Survey article. Japan's role in the Asian environmental crisis: comparing the critical literature and the environment agency's White Papers.

The late 1980s saw the development of two bodies of literature addressing Japan's relationship to the Asian environmental crisis. The Japanese government's statements were concerned primarily with the contributions Japan could make to solving that crisis, while critical scholars and NGOs focused on ways in which Japanese activity exacerbated it. Using the annual White Papers of the Japan Environment Agency as a guide, this survey article inquires into the extent to which the government has come to engage with the arguments of the critical literature during the 1990s, a decade in which governments and multilateral lending agencies have been forced to deal more closely with environmental concerns. In particular I discuss (1) the extent to which the white papers address Japan's negative impacts on Asia; (2) the ways they treat Japan as a model for Asian environmental policy; and (3) their approach to conflict over policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]