Energy Security in Japan: Challenges after Fukushima by Vlado Vivoda (review)

This book is a timely study of Japan’s energy regime, one that attempts to answer the key question of how much systemic change is likely as a result of the March 11, 2011 (hereafter, “3–11”) natural and nuclear disasters. Certainly there is already a fair amount of academic work on how 3–11 has affected Japan’s energy policies and politics. But these contributions are book chapters, journal articles, working papers, and the like, and hence limited in scope and breadth. The present volume appears to be the first book-length treatment of how 3–11 has affected Japan’s entire energy economy and policy regime. While it cites no Japanese work, its interdisciplinary approach combines expertise on Japan’s principal energy sources with a review of policymaking in the various energy sectors. Such is no mean feat when the object of analysis is perhaps the world’s fourth-largest energy economy, totaling well over ¥50 trillion (U.S. $450 billion) in annual transactions and investments. The challenge is even greater when this energy system confronts unprecedented uncertainty due to the continuing effects of 3–11, accelerating global energy revolutions, and the increasing impacts of climate change.

The book is in some respects a welcome empirical update on Laura Hein’s 1990 monograph, Fueling Growth: The Energy Revolution and Economic Policy in Postwar Japan (Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University), and Richard Samuels’s 1987 work, The Business of the Japanese State: Energy Markets in Comparative and Historical Perspective (Cornell University Press). Energy Security in Japan offers a useful survey of Japan’s energy sectors, giving attention to the postwar history and future prospects of each of the fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), nuclear energy, and renewable energy. The vitally important area of electricity generation and transmission also receives deserved scrutiny in a standalone chapter. This detailed investigation of each key category is framed by a political economy analysis of the interests, institutions, and ideas that hold sway within the overall energy economy, particularly the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and business lobbying associations. The author cites representative literature on the role of entrenched practices and vested interests in limiting the scope for change to deeply embedded systems and shows why he believes this path dependence is especially strong in Japan’s energy regime.

Moreover, Vivoda supplements this line of argument with recent research that underlines the time required for energy transitions to unfold. He applies this learning to Japan, advising that “substantial changes in proportions of energy use from various sources take decades” (p. 21). The book’s overall conclusion is that Japan is pretty much stuck with the energy system it had prior to the enormous shock of Fukushima. In particular, the author sees limited scope for renewable energy in its power generation. He thus believes that, over time, Japan will be compelled to return to a prominent role for nuclear energy in order to reduce an overly high reliance on fossil fuels in its power mix.

The author’s review of the evolution of Japan’s energy policies starts with the 1950s shift of the pillar of the energy economy away from coal to oil. The material is based on secondary sources and hence offers no new insights into that era. Even so, the presentation demonstrates the unparalleled significance of energy in shaping Japan’s economy and foreign policy, and underpins the book’s main thesis concerning Japan’s stress on security and its restricted energy options. The 1950s energy transition was essential to Japan’s postwar economic miracle, as oil was much less costly and more convenient to use than the heavily protected domestic supplies of coal. A flood of cheap oil allowed postwar Japan not just to rebuild from the war but also to remake itself as a juggernaut of energy-intensive and internationally competitive export industries. Japan burned oil with abandon. But in...