ABSTRACT
Throughout the summer following the March 11 magnitude 9 earthquake and massive tsunami, Japanese politics and energy policy continued to reel from the shock of nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima-Daiichi reactor complex. Confusion is of course to be expected in the wake of such an enormous tragedy. But it is being exacerbated by vested interests that seek to stymie fundamental reforms to the energy sector involving the generation and transmission of electrical power. Tokyo Electric Company’s (TEPCO) ruinous reactors in Fukushima are the most visible legacy of these vested interests’ dominance of Japan’s energy policy. Key actors in this “nuclear village,” as it is now widely known, are TEPCO and the nine other monopolized regional utilities that divide the country into their respective fi efs. They cooperate closely with bureaucrats in the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and elsewhere in the state, as well as with a broad swath of the political class. Management and labor in some of Japan’s blue-chip fi rms, including power-unit builders Toshiba, Hitachi and Mitsubishi, are part of the village. So too are a host of fi gures positioned at the uppermost ranks of media, academia and elsewhere. Collectively, they are a textbook case of the problem of concentrated benefi ts and dispersed costs. Their tightly focused rent-seeking drove Japan to bet heavily on nuclear power; and though the risks of this policy are now clear, they are determined to preserve as much of the status quo as they can while passing on its burgeoning costs.
