The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 16 | Issue 22 | Number 2 | Article ID 5217 | Nov 15, 2018

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A War Against Garbage in Postwar Japan

Eiko Maruko Siniawer

A War Against Garbage in Postwar Japan

Eiko Maruko Siniawer

When Minobe Ryōkichi declared war againstgarbage in September 1971, he thrust wasteinto the public’s attention and rendered itvisible. The governor of Tokyo was not justencouraging the construction of incineratorsand landfills to deal with the rapid proliferationof rubbish then facing the metropolis, but wasalso provoking discussions about theinescapable costs of high economic growth andmass consumption. The Garbage War (gomisensō), described below in an excerpt fromWaste, ultimately proved to be pivotal inchanging conceptions of waste in postwarJapan. Coupled with the Oil Shock of 1973, itrevealed how deeply waste had insinuated itselfinto the values and practices of everyday life,and how a society of mass production and massconsumption was also one of mass waste.Shaped too by ideas of environmentalprotection, the waste of things, resources, andenergy came to be seen as tightly interwovenproblems that threatened the security andlongevity of middle-class lifestyles.

At this moment in the early 1970s, garbage wasnot just a material reality that demanded theattention of urban infrastructure development,but also a symbol of the many desires ofmiddle-class life: the convenience of disposablegoods, the comforts fueled by energyconsumption, the purchase of electricappliances, the preservation of naturalresources, and more. In subsequent years,people’s production of rubbish continued topose problems, as it does today with plasticpolluting the world’s oceans and trash

accumulating after China’s refusal to continueserving as the world’s dump. But what haschanged over the postwar decades in Japan arethe v iews o f rubb ish and the largersociocultural issues that it has been seen toreflect. It is this more capacious understandingof garbage that best captures the centralconcerns of Waste, which is less about rubbishand much more about the idea of waste—aboutwhat was considered to be waste and to bewasteful in Japan from the mid-1940s to thepresent day.

A fundamental quality of garbage—that it hasbeen rejected as valueless—can be applied towaste of all sorts, material or otherwise. Todeem anything a waste, be it energy or food ormoney or time, is to make a determination ofvalue. By tracing shifts in conceptions of wasteand wastefulness, the book illustrates howpeople gave meaning to and found value intheir daily lives. And it tells a story of theconcerns, aspirations, disappointments, andhopes that have marked people’s experiencesin the long postwar.

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“I intend to become a clean-up man for Tokyo,”announced Minobe Ryōkichi in a speech afterwinning the governorship in April 1967.Speaking both literally and figuratively, hewent on to lay the philosophical groundworkfor what would become the Garbage War. Hearticulated his commitment to addressing“some of the biggest distortions of high-speedgrowth,” to raising the quality of living in themetropolis, and to keeping his campaignpromise of “correct[ing], if even only slightly,the inequities, the foulness, the inequality andthe ill treatment of the weak by society.”1 Interms of concrete priorities, sanitation andenvironmental pollution were high on the list.Demonstrating that his words were not empty,he appointed as his chief economic plannerShibata Tokue, a professor at Tokyo

Metropolitan University and an expert onmatters sanitary. Shibata was the author ofseveral books, including Nihon no seisō mondai(Japan’s Sanitation Problem), which waspublished a full decade earlier and was wellahead of its time in considering the relationshipbetween economic changes, societal shifts, andwaste.2

What Minobe hoped to do was bu i ldincinerators in wards throughout themetropolis, so that each area of the capitalwould become more directly responsible for itsown garbage, and the disproportionate onus fordisposal then placed on one particular ward,Kōtō, would be alleviated. At a pragmatic andstrategic level, the Garbage War was acampaign to convince residents that ensuringtheir standard of living might very well requireassenting to an incinerator in their backyard.The declaration of war in September 1971 wasthus an appeal to Tokyoites: that the dire stateof the garbage problem would have to beaddressed to preserve their lives and lifestyle,and the most effective weapon in this battlewould be the modern incinerator.3 On a societaland political level, the Garbage War was abouthow to apportion more fairly the responsibilityfor disposing of the undesirable by-products ofmodern civilization.

In many ways, Minobe’s offensive sought tothoroughly modernize waste. Rubbish was to betreated as the creation of a modern andcivilized society, and was to be managed withtechnology so advanced that incinerators couldstand and be seen in the heart of metropolitanneighborhoods as symbols of their capacity totame waste. What Minobe was fighting was theenduring view of garbage as, to borrow thehistorian David Howell’s description of humanshit, yucky.4 And not just yucky but potentiallydangerous, so that it should be kept at thecity’s margins or, at the very least, outside ofone’s own backyard.

