Abstract
Water pollution is a significant environmental problem. Success or failure of water pollution control policy depends primarily on effluent standards, monitoring systems, and central–local government relations. This paper focuses on the relationship between the central government and the Kanagawa Prefecture government in Japan concerning the history of water pollution control policy from the 1950s to the early 1970s. Kanagawa Prefecture is next to Tokyo, and the Kanagawa Prefecture government has been a leader regarding environmental policy at the local level in Japan. This paper examines two aspects of water pollution control history in Japan. The first is the reason behind the implementation of a unique water pollution control policy by the Kanagawa Prefecture government against the central government, although two of its governors were conservatives. In other words, this paper examines what other historical factors exist to promote or formulate water pollution control policy, other than ideology. The second aspect involves examining what central–local government relations mean, how they change, when and how national policy change affects local policy change, and vice versa.
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Notes
Many Japanese acts, prefecture ordinances, etc. are not formally translated in English. Thus, we must translate them informally. To avoid reader confusion, the formal numbers of the acts, prefecture ordinances, etc. are shown in the text.
“The term leftist [local] governments refers to cases where the local executive is elected with the support of the Japan Socialist Party or the Japan Communist Party, or both. Ideologically these governments are clearly linked to the national-level political opposition” (Muramatsu 1997, p. 44). In addition, leftist local governments “did emphasize official reports and public relations, compensating for the political loss of ‘direct ties to the center’ with ‘direct ties to the citizens’” (Muramatsu 1997, p. 45).
Governor Tsuda received strong support throughout Kanagawa Prefecture, so he was considered a great administrator. Although the Liberal Democratic Party expected that Mr. Tsuda would be a candidate of the Kanagawa Prefecture governor election that would be held in 1975, in October 1974, he declared he would not run for governor due to health reasons (Asahi-shimbun 1974).
The total population of Kanagawa Prefecture grew rapidly: 2,183,019 in 1940; 1,865,667 in 1945; 2,487,665 in 1950; 2,919,497 in 1955; 3,443,176 in 1960; and 4,430,743 in 1965 (See Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Statistics Bureau 2014).
The number of members of the 1951 Committee was increased several times. For example, the number in December 1963 was 29 members, comprised of seven administration officials, eight members of the Kanagawa Prefectural assembly, nine main municipalities, and five others. Seven members of the Kanagawa Prefectural assembly were selected not by ideology of political parties but from the electoral zones of Yokohama and Kawasaki City, because there was a significant amount of environmental pollution in Yokohama and Kawasaki City (Noda 2012a, pp. 123–124).
For example, the purpose of the 1959 revision was to coordinate environmental administration with the urban planning administration in the Kanagawa Prefecture government, because the mixture and proximity of factories and houses in towns caused serious environmental problems (Noda 2012a, p. 130).
In general, scholars of environmental law or environmental policy do not research the Old Tow Laws, because they are judged to be faulty. However, Terao (2011) re-evaluates the laws based on environmental policy history.
Policy-making procedures of the Water Pollution Control Law have not been studied. The remaining issue is to study the procedures, especially regarding the issue of who decided to expand the governor’s authority.
At the same time, many local elections were held. Ryokichi Minobe was elected Governor of Tokyo, and he was the first leftist governor in Tokyo Metropolitan (Asahi-shimbun 1967).
It is said that the administration made this decision based on the advice of a professor of administrative law who was a member of the Promotion Headquarters (Kanagawa Institute for Local Autonomy 1989, p. 107).
A member of the Promotion Headquarters noted at the first meeting of the Promotion Headquarters, that factories or office owners could not resist more rigid environmental policy because Kanagawa Prefecture was located near a large metropolitan area, Tokyo (Kanagawa Prefecture Archives H23-056-11[2]). We think that this proximity was one of the major factors in implementing more rigid environmental policy.
We think that this historical function shows path dependence as emphasized by Paul Pierson (e.g. Pierson 2004), but we will examine this issue in the future.
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Acknowledgments
This paper was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 22710047, and Tokyo Keizai University Research Grant Number 14–23. I am very grateful to the reviewers for their comments and suggestions. I would like to thank Editage (www.editage.jp) for English language editing. All remaining errors are my own.
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Noda, K. Water pollution control history in Japan, effluent standards, and central–local government relations. Water Hist 7, 337–356 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-014-0122-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-014-0122-6