Introduction
From the 1950s to the early 1970s, Japan experienced rapid economic growth. By 1968, Japan had the world's third-largest gross national product, trailing only the United States and the Soviet Union.Footnote 1 At that time, the country was under a Liberal Democratic party (LDP) government, which had been formed in 1955 through the merger of two conservative parties. Following the revision of the US–Japan security treaty in 1960, which had been accompanied by fierce mass demonstrations, the LDP government introduced a series of income-doubling policies. The subsequent decade of economic growth brought material affluence to most Japanese, making middle-class life a standard for the nation and enabling Japanese families to become more home-oriented.Footnote 2
However, this growth also had an underside. Media reports made the Japanese citizenry aware of environmental pollution problems, as well as the gap between Japan and other advanced industrialized nations in terms of housing and social infrastructure.Footnote 3 In particular, the Four Major Pollution-Related Diseases victims’ movement, which featured people who had suffered from industrial emissions, fought successful court battles to win monetary compensation for victims, thereby attracting nationwide attention. Meanwhile, environmental protest movements seeking to prevent the construction of large-scale industrial complexes also developed. In response to these environmental problems and public protests, the government took significant legislative steps by enacting the Basic Law for Environmental Pollution Control in 1967 and 14 pieces of legislation passed at the so-called Pollution Diet in 1970.Footnote 4
In addition, a new wave of citizen movements concerned about the general quality of life in urban areas arose. These movements protested such issues as the construction of trunk roads through land readjustment projects, infringements on residents’ right to receive natural light due to the construction of multi-storey buildings around them and the need for social infrastructure in the newly developed suburbs. These movements produced a panoply of progressive reformist prefectural governors and mayors – such as Ryokichi Minobe, elected as Tokyo metropolitan governor in April 1967 – who were seen as more attentive to the voices of citizens, particularly those engaged in citizens’ movements.Footnote 5 The mass media also advocated for the establishment of policies that would improve the general quality of urban life. One example appeared on New Year's Day 1965, when the Asahi Shimbun newspaper published a special feature on urban problems. The article underscored an urgent need for specific urban policies to combat overcrowding and urban sprawl and to promote the large-scale provision of decent housing.Footnote 6
Against this backdrop, the late 1960s saw Japan's government become more active in promoting urban policy. In May 1968, the LDP government enacted the new City Planning Law (1968 Law), replacing legislation enacted in 1919. The LDP then publicized its urban policy outline in June, and the opposition parties followed suit. In the House of Councillors election of July 1968, urban policy was a prominent issue for all five major political parties: the LDP, two leftist parties (the Japan Socialist party or JSP, then the largest opposition party, and the Japanese Communist party), and two centrist parties (the Democratic Socialist party and Kōmeitō). These parties emphasized land use planning and increased availability of affordable housing.
In the first general history of modern city planning in Japan, Yorifusa Ishida, widely recognized as the pioneer of Japanese planning history,Footnote 7 underscored two factors as the ‘historical background’ behind the enactment of the 1968 Law. First, there was ‘a general consensus’ among the Japanese public that urban development ‘must be guided through some form of regulation’ to redress problems created by rapid economic growth, such as soaring land prices and urban sprawl. This view was reflected in two features of the 1968 Law aimed at controlling development: the division of the city planning areas (CPAs), or the areas covered by the planning schemes, into urbanization promotion areas (UPAs) and urbanization control areas (UCAs), and establishment of a development permission system to regulate acceptable development activities.Footnote 8
The second main factor cited by Ishida as underlying enactment of the 1968 Law was a progressive political current that arose from various citizen movements, particularly the above-mentioned ones concerned about the general quality of life in urban areas, which influenced and encouraged progressive legislative activity by local governments (and vice versa). This point resonated with two other features of the 1968 Law: the delegation of planning powers to municipalities, and measures to ensure public participation in policy-making, such as public inspection periods for proposed schemes and public explanatory meetings held by prefectural governors or municipal leaders.
