Institutional Setting, Politics and Planning: Private Property, Public Interest and Land Reform in Japan

Abstract

Taking an historical view, the paper considers how Japan has struggled to regulate development and examines the impact of land reform in the immediate post-WWII era. This is seen as a key institutional change that precipitated numerous political and policy shifts in subsequent decades and acted as a critical factor in shaping Japanese land use. The focus of the paper demonstrates how the political and economic transformation of Japan just prior to and after land reform in 1946 led to a situation where successive governments have tried but ultimately failed to intervene successfully in the development process, contributing to unsustainable outcomes derived largely from a sustained period of growth and economic development. In our view, this was supported by the legal framework reinforced under the Allied Occupation (1945–1951), alongside the outcomes of the land reform process. This has also led to a remarkably consistent set of institutional conditions. In order to highlight the impact of land reform the case of Japanese green belt policies between 1927 and 1965 are used to provide a more detailed account of the difficulties that planning and land use regulation has experienced in Japan.