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Transnational Environmental Activism and Japan's Second Modernity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
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This article examines the new sphere of transnational activism in the Japanese environmental movement of the 1970s. What was previously a domestic phenomenon of local mobilizations against pollution and development expanded into a new array of transnational initiatives, many with a specific focus on pollution in the countries of East Asia. The article focuses on a transnational movement involving South Korean and Japanese activists to stop the relocation of a polluting mercurochrome plant from Japan to South Korea. I argue that such transnational involvement had a significant impact on activist identity. Within the framework of the Japanese nation, activists could seamlessly position themselves as victims of the state and industry. But transnational involvement upset this schematic by exposing their complicity in the transgressions of Japanese industry abroad. The result, I argue, was a more self-reflexive activist identity and the development of a kind of grassroots regional consciousness within some Japanese civic movements throughout the 1970s.
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References
Notes
1 Sidney Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 206.
2 Ulrich Beck, ‘The Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive Modernization,‘ in Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash eds., Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition, and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1994), 1-55.
3 Simon Avenell, ‘Japan's Long Environmental Sixties and the Birth of a Green Leviathan,‘ Japanese Studies 32, no. 3 (2012): 423-44.
4 T. J. Pempel, ‘Gulliver in Lilliput: Japan and Asian Economic Regionalism,’ World Policy Journal 13, no. 4 (winter 1996-7):18; Derek Hall, ‘Pollution Export as State and Corporate Strategy: Japan in the 1970s,’ Review of International Political Economy 16, no. 2 (2009): 262.
5 Hall ‘Pollution Export,‘ 262.
6 Hall, ‘Pollution Export.‘
7 Derek Hall, ‘Environmental Change, Protest, and Havens of Environmental Degradation: Evidence from Asia,‘ Global Environmental Politics 2, no. 2 (2002): 22, 23.
8 Ui Jun, ‘Pollution Export,‘ in Shigeto Tsuru and Helmut Weidner eds., Environmental Policy in Japan (Berlin: Sigma, 1989), 396, 401.
9 Ui Jun, ‘Kokuren kankyō kaigi hōkoku I,’ Kōgai Genron 13 (July 1972): 17-18. Reproduced in Saitama Daigaku Kyōsei Shakai Kenkyū Sentā ed., Ui Jun shūshū kōgai mondai shiryō 2 fukkoku ‘Kōgai Genron’ dai 1-kai haihon dai 3-kan (Tokyo: Suirensha, 2007), 221-2.
10 Matsuoka Nobuo, ‘Tōnan Ajia no tabi kara (Marēshia nite),’ Jishu Kōza 18 (Sept 1972): 2. Reproduced in Saitama Daigaku Kyōsei Shakai Kenkyū Sentā ed., Ui Jun shūshū kōgai mondai shiryō 1 fukkoku ‘Jishu Kōza’ dai 3-kan (Tokyo: Suirensha, 2005), 346.
11 Matsuoka Nobuo, ‘Mō hitotsu no omoni o seou kakugo o: Higashi Ajia no tabi kara (3),’ Jishu Kōza 20 (Nov 1972): 38. Reproduced in Saitama Daigaku Kyōsei Shakai Kenkyū Sentā ed., Ui Jun shūshū kōgai mondai shiryō 1 fukkoku ‘Jishu Kōza’ dai 4-kan (Tokyo: Suirensha, 2005), 106.
12 Inoue Sumio, ‘Bokura wa kōgai yushtsu to tatakai hajimeta,‘ Tenbō 191 (Nov 1974): 50.
13 Hirayama Takasada, ‘Tōnan Ajia kōgai saihakken no tabi (1) Tai nite,’ Jishu Kōza 31 (Oct 1973): 52. Reproduced in Saitama Daigaku Kyōsei Shakai Kenkyū Sentā ed., Ui Jun shūshū kōgai mondai shiryō 1 fukkoku ‘Jishu Kōza’ dai 2-kai haihon dai 1-kan (Tokyo: Suirensha, 2006), 382.
14 Hirayama Takasada, ‘Exporting Pollution (The Export of ‘KOGAI’),’ KOGAI: The Newsletter From Polluted Japan 2 (Winter 1974): 7; Inoue, ‘Bokura wa,’ 52.
15 Jishu Kōza Ajia Gurūpu, ‘Tai Asahi Kasei Sōda no kasen osen,’ Jishu Kōza 31 (Oct 1973), 48. Reproduced in Saitama Daigaku Kyōsei Shakai Kenkyū Sentā ed., Ui Jun shūshū kōgai mondai shiryō 1 fukkoku ‘Jishu Kōza’ dai 2-kai haihon dai 1-kan (Tokyo: Suirensha, 2006), 378.
