Ghosts of crises past: Comparing Japanese policy effectiveness in the 1970s oil crises and contemporary climate change

Abstract:

Due to the immense strain they put on policymakers, the oil crises of the 1970s and the contemporary challenge of anthropogenic global warming must represent two of the greatest tests of Japanese energy policy of the past 50 years. As such, the policy response to the oil crises had been effective, but the challenges posed by global warming have not been met with equal success – and this situation
partly stems from the measures adopted in response to the previous crisis.

This paper will show that Japan, just like the majority of other countries, has no policy on global warming per se. Instead, Japan’s policies and measures on climate change mitigation are formulated by adjusting the country’s energy
policy. The oil shocks prove that the Japanese government does have the ability to dramatically alter its energy policy, provided it regards the challenge as legitimate and rises to the responsibility to respond to it, but the
institutionalization of some of the solutions to the crises of the 1970s prevent this.

Contemporary Japanese energy policy is therefore blinkered to some extent, hobbling the effectiveness of the Japanese response to climate change. In exploring what factors affect the success of the Japanese government’s policies this paper looks at the documents articulating the instruments called upon to respond to these crises. This includes not only laws, but also plans, strategies and outlooks, which may offer details about the general direction of policy, stipulate envisaged targets, or specify concrete measures that, for whatever reason, were not mentioned in legal texts.