New evidence from the Japanese government indicates that long-delayed plans to build a new Marine base at Okinawa's Henoko will be further delayed with best prospects for completion of the project now pushed back to approximately 2032, or fifteen years. The cause of the delay, which may in fact preclude completion of the costly project permanently, is the discovery of soil in the bay of the consistency of mayonnaise, requiring implanting of 77,000 sand pillars at great depth prior to land filling. Together with the robust anti-base movement, the prospects for completion of the Henoko base continue to fade.

In recent years, Japan has been labeled an “environmentally backward country.” Yet Japan's integration of decarbonization and all-hazard-resilience is more advanced than critics generally admit. The evidence shows that, when compared to its peer countries, Japan is achieving significant climate mitigation and adaptation via a multilevel industrial policy. Moreover, Japan's synergistic integration of mitigation and adaptation to climate is important for the 2030 Agenda, which comprises the Paris Agreement, Sustainable Development Goals, and the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction. That is not to say Japan's present pace of reductions in emissions and waste, increased resilience against climate and other hazards, and performance on other metrics is sufficient to meet the goals of the 2030 Agenda. However, the evidence assessed in this paper suggests that Japan deserves closer scrutiny for potential lessons in collaborative, cost-effective and equitable mitigation and adaptation.