ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a discussion of the country's governance structure and recent structural changes in order to highlight critical institutional challenges that local stakeholders are struggling with. It needs to highlight the relatively weak role of local governments within Japan's overall highly centralised governance system. Although Japan's government has been promoting renewable energies through a feed-in tariff system since 2012, the fear of crippling power outages led energy suppliers to ramp up imports of fossil fuels – initially liquified natural gas (LNG) and then increasingly the far cheaper coal. Reducing environmental pollution and conserving energy has been a major concern for industrial and environmental policies in Japan since the 1970s. In September 2014 Prime Minister Abe appointed Shigeru Ishiba, a former Minister of Defence and promoter of nuclear energy and rearmament, as cabinet minister for regional economic revitalisation with sole objective to promote the revitalisation of Japan's depopulating and rapidly ageing rural towns and villages.