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Even today as the population shrinks, politicians spend enthusiastically on building dams, paving hillsides and fortifying shorelines — what Alex Kerr, the author of the book “Dogs and Demons,” calls “Japan’s rampant and escalating assault on its rivers, mountains and coasts.”
And yet Japan is a much healthier place to live today than in the 1960s. It cleaned up in part by convincing academia and business that potential profits lay in resolving environmental problems. Kitakyushu — a city in northern Kyushu where chemical and heavy industries contaminated a local bay so badly it became known as the “Sea of Death” — is now a pioneer in the use of hydrogen as a power source. Kawasaki has rebranded itself as an eco-city, building Japan’s largest solar power plant on landfill and turning recycling waste into a business. Chisso, once known for dumping toxic waste in the sea, has developed innovative wastewater-treatment technology.
The problems caused by pollution are hitting China even harder and faster. But at least in theory it has a late-mover’s advantage. Already, thousands of citizens’ groups around China have organized to protest against polluting projects, like chemical and copper plants and wastewater pipelines, sometimes even filing lawsuits. The Chinese media are covering these issues more aggressively than in the past.
And the government is responding. Last month, it ordered the temporary closure of more than 100 polluting factories and the removal of 30 percent of government vehicles from the streets of Beijing. With the health of a nation of more than one billion people at stake, however, it will have to do much, much more.
Alexandra Harney is an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations based in Tokyo.
