ABSTRACT
Following the nuclear accident in Fukushima, all reactors in Japan were shut down and only gradually were restarted beginning in 2013. The German government, only a few days after the Fukushima accident, reexamined its previous decision to phase out the use of nuclear energy over a period of more than two decades, and in summer 2011 decided instead to completely shut down all reactors in Germany by 2022. From the beginning of the Fukushima crisis, there was intense interest in Japan in Germany’s way of responding to the crisis. Industrial representatives interested in technologies using renewable energy and anti-nuclear activists frequently visited Germany. Similarly, the German public followed developments in Japan with interest, and there were efforts by industrial concerns to enter the market for renewable energy technologies in Japan, as well as by German activists and members of the Green Party to influence political decision making in Japan. It is rare that modern democratic societies try to influence each other quite as overtly as was the case between Germany and Japan in the years following 2011; this was due to the emotional shock caused by the nuclear accident, to the established industrial relationship between both countries, and to a high level of mutual sympathy and interest between the two societies.