Even before the fall of 1971, it was clear that

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many residents would resist the construction ofnew incinerators for various reasons having todo with environmental impact, health, andsafety as well as financial costs and theintervention of the metropolitan governmentinto ward affairs. A prime case was the refusalof Suginami ward to house an incinerator on itssoil, a position that rendered it a combatant inan eight-year war of its own. Plans for a facilityin Suginami had been in the works since 1939,were put on hold in the war-torn 1940s, andwere resuscitated as part of the metropolitangovernment’s (unkept) promise in 1964 to bei n c i n e r a t i n g a l l g a r b a g e b y 1 9 7 0 .Understanding that facilities would have to bebuilt in various wards throughout Tokyo, theresidents of Suginami began to discuss theprospect for their ward. But in November 1966,they were abrupt ly in formed by themetropolitan government of the specific sitethat had been chosen, one that was locatednear an elementary school and a train stationand would require the sale of privately ownedland. Stunned by this unexpected decision,ward residents organized a resistancemovement that was still holding its oppositionalstance in the fall of 1971.5

Parallel to Suginami’s battle against theintroduction of an incinerator into its ward,Kōtō had been defending itself against anonslaught of garbage for years.6 Kōtō waslocated on the shores of Tokyo Bay and washome to two-thirds of the capital’s landfills.Garbage trucks transported waste from allacross Tokyo, converging in a daily parade ofnoise and odor in the ward’s congested streets.Official figures put at five thousand the numberof trucks that passed through each day, withthe area of Edagawa near the landfills mostaffected. There were regular outbreaks of flies,and rubbish whirling through the air on windydays. Long frustrated by its inordinateobligation to dispose of the capital’s waste, theward resisted stridently when it was asked bythe metropolitan government in mid-August1971 to support extending the life of Landfill

Number Fifteen (the infamous Island ofDreams, or Yume no Shima, and technically thenew, or second, Island of Dreams).7 Over thenext month, the ward formally expressed itsopposition to the government’s plan, and onSeptember 27, one day before Minobe’sdeclaration of the Garbage War, the Kōtō wardassembly adopted questions to be posedpublicly to the metropolitan government and tothe twenty-two other wards of the capital aboutthe structures, assumptions, and unequalburdens of waste disposal.8

Particularly irksome to Kōtō residents was theirresponsibility of Suginami ward which,though wealthy and populous with roughly halfa million residents, did not have its ownsanitation plant and was entirely reliant onKōtō ward for waste management. In the eyesof the frustrated citizens of Kōtō, Suginami’scontinued refusal to build an incinerator notonly suggested its indifference to the inequitiesof the situation but also symbolized theunwil l ingness of other wards to takeresponsibility for their garbage. The conflictbetween the two wards grabbed significantpublic attention in late December 1971, whenKōtō ward decided to forcibly block truckscarrying Suginami’s trash from enteringLandfill Number Fifteen. Beginning early in themorning on December 22, all of the arrivingtrucks were checked and those from Suginamiwere turned away; as one sign read, “TakeBack Suginami’s Garbage.” The ongoingshowdown between the citizens of Kōtō andSuginami came for many to epitomize, andadopt the moniker

of, the Garbage War.9

This dimension of the Garbage War, theconfrontation between citizens of Kōtō andSuginami wards, heightened the visibility of thegarbage problem even as it was about whoshould be obliged to render garbage invisible.In late May 1973, when Kōtō again refused toaccept garbage from a Suginami that had not

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yet agreed to house its own incinerator, peopleopened their newspapers and turned on theirtelevisions to witness members of the Kōtōward assembly in helmets, physically barringentrance to Landfill Number Fifteen. And for atleast the few days when collection wassuspended, denizens of Suginami wardencountered piles of garbage spreading acrosstheir sidewalks.10 The presence of rubbish,made inescapable by Kōtō’s actions, helpedforce an intervention by Minobe, whopersuaded Kōtō to end its blockade andresumed negotiations with a Suginami wardmore committed to figuring out a site forconstruction of its incinerator.11

Members of the Kōtō ward assemblychecking garbage trucks entering theirward for those carrying rubbish fromSuginami ward. May 22, 1973. Photographby Mainichi shinbun.