Japan, since its modernization during the Meiji period (1868–1912), had developed a distinctive planning culture quite different from that of other developed countries, one that emphasized the bureaucracy's definition of the public interests based on the premise that the people should serve the state.Footnote 9 Under the old planning system based on the 1919 City Planning Law, city planning was seen as a state project in which ordinary citizens had little voice.Footnote 10 Because attempts to reform this undemocratic planning system after World War II failed, urban reconstruction proceeded in a much more centralized and top-down manner than in other countries such as Britain. Not until the enactment of the 1968 Law did citizens have the opportunity, acknowledged by statute, to express their opinion of planning schemes.Footnote 11 Ishida stated that these features of the 1968 Law were aimed at ‘democratization’ of the planning system, reflecting the prevalence of the idea of self-governance and progressive behaviour by local governments. In particular, the provisions concerning public participation introduced in the 1968 Law marked a significant change, despite all their shortcomings (for example, the public explanatory meetings were not obligatory and the public inspection period was short). Ishida cited a comment by a principal official of the responsible ministry that the new provisions were introduced ‘to avoid complaints that “We have not been informed.”’ Furthermore, the LDP's publication of its urban policy outline in 1968 reflected a sense of crisis, particularly in electoral terms, which led to urban policy becoming, according to Ishida, ‘a prominent issue in the national election’.Footnote 12
In his seminal study on post-war Japan's public policies, Kent Calder argued that the LDP government maintained its dominance through compensation – that is, by responding to the demands and pressures of various constituencies in situations that appeared to threaten the LDP's hegemony. With regard to land use planning, Calder wrote, the ‘late 1960s and early 1970s brought modest formal policy change’ to extend ‘symbolic benefits to urban dwellers, in a bid for their support’ when land use issues were perceived as salient enough to constitute a political crisis. The enactment of the 1968 Law was followed by the LDP's announcement of its urban policy outline ‘to appeal to city voters’ just before the House of Councillors election. However, once the election was over, the LDP and the other political parties ‘apparently lost interest in land use planning’ and the policy promises were frequently ‘compromised at the implementation stage’ to compensate the core source of electoral support for the LDP, namely farmers. Previously, the tax rate on agricultural land had been lower than that on land for housing. Therefore, farmers in urban areas frequently held on to their agricultural land in the expectation of a speculative rise in land prices. It was anticipated that through a revision of the local tax law designed to promote development in the UPAs, farmers living in these areas would have to pay the same tax on their agricultural land as the rate on land available for housing, so as to encourage the farmers to offer their land for development. The implementation of this scheme, however, was postponed in the early 1970s, as the LDP and opposition parties sought to exempt farmers who owned land in the UPAs from the proposed tax changes.Footnote 13 As Michael Hebbert indicated, this postponement enhanced farmers’ commitment to retaining their speculative land holdings, which exacerbated urban sprawl, accompanied by soaring land prices and inadequate social infrastructure.Footnote 14 On the other hand, Jeffrey Broadbent indicated that the LDP government's compensation to those concerned about environmental pollution became substantial in the late 1960s, as the intensity of political threats to the LDP's hegemony caused by pollution protests and progressive local governments grew stronger.Footnote 15
In his authoritative, comprehensive overview of urbanization and planning in modern Japan, the first of its kind in English, André Sorensen explained the emergence of the new planning system centred on the 1968 Law. In Sorensen's view, an environmental crisis prompted the development of civil society in Japan by increasing the legitimacy of citizen activism and protest. Urban sprawl, particularly the haphazard scattering of new developments in suburban areas, was ‘one key aspect of environmental degradation’. Political pressure to introduce concrete measures to address sprawl ‘became overwhelming’ in 1968, as ‘the growth of citizen movements in opposition to government policy and the steadily increasing strength of opposition parties’ in elections were ‘crucial in pressuring the government’. That is, ‘what seems to have prompted action was a rising sense of political crisis for the ruling LDP’, which feared that ‘the increasing political opposition represented by the citizens’ movements would have electoral impacts at the national level’.Footnote 16
