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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
In the waning days of 2014, by far the hottest year humans have ever measured, Bloomberg News warned that the foreign investors who control roughly 70% of volume traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange “have had just about enough of Abenomics.” Decrying that there is no Japanese Facebook or Google, and that the “Japanese have lost their place as global leaders,” punters slashed their 2014 investment in Japanese stocks a stunning 94% compared to the previous year. There are certainly ample grounds to criticize Abenomics. But these speculative investors overlook Japan's climate-resilient spending programmes and accompanying structural reforms. Japan exhibits an emergent, implicit recognition that confronting endogenous shocks, especially natural disasters, is core to sustainable growth. So Japan may have no Facebook, but it is advantaged by something that appears more important: an expanding alliance of politicians, bureaucrats and specialists who are reshaping Abenomics and making the country a global leader in building resilience.
1 Joe Romm, “2014 Was Hottest Year On Record Globally By Far, Reports Japan Meteorological Agency,” January 5, 2014.
2 Yuji Nakamura and Yuko Takeo, “The 94% Plunge That Shows Abenomics Losing Global Investors,” Bloomberg News, December 29, 2014.
3 On the event, see here.
4 The conference website.
5 See Yoichi Takita, “Japan's elusive inflation target,” Nikkei Asian Review, December 25, 2014.
6 See “Bank of Japan's assets top 300 trillion yen for first time,” Nikkei Asian Review, December 13, 2014.
7 On the details, see p 4 of (in Japanese) “Current Assessment of the Results of the Abe Cabinet's Fiscal and Economic Policies,” Japanese Cabinet Office, June 13, 2014.
8 Many of the major initiatives are described (in Japanese) at the Japanese Cabinet Office website's section on National Resilience: http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/seisaku/kokudo_kyoujinka/
9 The Association's website is here.
10 See “Abe cabinet approves 3.5 trillion yen package,” Nikkei Asian Review, December 28, 2014: Abe cabinet approves 3.5 trillion yen package.“
11 On the details, see (in Japanese) “Total of YEN 3.5 trillion economic stimulus okayed by cabinet,” NHK News, December 27, 2014.
12 See “The Third Arrow of Abenomics: Misfire,” The Economist, June 15, 2013.
13 See Richard Katz, “Voodoo Abenomics:Japan's Failed Comeback Plan,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2014.
14 See “Editorial: Third Abe Cabinet should listen to dissenting voices,” Mainichi Shimbun, December 29, 2014.
15 See (in Japanese) “The YEN 3 Trillion Stimulus: No Expectations of Local Laxity?” December 27, 2014.
16 For the data, see (in Japanese) “Tax reform aim is to eliminate lower rate on empty homes,” Tokyo Shimbun, December 27, 2014.
17 On waste, see for example “Waste undermines reconstruction,” Japan Times, January 19, 2013.
18 See “Japan Revitalization Strategy,” Japan Cabinet Office, June 14, 2013.
19 One recent example is the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) May 30, 2014 discussion (in Japanese) of its “Distributed Energy Infrastructure Project”
20 For an overview, see Andrew DeWit, “3.11 and Japan's Shift to Smart, Distributed Power,” Asia Policy 17, January 2014.
21 See, for example, Michael Puckett “Financing the Next Generation of Resilient Power,” Clean Energy Finance Forum, November 25, 2014.
22 One example was the August 20, 2014 mudslides in Hiroshima, which were part of a protracted period of very unusual rainfall. See Andrew DeWit, “Hiroshima's Disaster, Climate Crisis, and the Future of the Resilient City”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 35, No. 2, September 1, 2014.
23 Kawasaki City's announcement is at the city's website (in Japanese), “Kawasaki City Renewable Energy and Other Introduction Promotion Fund Projects (FY 2014-2016),” Kawasaki City, Japan, December 24, 2014.
24 See the entire plan (in Japanese) “2014 Renewable Energy and Other Introduction Promotion Fund Projects (Green New Deal Fund Projects),” Kawasaki City, Japan.
25 On the projects, see Andrew DeWit, “Japan's Resilient, Decarbonizing and Democratic Smart Communities”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 50, No. 3, December 15, 2014.