The sign reads, “Take Back Suginami’sGarbage.” May 23, 1973. Photograph byMainichi shinbun.

The political conflicts about the construction ofincinerators shone a light on the sheer volumeand unceasing accumulation of garbage, aswell as on the desire of many Tokyoites not tohave to see or deal with that garbage in theirdaily lives. Insofar as Minobe had hoped todraw attention to the garbage problem, hesucceeded; but his aim of urban infrastructuredevelopment bumped up against theunderstanding, even the visceral feeling, thatgarbage was filthy, that it was to be cartedaway and kept at a distance. This conception ofrubbish was implicit in the stances of Suginamiward and others that resisted Minobe’ssanitation plans. A documentary aired by thenational broadcaster NHK in October 1973highlighted and exemplified the ways in whichconcerns about visibility and invisibility wereinherent in the clashes over garbage. The verytitle of the half-hour program, Gomi totokonoma (Garbage and the Alcove), alluded tothe question of how garbage should be seenwith its evocation of the tokonoma, a raised andrecessed space in a Japanese-style room inwhich an object (typically art, a scroll, or

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flowers) was displayed. The specific issue takenup in the documentary was the proposedconstruction of a sanitation plant in the heart ofShinjuku ward, a major hub of business,entertainment, and government administration.Minobe’s plan, announced in September 1973,was to build a forty-eight-story facility in alocation that was highly visible, purposely andpurposefully not hidden.12 Residents ofShinjuku responded with indignation, and thelocal neighborhood association (chōnaikai)collected ten thousand signatures from thosewho opposed the construction of the facility. Atone boisterous meeting of residents withrepresentatives of the Minobe administration,many opponents succinctly broadcast theirposition by wearing headbands emblazoned inred with “Down with Garbage” or “No toGarbage” (Gomi hantai). Shouting at thegovernment administrators, they expressedtheir concern that Shinjuku would become a“toilet neighborhood” (benjo no machi)—both aplace where shit resided and a shitty place. Thegovernment representatives tried to assure theresidents that the image of Shinjuku would notbe damaged, that the facility would be a modelof new town planning which mitigated thedangers of pollution and traffic, and that theward would become a tokonoma, a space thatdisplayed a state-of-the-art sanitation facility.In interviews with men and women on thestreets of Kōtō, many found it unfair that all ofShinjuku’s garbage was brought into theirward, that Shinjuku, like Suginami, did nothave to deal with its own waste, and that twoyears into the Garbage War, not a singleincinerator had yet been built. In the words ofone resident, Kōtō would also like to be atokonoma. Although the documentary itself didnot explicitly stake out a position in thisconfl ict , i t did use images to suggestimpatience with Shinjuku’s resistance. After itwas stated that the planned incinerator wouldhandle the 500 tons of garbage thrown out perday in Shinjuku, there was a lingering shot of adiscarded McDonald’s paper cup surroundedby other rubbish in a garbage can. After

Minobe explained his plan for each area of themetropolis to dispose of its own trash, thecamera panned slowly over empty metal cansand other litter, giving weight to his argumentthat the garbage problem needed to beaddressed. And in the closing scenes of thedocumentary, the loud voices of opponents inShinjuku were juxtaposed with a final image, inforeboding silence, of garbage being dumped.13

Minobe was ultimately victorious in his war,winning the assent of residents to theconstruction of inescapably conspicuousfacilities in more areas of the capital. InNovember 1974, all parties on the Suginamiside agreed to have an incineration plant builtin the Takaido area of the ward, having securedconcessions to mitigate its visibility, risk ofpollution, and disruption to the lives ofresidents. The plant itself was to use cutting-edge technology to control any possiblepollution; underground tunnels were to beconstructed for garbage trucks; and the trucksthemselves were to be redesigned to contain asmuch as possible their smells and rubbish. Andthe incinerator also provided amenities for thearea: the heat generated was to warm thewater for a nearby swimming pool and seniorcitizens’ home, and new community spaces andfacilities were to be constructed, such as alarge plaza and a library. After several hundredlocal meetings, many rounds of negotiations,and legal action, construction started in 1979on the Takaido plant, which came online in1982.14 Minobe and his allies had managed tousher in the era of the modern incinerator. Andthough a facility in Shinjuku never came topass, other wards did accede, as ground wasbroken in Adachi in 1974 and Hikarigaoka in1980. Over the next twenty or so years, morethan a dozen incinerators would be built.15

