Author’s Response: 3.11 and the Fog of Politics

Abstract

It has been almost three years since 3.11-36 months that have stretched out longest and most painfully for surviving victims. Many observers have spilled much ink trying to understand and evaluate what happened in Tohoku and what would mean for Japan and world. I am grateful to Asia Policy for assembling a group of thoughtful analysts to reflect on my early appraisal of catastrophe. I would like to use their assessments to revisit that understanding of 3.11 and its impact.As I wrote in book-and as Michio Muramatsu reminds us-a master narrative for 3.11 has yet to be written. Sheila Smith puts more directly. She wonders: Did really matter? One way to judge is by revisiting 3.11 from distance afforded by passage of additional time. How might my conclusions have been different if I had written book three years after catastrophe instead of just 18 months later? Which of dueling political entrepreneurs who tried to brand 3.11 catastrophe have been rewarded with policies that conform to their preferences? Has Japan really stayed course, or has embarked on a new one-either forward in a new direction or back to future?Andrew DeWit's apt characterization of the speed with which Japan's landscape was changing even as Samuels was writing about it is a good place to begin. He is correct to point to electric power revolution in Japan, to its acceleration after 3.11, and to its consonance with global paradigm shifts in energy. By shrinking and smartening, Japan's electric power sector seems to be catching up to rest of world's utilities, which had already begun adapting to disruptive technologies as well as to changing consumer, regulatory, and voter preferences even absent a 3.11-scale challenge.Japan's energy seems most prominent at local level. Following Masayoshi Son's lead, local governments are generating revenues by using post-3.11 feed-in tariff (FIT) to induce businesses to build large-scale renewable-power projects on vacant municipal land. Municipalities receive rent for land and additional tax revenue, while residents get clean, low-cost power and investors enjoy subsidized, low-risk returns. In fact, renewables increased by 25% in first year after FIT was enacted.Change in Japanese electric power sector-including a toughened regulatory authority and a shift away from utility-centric programs offered by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) toward micro-electric power companies-has proceeded despite utility companies' natural resistance to change, a resistance abetted in December 2012 when Japanese voters decisively ended hold of Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) on governance. Although polls showed overwhelming opposition to nuclear power, voters returned Japan's most avidly pro-nuclear and pro-utility party, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), to power, and TEPCO shares rebounded immediately. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called DPJ's policy of zero nuclear power groundless, accelerated efforts to export nuclear plants, appointed nuclear power advocates to key cabinet posts, removed anti-nuclear members of Basic Energy Plan commission, and reduced FIT price for new investments in renewables. Although METI approved solar-power generation facilities with output capacity equivalent to about twenty nuclear reactors (22 gigawatts), only about one-tenth of newly approved facilities have actually started producing electricity.1 Structural change and renewable growth have been slowed by a loophole in FIT legislation, and some investors have abandoned their projects after encountering difficulty connecting to grid and gaining access to panels.2 Nonetheless, breakup of vertically integrated monopoly system is under formal discussion in METI councils. The creative destruction of hidebound utilities is finally coming to Japan, and Alexis Dudden may be right when she says that changes in sector may ultimately prove most profound. …