26 Stephen Poole, “The truth about smart cities: ‘In the end, they will destroy democracy,‘” The Guardian, December 17, 2014.
27 Rob Kitchin, “Making sense of smart cities: addressing present shortcomings,” Cambridge J Regions Econ Soc, October 21, 2014.
28 See Oguro Yukiko (in Japanese) “Smart Community: The Sustainable City,” Daiwa Institute of Research, August 15, 2014.
29 For an overview of the scale of Japan's sewerage infrastructure as well as its challenges and countermeasures, see (in Japanese) “Planned Reconstruction and Maintenance,” MLIT, (nd).
30 The test will finish its trials in March of 2015, coincident with the UN-sponsored disaster event. On the test, see (in Japanese) “Japan's first system for heat recovery from the sewer,” January 6, 2014.
31 On this, see the chart on p. 13 (in Japanese) of Tokyo Metro 62 Committee on Renewable Energy and Smart Communities draft at “Mid-Term Report: Guidelines for Constructing Smart Communities and Surveys of Basic Plans,” February 4, 2014.
32 See p. 16 (in Japanese) “Digital Japan 2013: Taking Back Japan with ICT,” May 21, 2013.
33 This aim is clear in Japan's top energy technocrat, Kashiwagi Takao's chairing of the MIC Commission for Deploying a Local-Government-Led Community Energy System.“ This Commission was created by MIC on November 4 of 2014, and held its first meeting on November 7. It will have 3 more meetings, seeking to devise a template for local-government decentralized energy systems, prior to the end of its tenure in March of 2015. See (in Japanese) ”Opening of a Commission for Deploying a Local-Government-Led Community Energy System,“ Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), November 4, 2014.
34 On these items, see pp 10-12 of (in Japanese) NTT Data's Social and Environmental Strategy Unit presentation to METI on “The Potential for Realizing Smart Business and the Means of Local Government Collaboration,” Muraoka Motoji, July 25, 2014.
35 See (in Japanese) the list.
36 See (in Japanese) “Fiscal Year 2015 Main Points of the Requests Concerning the Promotion of Distributed Energy.”
37 This programme pre-dates 3-11, but has now come to include increasing the schools' capacity to function as a shelter during emergencies. See “The Role of the School as the District's Shelter,” MEXT, March 7, 2014.
38 These problems are true of the US as well: “It is difficult to calculate how much states and cities are spending on climate change adaptation because the money frequently is folded into other projects, such as infrastructure upgrades,” in Rita Beamish, “States, Cities Brace for Global Warming Fallout,” Stateline (The Pew Charitable Trusts), December 23, 2014.
39 See Sharlene Leurig, “Is Climate The Mother Of Innovation?” National Geographic, November 24, 2014.
40 On the threats from floods, droughts and heat waves, see the Royal Society report on “Resilience to Extreme Weather,” November 27, 2014.
41 Rita Beamish, “States, Cities Brace for Global Warming Fallout,” Stateline (The Pew Charitable Trusts), December 23, 2014.
42 Yoshiaki Nohara, Anna Kitanaka and Shigeki Nozawa, “Japan's GPIF to Invest $2.7 Billion in Infrastructure,” February 28, 2014.
43 Toru Fujioka and Masahiro Hidaka, “Kuroda Surprises With Stimulus Boost as Japan Struggles,” Bloomberg News, October 31, 2014.
44 See “GPIF and DBJ Launch Infrastructure Investment Program Under Co-investment Agreement With OMERS,” Development Bank of Japan, February 28, 2014.
45 Michael Diekmann, “Smart alternatives to fund infrastructure,” Project M, December 2014. And as
46 [46] Isabel Hilton, “Beyond Lima: Major Investors Must Fund Global Green Initiatives,” Yale Environment 360, December 15, 2014.
47 On the event.
48 The conference website.
49 If this seems absurd, in light of Fukushima and other real gaps in governance, consider how well Japanese cities work, in transport, policing, waterworks, and other basic services, compared to their counterparts in the developed and developing world.
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