Through the waging of the Garbage War, viewsof rubbish were modified. It would be toosimplistic to reduce the various and numerousconflicts down to just the meaning of waste,given the many interests involved concerning

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the health and safety of communities, equity,land-ownership, and the democratic process.Complicated too were the differences ofopinion even within wards. But the eventualconstruction of incinerators suggests that,despite l ingering concerns about i tscontaminating potential, there were shifts inideas about garbage—that its danger and filthcould be controlled; that with certainguarantees and proper incentives, a sanitationplant could be tolerated; and that waste couldb e m a d e s a f e e n o u g h t o b e i n y o u rneighborhood.

There were other indications of a generalsoftening in resistance to the idea of a sanitarytreatment plant in one’s neighborhood. TheTokyo Metropolitan Citizens’ Office (Tokyo-toTominshitsu) conducted multiple public opinionsurveys about the garbage problem whichincluded questions about views towardincinerators, a sign of how central theirconstruction was to the Garbage War. InNovember 1971, when residents were askedhow they would react if a sanitary treatmentplant had to be built near their home, almost aquarter (24.3 percent) of the 1,080 respondentssaid that they would be absolutely opposed.Roughly three-quarters (75.1 percent) said thatthey could find it acceptable, either with orwithout conditions.16 When the same questionwas asked two years later, in late Novemberand early December 1973, the percentage ofthe 973 survey takers who would assentremained about the same (75.6 percent), but ofthose people, many more agreed withoutconditions. And the percentage who wereopposed declined markedly (24.3 to 8.1percent).17 This downward trend was looselycorroborated by answers to other questions; itwas, for example, consistent with a decliningaversion to the principle that each area shoulddispose of its own

Garbage.18 A qualification does need to bemade. All of these responses were to questionsabout hypothetical situations or general ideas,

which likely made survey participants seemmore amenable to the building of newincinerators than they might actually havebeen. When asked about the specific, concreteissue of a facility in Suginami ward, almost athird (31 percent) of the respondents did notsupport its construction. This meant that morepeople objected to the real possibility of anincinerator in Suginami ward than to theabstract principle of each area takingresponsibility for its own garbage.19 But at leastin the realm of the hypothetical, there wassomewhat greater comfort with the ability ofincinerators to manage distasteful andpotentially harmful garbage.

There were also changes, more intentional andself-conscious, in the ways that the TokyoSanitation Bureau (Tokyo-to Seisō kyoku)conceived of garbage and its industry. Around1971, the bureau came to think of its work asbeing less about the disposal of filth (obutsu)for the purpose of beautification or evencleaning and more about the creation of acomprehensive system for preserving theenvironment. The bureau started to speak notof filth but of waste (haikibutsu), which it sawas exceeding levels tolerable for theenvironment. The large amount of garbageproduced by expanded economic activity aswell as the dumping of waste where it did notbelong breached the capacities of theenvironment. The bureau thus saw itsresponsibility as less about hygiene orsanitation, and more about restoration of thelost ba lance between waste and theenvironment. 2 0

The Sanitation Bureau’s view of waste as itsown kind of pollution, or “the third kōgai” afterthat of air and water, was informed by greateracknowledgment in the late 1960s and early1970s of the environmental costs of thecountry’s rapid economic rise. Particularly hardto ignore was the human price extracted by theenvironmental degradation and disasterswrought by industrial pollution. Citizens’

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antipollution movements were especially activein these years, and victims aggressively soughtredress in the courts. Most widely known werethe so-called “big four” pollution lawsuits whichbrought national attention to the four major“pollution diseases” caused by the mishandlingof industrial waste by corporations: Minamatadisease from methylmercury dumped by theChisso

Corporation off the coast of Kyūshū; NiigataMinamata disease from methylmercurydiscarded by the chemical engineeringcompany Shōwa Denkō; itai-itai disease fromcadmium released by mining companies inToyama prefecture; and Yokkaichi asthma fromthe sulfur oxide pollution of petrochemicalprocessing facilities in Mie prefecture. All fourof these cases resulted in legal victories thatsecured compensation for the victims andhelped make pollution an issue of social andpolitical prominence.21 Such litigation andenvironmental protests were largelyresponsible for landmark legislation, includingthe passage by the so-called “pollution Diet” inNovember 1970 of fourteen new laws thatestablished strict antipollution regulations. Andin May 1971, Prime Minister Satō Eisakuestablished the Environment Agency(Kankyōchō).22 It was in this context that theTokyo Sanitation Bureau increasinglyapproached waste as an environmental matterthat affected people’s lives.