16 Inoue, ‘Bokura wa,‘ 51.
17 Inoue, ‘Bokura wa,‘ 52-3.
18 Inoue, ‘Bokura wa,‘ 53.
19 Okuda Takaharu, ‘Nichitai o musubu kōgai hantai undō,’ Jishu Kōza 44 (Nov 1974): 41-54. Reproduced in Saitama Daigaku Kyōsei Shakai Kenkyū Sentā ed., Ui Jun shūshū kōgai mondai shiryō 1 fukkoku ‘Jishu Kōza’ dai 2-kai haihon dai 4-kan (Tokyo: Suirensha, 2006), 53; Okuda Takahara, ‘Documents of the First Co-operation Between Japanese Citizens and Thai People Acting Simultaneously to Stop the Exporting Pollution,‘ KOGAI: The Newsletter From Polluted Japan 7 (Spring 1975): 10-11.
20 Inoue, ‘Bokura wa,‘ 53.
21 Okuda, ‘Documents,‘ 11.
22 Hirayama Takasada, ‘Sōkan no ji,’ Geppō kōgai o nogasuna 1 (1974): 1; 1974/2/15; Inoue, ‘Bokura wa,’ 54.
23 Hirayama Takasada, ‘Toyama Kagaku, kōgai yushutsu chūshi!?’ Jishu Kōza 39 (June 1974): 28. Reproduced in Saitama Daigaku Kyōsei Shakai Kenkyū Sentā ed., Ui Jun shūshū kōgai mondai shiryō 1 fukkoku ‘Jishu Kōza’ dai 2-kai haihon dai 3-kan (Tokyo: Suirensha, 2006), 94.
24 Inoue, ‘Bokura wa,‘ 55.
25 Ogawa Hiroshi, ‘Ajia no mado: Nihon Kagaku no kōgai yushutsu o kokuhatsu suru,’ Jishu Kōza 42 (Sept 1974): 57. Reproduced in Saitama Daigaku Kyōsei Shakai Kenkyū Sentā ed., Ui Jun shūshū kōgai mondai shiryō 1 fukkoku ‘Jishu Kōza’ dai 2-kai haihon dai 3-kan (Tokyo: Suirensha, 2006), 307.
26 Hall, ‘Pollution Export,‘ 269.
27 Inoue Sumio, ‘Babanuki no riron o koete: Nihon Kagaku no kuromu tarenagashi to kankoku e no kōgai yushutsu,‘ Tenbō 204 (Dec 1977): 89.
28 Emphasis in original. Hirayama, ‘Toyama Kagaku, kōgai yushutsu chūshi!?‘ 95.
29 Hirayama, ‘Toyama Kagaku, kōgai yushutsu chūshi!?‘ 93.
30 Ogawa Yoshio, ‘Dai 2 no Toyama Kagaku = Nihon Kagaku no Kankoku e no kōgai yusutsu o yamesaseyo,‘ Geppō kōgai o nogasuna! Kankoku e no kōgai yushutsu o kokuhatsu suru 3 (August 1974): 2.
31 Ogawa Yoshio, ‘Dai 2 no Toyama Kagaku,’ 2; Masayoshi, Hideo, ‘Nikkan no genjō to kōgai yusutsu soshi undō.’ Geppō kōgai o nogasuna! Kankoku e no kōgai yushutsu o kokuhatsu suru 7 (Dec 1974): 1.
32 Inoue, ‘Bokura wa,‘ 59.
33 Kawana Hideyuki, Dokyumento Nihon no kōgai 13: Ajia no kankyō hakai to Nihon (Tokyo: Ryokufu, 1996), 101.
34 Kawana, Dokyumento Nihon no kōgai, 101.
35 Inoue, ‘Babanuki,‘ 91.
36 ‘Damatte irarenai: Jimoto higaisha ga dantai o kessei,‘ Tōyō Keizai Nippō (May 6, 1975). Reproduced in Geppō kōgai o nogasuna! Kankoku e no kōgai yushutsu o kokuhatsu suru 14 (July 1975): 31.
37 ‘Damatte irarenai,‘ 31.
38 Inoue, ‘Babanuki,‘ 92.
39 Hall, ‘Pollution Export,‘ 274.
40 See Oda Makoto, ‘Heiwa o tsukuru: Sono genri to kōdō - hitotsu no sengen,‘ in Oda Makoto, Oda Makoto zenshigoto 9 (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 1970), 113-31.
41 Aoyama Tadashi, ‘Nikkan jōyaku 10-nen to kōgai yushutsu hantai undō,’ Jishu Kōza 58 (Jan 1976): 64. Reproduced in Saitama Daigaku Kyōsei Shakai Kenkyū Sentā ed., Ui Jun shūshū kōgai mondai shiryō 1 fukkoku ‘Jishu Kōza’ dai 3-kai haihon dai 2-kan (Tokyo: Suirensha, 2006), 70.
42 Aoyama, ‘Nikkan jōyaku,‘ 68.
43 ibid.
44 Aoyama, ‘Nikkan jōyaku,‘ 67-8.
45 Aoyama, ‘Nikkan jōyaku,‘ 68.
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