Hasegawa, examining the process by which the 1968 Law that initiated democratization of the planning system was crafted, indicated two main factors that prompted the government to start preparing the bill in April 1967 and to submit it to the National Diet in July of that year: the LDP's fear of losing electoral support in urban areas following the January 1967 House of Representatives election, in which the LDP failed for the first time to win a majority of votes cast, and pressure from national newspapers for legislation to increase the supply of land for new urban housing. At the same time, as no political parties had established a comprehensive and detailed urban policy when the bill was being prepared in 1967, its provisions were developed exclusively by civil servants. Consequently, discussions during the bill's preparation focused on the concerned ministries’ arguments that the Ministry of Construction, which was responsible for city planning, should share its planning powers. The delegation of some of its powers to municipalities was a concession to demands by the Ministry of Local Autonomy.Footnote 17
Other key works in Japanese urban history, particularly those concerning environmental conflicts, citizen movements and local politics, have also provided important insights. Earlier studies underscored the role of citizen movements in forcing the political parties to place previously neglected issues on the local and national agenda.Footnote 18 Likewise, the politicization of local governance caused local-level policy matters to grow into national issues. Because the public had come to perceive a link between progressive local administrations and progressive policies attentive to public demands, some political experts anticipated that substantial change would soon occur in the Japanese political system as progressives seized power at the national level.Footnote 19 But subsequently, as the tide of progressive local governments and citizen movements ebbed, emphasis came to be placed on the state's ability to incorporate civic energyFootnote 20 or to shape civil society without a professionalized advocacy community, which was less likely to influence the making of public policy.Footnote 21
Even if we grant these scholars’ conclusion that the LDP government in the late 1960s pursued urban policies in a bid for urban dwellers’ votes primarily because of its fear of losing its national political dominance, certain points remain to be explored. First, we should consider what evidence exists to show that the introduction of public participation provisions in the 1968 Law was influenced by the then-popular progressive currents. Did bureaucrats or lawmakers actually feel pressure from citizen movements as Ishida indicated? Another point unexplored in previous studies is how urban policies became a major issue in the 1968 House of Councillors election. Furthermore, House of Representatives general elections were held in 1969 and 1972, whereas the House of Councillors regular election was held in 1971, in which, as will be seen, the political parties’ interest in land use planning seemed to remain intact. In addition, farmers’ exemption from tax changes was preserved, but prior studies have said almost nothing about discussions of urban problems or policies in these elections or of tax exemptions. How was it possible for the political parties to compromise on urban policies if they remained important in national elections? On the other hand, how did the contemporary public, particularly urban dwellers, perceive and react to these policies? Was there any sign that discontented urban dwellers could push the government to provide further compensation in the form of more substantial change in national policies, or that the state began to incorporate their civic energy?
To answer these questions, this article examines various sources, including Japan's three largest national newspapers – Asahi Shimbun (Asahi), Mainichi Shimbun (Mainichi) and Yomiuri Shimbun (Yomiuri)Footnote 22 – as well as minutes of the National Diet and related materials from the National Archives of Japan. The next section of the article discusses the incorporation of public participation provisions in the 1968 Law. After that, I examine the details of the urban policies touted during the national election campaign. The fourth section considers the UPA agricultural land tax exemptions and why the political parties worked together to secure them, and the final section interprets the findings and suggests conclusions.
The inclusion of public participation in the 1968 Law
The Ministry of Construction (MC) produced eight outlines and ten full texts of the city planning bill before it was submitted to the National Diet on 14 July 1967. The MC also prepared two memoranda that included arguments by various ministries. The first outline was dated 24 April 1967, and the first full text was dated 8 May 1967. The 24 April outline stated that once a CPA was designated, the prefectural governor would be required to set forth the basic city planning matters and provide relevant direction to concerned municipalities. The municipal heads in the designated CPAs would then be required to develop a plan and submit it to the governor for approval. The governor would have to hold a public meeting and consider any public opinions or concerns before seeking approval of the plan from the Prefectural City Planning Council, which was designated as the advisory organization for all the governor's planning decisions.Footnote 23
Following the 24 April draft outline, the 8 May draft bill stated that the prefectural governor would also be required to make the proposed city plans available for public inspection for one month before the public meeting to give the local citizens the opportunity to study the plans in advance and prepare their comments. Further, when submitting the proposed plans to the Prefectural City Planning Council, the prefectural governor would be required to include a summary of the opinions of concerned citizens.Footnote 24 In contrast to the final 1968 Law, the initial draft bill made both the public explanatory meeting and public inspection period obligatory. However, in the draft bill dated 14 June 1967, the public inspection period was shortened to two weeks and the clause referring to obligatory public explanatory meetings was removed.Footnote 25 Thereafter, no substantial changes were made regarding public participation until the bill was submitted to the National Diet in July 1967.Footnote 26 The reason for the omission of this clause is unknown, but one MC memorandum dated 9 June 1967 included an opinion that there should be no public inspections of proposed plans.Footnote 27