In addition to framing their work in terms ofenvironmental protection, sanitationprofessionals used the subject of garbage tovoice skepticism and pose questions about thesociety’s direction and priorities. The TokyoSanitation Bureau, nodding toward the linkb e t w e e n t h e g a r b a g e p r o b l e m a n denvironmental degradation, urged people tofocus on what was being lost with the“immense profits of businesses” and theattainment of “an affluent, consuminglifestyle.”23 Expounded here was not just theimplications of waste proliferation but also its

understood causes of mass production andmass consumption. And both of thesephenomena were connected to high economicgrowth, which was identified as the source ofthe abundance of things available forconsumption and the production of largeamounts of garbage. As was expressed in onepithy phrase: GNP is both gross nationalproduct and “garbage [gomi] nationalproduct.”24

Garbage was viewed not just as a result ofeconomic growth but also as evidence of theinability of gross national product (GNP) toeffectively capture and measure progress.There was vocal criticism in the early 1970s ofan obsession with GNP growth for its elision oreven exacerbat ion of environmentaldegradation and social problems, and for itsob fuscat ion or even obs t ruc t ion o funderstanding what a high quality of life mightbe. In 1970, the Asahi newspaper published along multipart series titled “Down with GNP!”(Kutabare GNP!) to examine one hundred yearsof Japan’s history as a late-developing capitalistcountry as well as the “distortions” of postwareconomic growth, and to look ahead towardstable and healthy economic growth for thesake of an affluent life that all Japanese peoplecould enjoy. Its inaugural installment expresseddoubt about whether GNP growth alone wassufficient, especially when it came to broaderconcerns about people’s welfare, and askedwhether there might be a better measure ofsocietal affluence.25 In one piece in the seriesthat addressed rubbish, the economist JohnKenneth Galbraith discussed “the externaldiseconomies of high level consumption” andlisted as examples “disposable beer cans andbottles from the beverage industries, discardedcontainers from other consumers’ foodindustries, [and] the garbage and sewage andother wastes of the high consumptionhousehold.”26 Among the other authors in theseries was the economist Tsuru Shigeto, anadviser to Minobe, who wrote regularly abouthis skepticism toward GNP: “Numerical

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measures such as GNP will not automaticallycarry connotations as to the magnitude orextent of economic welfare. We shall have toquestion increasingly the meaningfulness ofcertain quantitative measures or indexes whichin the past we have been conditioned to takefor granted.”27 Like Tsuru, Minobe found GNPan inapplicable metric when it came to successin the Garbage War. It should be noted thatnone of these men, nor the editors of the Asahinewspaper series, were rejecting economicgrowth outright. Nor were they talking aboutpollution as having enabled high economicgrowth, as some did.28 What they stressed werethe costs of economic growth, the particularnegative consequences of the high-speedvariety, the shortcomings of GNP as an index ofsocietal health, and the need for people to thinkbeyond GNP to what their values andcommitments should be.

Sharp criticisms of the mass consumptionfanned by economic growth were presented inan exhibit about the garbage problem housedin the metropolitan government building justafter Minobe’s declaration of the Garbage War.Titled “Let’s Shine a Light on Garbage,” thedisplay consisted of graphs, charts, andphotographs as well as a pamphlet thatidentified the root cause of the garbageproblem as “an economy of mass consumptionthat creates waste [muda].” Viewers wereencouraged to confront the meanings of massconsumption and to ponder two sweeping, evenexistential, issues: What is truly important andof value in life, and what should moderncivilization be?29 Implicit in these questions wasthe belief that mass consumption should notdefine modern lives and modern civilization,and that the economic success it enabled wasnot all it had been hoped to be. In the view ofthe sanitation expert and chief economicplanner Shibata Tokue, the optimistic logic thathigh levels of consumption and high economicgrowth would deliver high levels of happinesswas being overturned. There was thus a need,he said, to reconsider modern economics and

