Consensus building revisited: lessons from a Japanese experience

Abstract

This paper is a summation of material drawn from 18 papers written by Professor Toshio Kuwako of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The purpose of the paper is to present an overview of Kuwako's approach to consensus building and make it available to the English-speaking world. The papers written by Professor Kuwako are largely experiential accounts with reflection on and analysis of that experience. The organization given to the present paper is that of the present writer. Given that doubts are sometimes raised about consensus building in regard to intractable issues where no agreement seems possible, and that it is precisely these kinds of issues that are the focus of Kuwako's work, his contribution would seem important.