At the National Diet, the criticisms of the city planning bill focused mainly on issues related to agricultural land in the UCAs and UPAs. For instance, Shoichi Simodaira of the JSP described the discontent among farmers, especially those in suburban or peri-urban areas, at a meeting of the House of Representatives Construction Committee (HRCC). In relation to the UPAs, Shimodaira maintained that taxing agricultural land at the same rate as housing land was ‘a little too harsh’.Footnote 28 Likewise, many National Diet members, particularly those from the Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery Committees in both houses (irrespective of their political affiliation), expressed concerns on behalf of agricultural interests.Footnote 29
The arguments presented by witnesses invited to the HRCC meeting laid the groundwork for the National Diet to agree to the bill. Specifically, the points made by Shichiji Yasui, managing director of the Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives, were pertinent to the settlement. The bill originally provided that the special permission required under the Agricultural Land Law for the conversion of agricultural land into non-agricultural land would no longer be necessary for the UPAs. However, as Yasui noted, if this were the case, it would be seen as a justification for taxing agricultural land at the same rate as housing land. Therefore, he proposed a procedure for providing notification of such a conversion, and he further proposed that until and unless such a notification was given, the land would continue to be taxed at the agricultural rate. He also demanded that the bill include a public explanatory meeting to obtain farmers’ opinions, as they were not necessarily capable of understanding proposed planning schemes through a public inspection process or of preparing and submitting written opinions.Footnote 30
On 19 April 1968, the amended bill jointly proposed by the LDP, the JSP, the Democratic Socialist party and Kōmeitō passed the HRCC. The main amendments stipulated that the prefectural governors or municipal heads would be required to take measures to obtain citizen input, which included holding public explanatory meetings if necessary, and that the conversion of agricultural into non-agricultural land would require submitting a notification to the prefectural governor. A supplementary resolution, also jointly proposed by the same four parties, requested that the government take measures regarding the taxation of agricultural land in UPAs for farmers who wished to continue farming.Footnote 31 The bill was passed by the House of Representatives on the same day and by the House of Councillors in May 1968.Footnote 32 The newspapers had urged the National Diet to pass the bill swiftly,Footnote 33 and once it had passed, they argued that the new legislation should be fully implemented.Footnote 34
Urban policies in the national elections
Less than a month after the House of Councillors passed the city planning bill in May 1968, all five major political parties announced urban policy packages. The national newspapers expressed appreciation that the political parties, especially the LDP and the JSP, were finally taking the matter seriously.Footnote 35 Asahi wrote that any party that successfully took the appropriate measures to resolve urban problems ‘should be entitled to assume the reins of power’.Footnote 36
Urban policy also became ‘the important point’ in the forthcoming House of Councillors election. There was a consensus among the parties on the need for comprehensive land use planning, the restriction of private rights in connection with land use and tax reforms to promote planned development.Footnote 37 A table in the newspapers compared the policy pledges of the political parties. Yomiuri placed ‘housing measures’ and ‘traffic and pollution’ in a ten-point table of election pledges, and Asahi put ‘land and housing’ in a seven-point table. Newspaper readers were made aware that most parties had highlighted the need for land use planning and housing provisions from slogans, such as ‘a house per family’ (a slogan used by the LDP, the JSP and Kōmeitō), ‘7.8 million houses in five years’ (Democratic Socialist party) and ‘one million houses a year’ (Communist party).Footnote 38
However, criticisms also emerged. Yomiuri reported that the parties’ policy proposals were ‘rough and unrefined’. For example, the LDP gave no reasons why the main development actors should be private developers, and the JSP failed to offer realistic financing sources for state and local authorities while opposing reliance on private developers. Similar vagueness appeared in the proposals by Kōmeitō and the Democratic Socialist party, whereas the Communist party overemphasized the elimination of monopolistic capital. Yomiuri urged the parties to present concrete measures to realize their policy proposals, contending that otherwise the electorate would feel that these proposals were no more than a sales pitch for the election.Footnote 39 Asahi also criticized the parties’ land and housing pledges as ‘marshalling pretty expressions for the purpose of electioneering…As for how to tackle the crucial question of land…one could see no practical proposals.’Footnote 40 A week before the polling day, an Asahi editorial warned the political parties, ‘The electorate fully understands that it is impossible to solve all pending and outstanding issues such as commodity prices, tax reductions, and housing and land. If the political parties keep offering only rosy dreams, the political pledges will remain up in the air, which will result in an increase of distrust in politics.’Footnote 41
