ABSTRACT

Japan's nuclear energy programme had its origins in a number of unsuccessful wartime attempts to produce an atomic bomb. This chapter discusses the background to the case studies of anti-nuclear politics. It also discusses the perspective of autonomy and applies this perspective to the contested history of nuclear power in Japan. The chapter explores the construction of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant reflected the politics of the capitalist developmental state and shows how the decline of developmentalism has led to the fragmentation of the nuclear village. It also shows how the shift to a post-industrial economy has produced the ever more precarious political, social and economic environment to which freeter activists have responded both before and after 3.11. Further labour market reforms implemented in the 1990s were the result of a political strategy instituted at the highest levels of Japanese capital. Property price inflation spread throughout Tokyo and to Japan's other major cities.