culture.30

Sanitation professionals strove to disseminatetheir conceptions of garbage to the public atlarge, to convince people that their rubbishc o u l d a n d s h o u l d b e m a n a g e d i nenvironmentally conscious ways and that whatthey threw out should be seen as a reflection ofmodern life. As part of the Garbage War, theTokyo Sanitation Bureau took great pains tospread an understanding of incinerators assafe, clean, and modern. One arrow in thebureau’s quiver was public tours of sanitationtreatment plants, to challenge any images andpreconceptions Tokyoites might have aboutdirty and filthy incinerators and to reduce thelikelihood that they would oppose one in theirown neighborhood. In 1972, the bureauconducted 173 such tours with a total of 7,635participants. The bureau’s outreach strategyalso included meetings with neighborhoodassociations (of which it conducted 1,300 in1973), panel discussions, symposia, and“summer schools,” or multi-day instructionsessions about garbage matters. In 1974,responding to a particularly aggressive pushthat summer, 44,392 Tokyoites took part in aplant visit or symposium; in 1976, 60,000people saw an incinerator and 11,000 alandfill.31 The bureau also did some targetedoutreach to the next generation of residents,and through them to their parents as well.Special parent-child tours of incinerators wereorganized. And the bureau sponsored an annualcontest and exhibition of children’s drawingson garbage-related themes, for which itreceived thousands of entries from elementaryschool students across the metropolis.32

It is hard to gauge the extent to which thebureau’s programs and own thinking aboutgarbage influenced the views and behaviors ofTokyo residents, but the Garbage War certainlybrought the garbage problem to people’sattention and garbage to their consciousness,even if results in terms of their knowledge andactions were mixed. Less than two months after

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Minobe’s declaration of war, almost three-quarters of respondents (73.6 percent) in asurvey of 1,080 Tokyoites reported that theywere familiar with the term “Garbage War.”33

More than that, their sense that the productionof garbage had been increasing in recent yearswas in line with the metropolitan government’sdescription of the proliferation of trash. Askedhow they would compare the amount ofgarbage in Tokyo to that of three or four yearsearlier, a full 95 percent observed that it hadincreased to some extent. And many surveytakers did not exempt their own behavior fromthis trend, with 69.1 percent saying that theamount of garbage that their household threwout had increased over the same period. Thesense of urgency that the metropolitangovernment projected about this trend wasmirrored in the widespread belief that thestreets of Tokyo would become “mountains ofgarbage” some years hence, with 62.3 percentof participants reporting that this was apossibility.34

Although there seems to have been familiaritywith the contours of the garbage problem asthe metropolitan government defined it,knowledge about specific systems and practiceswas murkier, suggesting a limit to residents’interest in and attention to matters of waste.During the ongoing conflict over a possiblesanitation facility in Suginami, the SuginamiAssociation of Consumers (Suginami Shōhishano Kai) and daily life schools (seikatsu gakkō)conducted a survey of 493 housewives wholived in their ward. These groups had beenspearheading trash reduction efforts evenbefore the fall of 1971 and were curious abouthow housewives were thinking about garbage,especially in the context of the protractedstruggles over the incinerator. While a memberof the association spoke highly of the GarbageWar as bringing to the surface an issuepreviously considered unsavory, she wasdismayed about the lack of knowledge revealedby the survey. For instance, the ward had aparticular system for the collection of large

refuse according to which a resident had tocontact the sanitation office three days before adesignated date to schedule a pickup. Only 58percent of respondents knew that this was howto dispose of such items; 37 percent thoughtthat the method was the same for regular andlarge garbage, which likely meant that theywere throwing out bulky objects for normaltrash collection. A measly 4 percent of theparticipants knew the ultimate fate ofSuginami’s garbage—that roughly 60 percentwas incinerated in other wards and that therest was transported to Landfill NumberFifteen. Perhaps most alarming given the long-standing and vocal opposit ion to theconstruction of an incinerator in their ward, 19percent of the housewives believed that theirgarbage was disposed of at a (then nonexistent)plant in Suginami.35

From the perspective of garbage collectors,there were different impressions about theinfluence of the Garbage War on residents’awareness of trash matters. In conversationswith twenty garbage collectors from fivedifferent areas of the capital, some noticed thatpeople had become more responsive torequests and directives from their office. Someobserved that in certain places and amongcertain dedicated people, such as members ofparticular organizations, there was morerecognition of the garbage problem. And oneworker suggested that a higher level of interestin general could be attributed to newspaperand radio coverage of the Garbage War. Butmost said that people treated their garbage asthey had before—that trash piled up againshortly after collection and that the level ofknowledge about how to dispose of rubbish waslow, especially among those who lived in largeapartment buildings. One sanitation workernoted that many residents still did as theypleased with their garbage.36

On its own, the impact and legacies of theGarbage War on attitudes toward waste wouldhave been significant, if not monumental.