After the 1968 House of Councillors election, the newspapers suspected a diminished interest in urban policy among the political parties. Along with the Asahi article on which Calder based his argument about the political parties’ loss of interest,Footnote 42 Mainichi also published one in December 1968, asserting that ‘one could not but suspect that what each party called its urban measures was in fact not measures for the people but election tactics for their candidates’. Because of pressure from farmers, ‘the political parties would not take the issue of taxation on land seriously and positively’.Footnote 43
Nevertheless, interest in urban policy appeared to be rekindled in the House of Representatives election at the end of 1969. Yomiuri again published a table containing each party's election campaign pledges on ten issues, three of which were related to urban policy: ‘regional development’, ‘land and housing’ and ‘urban development and pollution’. Under the land and housing category, the term ‘land use planning’ was mentioned by the LDP and Kōmeitō, and housing promises were emphasized once again, with phrases such as ‘a room per person’ (LDP, JSP and Democratic Socialist party) or ‘a house per family’ (Kōmeitō).Footnote 44
The day after the election, Asahi published a survey in which 39 newly elected National Diet members in Tokyo constituencies had been asked to name an urban problem they would highlight as important and would take measures to resolve. The list of pledges highlighted a range of urban problems, ranging from pollution, traffic paralysis, housing shortages and the need for planned redevelopment to the lack of proper land policy. Although the new National Diet members indicated a determination to resolve these urban problems, ‘only a few offered practicable, concrete measures to tackle them’. One elected member confessed that it was ‘difficult to highlight “the uniqueness of our party” in discussing urban problems, because all parties had similar arguments to each other’ and therefore the topic ‘would not earn votes’. The paper suggested that this type of thinking was the main reason why there had been insufficient discussion of urban problems during the election campaign despite the evident public interest in the matter.Footnote 45
Similarly rosy but untrustworthy proposals were also offered in national elections in the early 1970s. Reporting on the LDP's policy proposals for the House of Councillors election in June 1971, Asahi noted that the party's urban policies now included a large-scale provision by local authorities to make rented accommodation available to people with low incomes.Footnote 46 Public housing was also on the election platforms of the opposition parties.Footnote 47 Simultaneously, the newspapers reported a pent-up discontent in the urban electorate. Yomiuri published a letter from a metal fitter in his thirties living near Tokyo who resented the fact that no political party had a reliable and workable land policy. He criticized not only the LDP but also the opposition parties, claiming that they were not working for the common citizens but, rather, were protecting the interests of farmers, many of whom had become millionaires by selling their land piece by piece to working people.Footnote 48 Asahi opined that the election topics of greatest interest for people in urban public housing complexes were housing and commodity prices. The newspaper then published comments by inhabitants of Tokyo suburbs who were interviewed at polling stations. For instance, a housewife in her fifties lamented that ‘the candidates who stated repeatedly “I beg for your vote” only cast a chill over the electorate. I reckon that most candidates know nothing about what we are asking for from politics.’Footnote 49
However, land policy emerged as an important issue again in the House of Representatives election in December 1972. In June of that year, the LDP's Kakuei Tanaka (who became prime minister the following month) published a best-selling book titled A Plan for Remodelling the Japanese Archipelago, in which he proposed to redress overcrowding in large cities and population loss in rural areas through a balanced distribution of industries and the establishment of a national network of high-speed highways and bullet train transportation.Footnote 50 The book encouraged large companies, particularly those engaged in real estate and development, to buy land for future development, provoking a further hike in land prices. The opposition parties generally disagreed with Tanaka's argument.Footnote 51 Against this backdrop, the LDP and three opposition parties (JSP, Kōmeitō and the Democratic Socialist party) emphasized land use planning in their December election pledges, and the Communist party stressed that land for development should be obtained through the expropriation of properties purchased by large companies, the use of land owned by the state or public authorities and the release of land being used as military bases.Footnote 52
