splintered and poorly led opposition parties at the national level. The hapless Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) seems likely to gain some seats; but Abe has defined defeat as the loss of his parliamentary majority, which is simply not going to happen. Electioneering per se is set to begin on December 2. It will almost certainly not feature substantive debate on the stark choices confronting Japan, meaning how to achieve resilient, decarbonizing, resource-lite growth in the world's most rapidly ageing society. There will be no serious discussion of the fact that Japan faces among the direst threats from climate change, the developed economies’ most gargantuan public debt, extreme dependence on increasingly precarious fossil fuels, an unprecedented economic experiment (Abenomics) now clearly in deep trouble, dangerously poisoned relations with important neighbours, and a multiplicity of other challenges that collectively defy precedent. All developed and developing countries face dense clusters of “wicked problems,” particularly on the water-energy-food nexus in an epoch of climate crisis, but surely Japan's are among the most daunting if one strips out the failed states.
1 See Michael Cucek, “Abe Shinzo's Mock Test Election,” Shisaku, November 22, 2014.
2 See Sven Steinmo, The Evolution of the Modern States: Sweden, Japan, and the United States (Cambridge, 2010).
3 See Kashiwagi Takao (ed), Smart Communities: A Smart Network Design for Local Government Infrastructure (Tokyo: Jihyosha).
4 On the German financial elite's antipathy to expansionary fiscal policy, for Germany itself and the EU as a whole, see Marcel Fratzscher, President of DIW Berlin and Professor of macroeconomics and finance at Humboldt University, in “Germany's Four Neins,” Project Syndicate, November 21, 2014.
5 See pp 14-17 of the Cabinet's growth strategy (in Japanese).
6 See e.g. pp 8-12 for their keen awareness of developments in Germany and elsewhere and pp 40-41 for their awareness of the risk of building a Galapagos.
7 See Office of Naval Research, “Energy Action Month: ONR Expands “Green” Reach in Asia-Pacific,” October 27, 2014.
8 On this, see Anirudh Tikkavarapu, “Towards a Decentralized Nuclear Future,” February 25, 2014.
9 On various SMR designs, see Sharryn Dotson, “The Promise of Small Modular Reactors,” Power Engineering, October 21, 2014: http://www.power-eng.com/articles/print/volume-118/issue-10/features/the-promise-of-small-modular-reactors.html
10 Toshiba and Hitachi's smart community PR is readily available, in English and Japanese as well as in videos and documents. See, for example, “Smart Community Projects on “Eco-Island Miyakojima” of Okinawa,” Toshiba Smart Community Blog, July 15, 2014.
11 On this, see Kenji Kaneko, “Japan Announces Roadmap for Hydrogen Introduction,” Nikkei BP CleanTech Institute, July 3, 2014.
12 Kashiwagi's leadership message is available on-line in English.
13 On this see (in Japanese) Kashiwagi's description of the project in his article for the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism (MLIT), “The Smart City: Achieving Both Economic Development and Environmental Measures,” MLIT Shinjidai, Vol 71, February 2011.
14 See Paul Hockenos, “Local, Decentralized, Innovative: Why Germany's Municipal Utilities are Right for the Energiewende,” Energy Transition, September 28, 2013.
15 On this, see “Small-town Japan's big hopes for energy self-sufficiency,” Nikkei Asian Review, October 28, 2014.
16 See for example Komiyama's presentation on “Japan as Forerunner of Emerging Issues,” December 6, 2010.
17 The event is summarized by David Braun “Sustainable Cities: Challenges and Opportunities in Japan,” National Geographic, October 21, 2014.
18 They make this explicit in a Japanese-language discussion from October of last year, where they emphasize smart communities as core to growth. See Komiyama Hiroshi and Kashiwagi Takao, “The Outlook for Energy Policy and the Role of Heat Distribution Business,” Japan District Heating Council, October 2013.
19 These flagship projects are led by METI and grouped in the Japan Smart Community Alliance.
20 On this very important question of whether the public sector will lead or not, see Alex Marshall, “Big Data, Big Questions,” Metropolis, February 2014.
21 The role of the stadtwerke in smart communities is especially well-depicted in MIC's Local Revival Group's Local Policy Division's May 13, 2014 presentation (in Japanese) to the ruling LDP. See “Concerning the Project on Distributed Energy Infrastructure”.
22 On the basis of Nikkei BP's 2012 “Comprehensive Guide to Smart Cities,” Toshiba projected a total of 36 projects in Japan and 485 globally (including Japan's), with 217 of the global projects being centred on smart grids and renewable energy (see in Japanese “Growth Strategy for Building Smart Communities”). Japan's projects have since then increased to over 100, at least, and the 5000-member Smart City Council's 2014 “Smart Cities Readiness Guide” suggests there are several thousand projects underway globally.
23 See the website (in Japanese) for the EcoNet Tokyo 62 “Renewable Energy and Smart Community Research Commission,” which is to produce the handbook.
24 The Ider Project page and its numersous research reports (in Japanese) is here.
25 See, in Japanese, the Kanto Meti's page on its “sumakomi” (smart community) collaboration group.
26 See Stephen Voss “A Risk Index for Megacities,” September 5, 2006, and a more comprehensive list in Japanese.
27 See Jeff Spross, “Why Tropical Storm Vongfong May Just Be The Beginning For Japan,” October 12, 2014.
28 Streeck brilliantly and concisely explains how the Schumpeter-Goldscheid tax state became the debt state and is now (especially in Germany) a consolidation state that manifests an “uncompromising determination to place its obligations to its creditors above all other obligations” and a coalition of forces that stands in the ways of spending increases and indeed emphasizes cuts on all expenditure other than debt-service payments. See his “Buying Time: the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism,” talk on October 20, 2014 at the LSE. The cited remarks are at the 35:00-minute mark.
29 Michael Mann warns that deep cuts in CO2 have to start now, not sometime later, or humanity risks runaway warming and unimaginable, accelerating chaos.
30 See the excellent work by Clarisse Pham, “Smart Cities in Japan,” EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation, October 2014.
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