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Waste was rendered visible—through theconstruction of incinerators and as the topic ofdiscussions about the contemporary economyand society. Sanitation experts shifted theirthinking about garbage (from a symptom ofcivilizational inadequacy to a product ofcivilizational excess), and about their industry

(from beautification and cleanliness toenvironmental protection). And rubbish cameto be viewed as a problem of postwarmodernity to be tackled in new ways.

What amplified, extended, and expanded all ofthese developments was the Oil Shock.

Eiko Maruko Siniawer is Professor of History at Williams College. She is the author of Waste:Consuming Postwar Japan, from which this excerpt was drawn, as well as Ruffians, YakuzaNationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan.

Notes1 Ōno Osamu, “Minobe to the Rescue,” Japan Quarterly 16, no. 3 (July–September 1969): 268;Laura Hein, Reasonable Men, Powerful Words (Berkeley: University of California Press,2004), 191.2 Shibata Tokue, Nihon no seisō mondai (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1961).3 In April 1957, the Tokyo Sanitation Bureau had replaced the term “garbage incinerator”(jinkai shōkyakujō) with “incineration plant” or “sanitary treatment plant” (seisō kōjō) tounderscore its technological capabilities. Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku Sōmubu Sōmuka, ed., Tokyo-toseisō jigyō hyakunen shi (Tokyo: Tokyo-to, 2000), 149.4 David L. Howell, “Fecal Matters,” in Japan at Nature’s Edge, ed. Ian Jared Miller, JuliaAdeney Thomas, and Brett L. Walker (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013), 137.5 Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku Sōmubu Sōmuka, Tokyo-to seisō jigyō, 249–50; Tokue Shibata, “Land,Waste and Pollution,” in Sustainable Cities, ed. Tamagawa Hidenori (Tokyo: United NationsUniversity Press, 2006), 103–4.6 This area of the capital had, in fact, been a dumping ground in the prewar period whenresidents of what was then Fukagawa ward “had been suffering from fumes, offensive odor,and swarms of flies originating in the open trash landfills.” Indeed, Fukagawa had an“association with waste” as early as the 1700s. Mariko Asano Tamanoi, “Suffragist Women,Corrupt Officials, and Waste Control in Prewar Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies 68, no. 3(August 2009): 805–7.7 The original Island of Dreams was Landfill Number Fourteen, which was in use from 1957 to1967. The (new/second) Island of Dreams was Landfill Number Fifteen, which was in use from1965 to 1974. Multiple generations of the Island of Dreams would follow.8 Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku Sōmubu Sōmuka, Tokyo-to seisō jigyō, 233; Nakamura Masanori, Ōraruhisutorī no kanōsei (Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobō, 2011), 9; Shibata, “Land, Waste andPollution,” 101.9 Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku Sōmubu Sōmuka, Tokyo-to seisō jigyō, 238–39; Shibata, “Land, Wasteand Pollution,” 101–2; “Gomi sensō, sono sengen kara Suginami no kaiketsu made,” Gomisensō shūhō 135 (December 27, 1974): 2–4.