Despite the differences in emphasis, Junya Yano, Kōmeitō’s secretary general, stated at a press conference during the election campaign that the party would ask other opposition parties, including the Communist party, to collaborate in a national conference focused on land measures and jointly to submit a land use bill after the election. Asahi claimed that this was the first time that Kōmeitō had proposed including its rival, the Communist party, in a collaboration of opposition parties confronting the LDP.Footnote 53 The JSP also called on the other opposition parties to join in a post-election collaboration on a land measures bill.Footnote 54
In the end, the election was a major success for the Communist party as it secured 39 seats, a 25-seat gain from the previous House of Representatives election in 1969, raising its status to the third-largest of the five major parties. The LDP lost 16 seats and retained 284, the JSP gained 28 seats for a total of 118, the Kōmeitō fell from 47 seats to 29 and the Democratic Socialist party lost 11 seats while holding 20. The Communist party fared particularly well in large cities; for example, in the Tokyo and Osaka prefectures, it gained approximately 20 per cent of the vote. Such results were regarded, as an Asahi headline declared, as signs of the electorate's ‘fury over the lack of urban policy’, because the candidates in the large cities had failed to discuss urban problems; ‘not that they did not, but [they] could not’ discuss them, ‘because no party had a clear “vision of a future city”’. This ‘poverty of urban policy was reflected in the will [among urban dwellers] to look to the Communist party’ to tackle urban problems.Footnote 55
The political parties and the tax treatment of agricultural land
The public had additional reasons to feel distrust and discontent towards Japan's political parties. A ministerial conference on land prices in August 1970 decided that from the beginning of the 1971 fiscal year (i.e. April 1971), the tax rate on agricultural land in the UPAs would be increased gradually until it was at the same level as the tax rate on housing land.Footnote 56 Because this proposal required a revision of the Local Taxation Law, the matter was referred to the Local Government Committees in the National Diet, with the Ministry of Local Autonomy being the responsible ministry. The government's bill proposed that agricultural land in the UPAs be divided into three categories based on the extent of urbanization, and that only agricultural land in the most urbanized areas be taxed at the same level as housing land in 1971.Footnote 57 The agricultural land in this category, called ‘category A agricultural land’, was estimated at approximately 4.2 per cent of all agricultural land nationally in the already demarcated UPAs. The tax basis for the category A agricultural land in large cities would be up to 250 times as great as it was previously.Footnote 58
The revised local taxation bill was discussed and passed in the National Diet in March 1971. At the meeting of the House of Representatives Local Government Committee (HRLGC), the opposition parties expressed strong objections. The JSP argued that it would not be ‘appropriate’ to levy the tax on agricultural land at the same level as housing land until and unless the housing developments on this land were completed. Encouraging farmers to abandon farming through harsh taxation measures would be ‘inappropriate’. Kōmeitō claimed that the proposed tax changes were ‘an arbitrary tax burden imposed on farmers’, the Democratic Socialist party decried the revised bill as ‘a deemed taxation’ that was ‘unacceptable’ and the Communist party stressed that the bill would ‘even wrest the freedom to choose an occupation’ from farmers. Although the bill was passed by the LDP majority, a five-point supplementary resolution jointly submitted by the LDP, the JSP, Kōmeitō and the Democratic Socialist party was also adopted, stating that ‘proper care should be taken’ not to reclassify taxes on agricultural land owned by farmers in the UPAs who wished to continue farming there.Footnote 59 In fact, when the minister of local autonomy introduced the bill at an HRLGC meeting in February, he stated that the taxes on category A agricultural land would remain unchanged for fiscal year 1971.Footnote 60
A year later, the government tried again to submit a revised local tax bill for agricultural land tax reform to the National Diet. However, before the bill reached the HRLGC, the newspapers were reporting that the National Diet LDP members who represented agricultural interests had involved many other LDP members in opposing this agricultural land taxation.Footnote 61 At the HRLGC meetings, the opposition parties were highly critical of the submitted bill. Tsuruo Yamaguchi of the JSP contended that the municipal head responsible for collecting property taxes should have the authority to decide which agricultural land should be exempted from taxation at the same level as housing land.Footnote 62 Ryo Moji of the Democratic Socialist party argued that the taxation of agricultural land should not be a deemed taxation. He also said that the proposed increase was a mistake because it would deprive farmers of their vocation.Footnote 63
