Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine the relations between waste management experts, officials, citizens and civil society groups in the first half of the twentieth century in order to illuminate the role that civil protest had on shaping official attitudes and policies regarding waste management in Japan.

Paper long abstract:

From garbage wars to recycling campaigns, civil society groups and ordinary citizens have been intimately involved in Japan's modern waste management system almost since its inception in the Meiji period. Although at first engineers and waste management officials believed that Japan's various "garbage problems" could be solved through the right technological innovations, by the 1930s the rhetoric of these waste experts had shifted toward expressing the belief that municipal waste management was impossible without the educated cooperation of ordinary citizens. What caused this shift in attitudes? In addition to changes in waste disposal technology, particularly the rise of incineration, the primary factor shaping the opinions of waste management experts and officials was the dramatic increase in citizen protests against waste disposal sites that occurred over the first three decades of the twentieth century.

This paper will examine in-depth the relations between waste management experts, officials, citizens and civil society groups in the first half of the twentieth century using archival materials such as policy planning documents, local government announcements and publications, neighborhood association newsletters, newspaper articles, and newsletters, magazine and journal articles published by civil society organizations and protest organizations. This analysis hopes to illuminate the role that civil protest in particular had on shaping official attitudes and policies regarding waste management in Japan.