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10 Yomiuri shinbun, May 22 and 23, 1973; Asahi shinbun, May 23 and 24, 1973; Mainichishinbun, May 22 and 23, 1973; Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku Sōmubu Sōmuka, Tokyo-to seisō jigyō,243; Nakamura, Ōraru hisutorī, 2, 34.11 Yomiuri shinbun, May 24, 1973; Asahi shinbun, May 25, 1973; Mainichi shinbun, May 26,1973.12 An exhibit titled “Let’s Shine a Light on Garbage,” displayed in the metropolitangovernment building in the fall of 1971, sought to “shine a light on” and “make magnificent”what was in the shadows: the kitchen, the garbage bin, and the privy. Yorimoto, “Gomi nihikari o ateyō,” 14.13 Gomi to tokonoma (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, October 5, 1973).14 Nakamura, Ōraru hisutorī, 40–44; Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku Sōmubu Sōmuka, Tokyo-to seisōjigyō, 252–54; Shibata, “Land, Waste and Pollution,” 104–5; Margaret A. McKean,Environmental Protest and Citizen Politics in Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press,1981), 105.15 Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku Sōmubu Sōmuka, Tokyo-to seisō jigyō, 614–15.16 The percentage of respondents who required conditions was 69.6 percent; those who didnot, 5.5 percent. Tokyo-to Tominshitsu, ed., Gomi mondai ni kansuru seron chōsa hōkokusho(Tokyo: Tokyo-to Tominshitsu, 1971), 31.17 In the 1971 survey, only 5.5 percent of the respondents did not require conditions; in 1973,18.6 percent. Also, note that the wording of the multiple-choice answer changed from“absolutely opposed” in 1971 to “opposed” in 1973. Tokyo-to Tominshitsu, ed., Gomi mondaini kansuru seron chōsa (Tokyo: Tokyo-to Tominshitsu, 1973), 18. For those who agreed to theconstruction of an incineration plant with conditions, the most commonly cited condition byfar was no emission of pollution (64.1 percent), followed by cleanliness (22.5 percent), and nopollution by garbage trucks (20.7 percent). For those who were opposed, the top reason byfar was emission of pollution (70.9 percent).18 On the question of whether each area should dispose of its own garbage, the percentagewho were opposed or somewhat opposed in 1971 was 20.3; in 1973, it was 4.9. Tokyo-toTominshitsu, Gomi mondai ni kansuru seron chōsa hōkokusho, 27; Tokyo-to Tominshitsu,Gomi mondai ni kansuru seron chōsa, 19.19 On the question of building a sanitary treatment plant in Suginami ward, 44.1 percentagreed or agreed somewhat; 31 percent were opposed or somewhat opposed. Tokyo-toTominshitsu, Gomi mondai ni kansuru seron chōsa hōkokusho, 25. At the same time, therewas empathy (72.9 percent in support) for the stance of Kōtō residents against thetransporting of others’ garbage into their ward. Tokyo-to Tominshitsu, Gomi mondai nikansuru seron chōsa hōkokusho, 23.20 Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku, Tokyo no gomi, 44–46.21 On citizen activism and antipollution movements, see McKean, Environmental Protest andCitizen Politics; Timothy S. George, Minamata (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center,2001); Simon Andrew Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 2010); Simon Avenell, Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2017); and Brett L. Walker, Toxic Archipelago (Seattle:University of Washington Press, 2010).22 Jeffrey Broadbent, Environmental Politics in Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University

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Press, 1998), 120–28.23 Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku, Tokyo no gomi, 46.24 This phrase was published by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in a weekly report on theGarbage War. Oshida Isao, “ ‘Suteru’ to wa (2),” Gomi sensō shūhō 80 (July 13, 1973): 4–6;“Gomi kara mono o kangaeyō,” Gomi sensō shūhō 41 (September 29, 1972): 2.25 Asahi shinbun, May 17, 1970; Asahi Shinbun Keizaibu, ed., Kutabare GNP (Tokyo: AsahiShinbunsha, 1971), iv.26 John Kenneth Galbraith, “The GNP as Status Symbol and Success Story,” in Asahi ShinbunKeizaibu, Kutabare GNP, vii.27 Tsuru Shigeto, “In Place of GNP,” Social Science Information 10 (August 1971): 8. See alsoHein, Reasonable Men, Powerful Words, 206.28 Scientist Ui Jun, for example, argued that “understanding pollution as a distortion or aconsequence was a mistake. On the contrary . . . pollution made high-speed growth possible;it was the third pillar [daisan no hashira] of the miracle.” Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens,155.29 Yorimoto, “Gomi ni hikari o ateyō,” 13–14.30 Shibata Tokue quoted in Nakamura, Ōraru hisutorī, 25.31 Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku Sōmubu Sōmuka, Tokyo-to seisō jigyō, 246–47. See also Yomiurishinbun, December 16, 1974.32 Each year from 1972 to 1976, the bureau received well over four thousand entries fromover one hundred elementary schools. Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku, ed., Minna de gomi mondai okangaeru (Tokyo: Tokyo-to Seisōkyoku, 1977), 4–5, 30–32, 35.33 Tokyo-to Tominshitsu, Gomi mondai ni kansuru seron chōsa hōkokusho, 13.34 On the question about the amount of garbage discarded, 70.2 percent responded that it hadincreased “very much” and 24.8 percent said “somewhat.” Ibid., 5–7.35 Ōhashi Tomoko, “Gomi sensō to Suginami Shōhisha no Kai,” Shimin 7 (March 1972): 135.36 “Ankēto,” Toseijin 362 (February 1972): 48–49.