Anti-nuclear power movement in Japan

However, starting in the mid-1990s there were several nuclear related accidents and cover-ups in Japan that eroded public perception of the industry, resulting in protests and resistance to new plants.

Political and energy experts describe "nothing short of a nationwide loss of faith, not only in Japan's once-vaunted nuclear technology but also in the government, which many blame for allowing the accident to happen".

People associated with the anti-nuclear movement include: Jinzaburo Takagi, Haruki Murakami, Kenzaburō Ōe, Nobuto Hosaka, Mizuho Fukushima, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tetsunari Iida.

[7] Former Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, who was elected in 2012, has put nuclear energy back on the political agenda, with plans to restart as many reactors as possible.

In July 2015, the government submitted its ideas for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the United Nations, and the proposal included a target for nuclear power to meet at least 20% of Japan's electricity consumption by 2030.

Robert Jay Lifton has asked how Japan, after its experience with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, could "allow itself to draw so heavily on the same nuclear technology for the manufacture of about a third of its energy".

[13] Japan's nuclear industry was not hit as hard by the effects of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident (USA) or the 1986 Chernobyl disaster (USSR) as some other countries.

However, starting in the mid-1990s there were several nuclear related accidents and cover-ups in Japan that eroded public perception of the industry, resulting in protests and resistance to new plants.

Greenpeace has also opposed the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant under a campaign called "Wings of Peace – No more Hiroshima Nagasaki",[24] since 2002 and has launched a cyberaction[25] to stop the project.

In 2008, members of hundreds of opposition groups demonstrated in central Tokyo to protest the building of the Rokkasho Plant, designed to allow commercial reprocessing of reactor waste to produce plutonium.

In its action plan for 2012, the group appealed for "halting construction of new nuclear plants and the gradual phasing out of Japan's 54 current reactors as energy alternatives are found".

[clarification needed] Columban priest Fr Seán McDonagh's forthcoming book is entitled Is Fukushima the Death Knell for Nuclear Energy?.

[21] The proposed Kaminoseki Nuclear Power Plant is to be built on landfill in a national park in Japan's well-known and picturesque Seto Inland Sea.

[26] In January 2011, five Japanese young people held a hunger strike for more than a week, outside the Prefectural Government offices in Yamaguchi City, to protest site preparation for the planned Kaminoseki plant.

[35] On 6 May 2011, Prime Minister Naoto Kan ordered the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant be shut down as an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 or higher is likely to hit the area within the next 30 years.

[40] In July 2011, a mayor in Shizuoka Prefecture and a group of residents filed a lawsuit seeking the permanent decommissioning of the reactors at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant.

Company workers, students, and parents with children rallied across Japan, "venting their anger at the government's handling of the crisis, carrying flags bearing the words 'No Nukes!'

[52] Protesters called for a complete shutdown of Japanese nuclear power plants and demanded a shift in government policy toward renewable energy sources.

[2] More than 1,000 people formed a candle-lit human chain around Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry on the evening November 11, 2011, the eight-month anniversary of the Fukushima crisis.

On November 18 at the site of another nuclear power plant on the southern island of Kyushu, some 15,000 people demonstrated to call on the government to abandon all of the nation's reactors.

"By shattering the government's long-pitched safety myth about nuclear power, the crisis dramatically raised public awareness about energy use and sparked strong anti-nuclear sentiment".

In July 2012, Ryuichi Sakamoto organized a concert entitled "No Nukes 2012," featuring performances by 18 groups including Yellow Magic Orchestra, Kraftwerk, Asian Kung-Fu Generation, Saito Kazuyoshi, Akihiro Namba, and others.

[68] Award-winning novelist Haruki Murakami has said that the Fukushima accident was the second major nuclear disaster that the Japanese people have experienced, but this time it was not a bomb being dropped.

According to Murakami, the Japanese people should have rejected nuclear power after having "learned through the sacrifice of the hibakusha just how badly radiation leaves scars on the world and human wellbeing".

In May, he ordered the aging Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant be closed over earthquake and tsunami fears, and he said he would freeze plans to build new reactors.

[75] In 2012, Kan said the Fukushima disaster made it clear to him that "Japan needs to dramatically reduce its dependence on nuclear power, which supplied 30 percent of its electricity before the crisis, and has turned him into a believer of renewable energy".

According to The Wall Street Journal, Hosaka "is determined to turn this city ward of 840,000 people, the largest in Tokyo, into the front-runner of a movement that will put an end to Japan's reliance on atomic power and accelerate the use of renewable energy".

There were flaws in, and lax enforcement of, the safety rules governing Japanese nuclear power companies, and this included insufficient protection against tsunamis.

[86] The former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who came to power in 2012, has put nuclear energy back on the political agenda, with plans to restart as many reactors as possible.

In July 2015, the government submitted its ideas for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to the United Nations, and the proposal included a target for nuclear power to meet at least 20% of Japan's electricity consumption by 2030.