Thus, the opposition parties clearly played a part in undermining the tax change proposal. As a joint proposal of the LDP, the JSP, Kōmeitō and the Democratic Socialist party, the HRLGC members drafted a revised local tax bill under which municipalities would tax land approved for farming (or land scattered in urban areas and designated as already or likely to be available for urban green space) as agricultural land. The municipal head would be required to appoint an advisory committee on agricultural land taxation to consider these types of approvals. The four parties also submitted a joint resolution stating that any agricultural land scattered in urban areas on which any kind of farming products were being cultivated should be treated as urban green space.Footnote 64 Asahi expressed concerns that, as the taxation change was ‘falling through’, this was ‘likely to spoil the new city planning law’, because the supply of land for new housing development would be restricted.Footnote 65
A similar procrastination occurred again in the following year. Yomiuri reported that the four opposition parties, including the Communist party, had forwarded a draft bill that included demands from the Agricultural Co-operatives.Footnote 66 In the HRLGC, it was agreed that a National Diet members’ bill should be presented jointly by the opposition parties and the LDP, but at the last minute, Premier Kakuei Tanaka refused to accept itFootnote 67 and instead asked his party to prepare its own bill.Footnote 68 The opposition parties used the entire HRLGC meeting on 27 March 1973 to express their fury. They were upset because the government had asked the LDP and opposition parties to collaborate in drafting a bill and because they had finally prepared one with which all parties concurred. In their opinion, the bill was compromised because of disagreements within the LDP.Footnote 69
Ultimately, the bill prepared separately by the LDP was adopted at the HRLGC meeting.Footnote 70 It focused mainly on the major metropolitan areas of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, and it made no more than 6 per cent of the agricultural land in the UPAs subject to the tax changes.Footnote 71 The LDP, the JSP, Kōmeitō and the Democratic Socialist party then prepared a seven-point supplementary resolution, one point of which stated that a productive green land system should be established for the agricultural land in the UPAs and that the tax rate on this green land should be the same as that of agricultural land.Footnote 72 The Productive Green Land bill was passed by both houses in May 1974.Footnote 73
Conclusion
With regard to the inclusion of public participation provisions in the 1968 Law, we have seen that the city planning bill drafted by civil servants and submitted to the National Diet in 1967 omitted the requirement of a public explanatory meeting. There is no evidence that any government ministry cared seriously about promoting citizen participation in city planning. Nor is there any particular indication that lawmakers were influenced by the pressure of citizen movements. However, the argument of Shichiji Yasui at the National Diet, who represented the agricultural interests, favoured the establishment of a joint amendment that included a requirement of public explanatory meetings in the 1968 Law. Among other witnesses at the HRCC meeting, two urban studies scholars, Seisaku Takagi and Eiichi Isomura, mentioned that the public participation provisions in the planning bill were insufficient.Footnote 74 Nevertheless, only Yasui demanded the inclusion of public explanatory meetings in the planning bill, so as to incorporate the opinions of farmers. In fact, Ishida, in his 1973 study on public participation in the decision-making process regarding the UPAs and UCAs, revealed that an overwhelming majority of the citizens who gave input into the process were farmers.Footnote 75
As for the role of urban policy in the 1968 House of Councillors election, the newspapers suspected that the political parties’ emphasis on urban policy was more an election slogan than a realistic aim, and their perception was confirmed in the subsequent national elections. A day after the 1969 House of Representatives election, Asahi published an interview with a housewife who lived with her husband and their child in a tiny one-room apartment in Tokyo's Shinjuku ward. She said, ‘Had there been a Japan Housing Party, it would have won the election…all we want is to get a two-room accommodation. Newly elected members should experience living in a one-room accommodation with their family for one week at least.’Footnote 76 Surveys conducted by Yomiuri prior to the polling day also confirmed the electorate's discontent. The newspaper asked 3,000 persons chosen at random from among the nationwide electorate and 867 candidates who ran in the election which policy they regarded as most important. Matters related to urban policy, under such headings as ‘housing and land’, ‘traffic and pollution’ and ‘urban measures’, were named by a modest 8.8 per cent of the citizen respondents, but by a mere 2.1 per cent of the candidates.Footnote 77
This discrepancy in priorities was even wider in similar surveys conducted prior to the 1971 House of Councillors election. On this occasion, 250 of 308 candidates for office and 1,200 residents of metropolitan Tokyo were asked to name two policies they considered important; the Tokyo residents were also asked which two policies they were least satisfied with, while the candidates were asked to name the two policies with which they thought the electorate was most dissatisfied. The results revealed a conspicuous discrepancy in the case of ‘housing and land’. Among the Tokyo residents, 22.7 per cent considered this an important policy area and 25.5 per cent were dissatisfied with current policy. In contrast, only 4.0 per cent of the candidates considered the issue important, while 8.8 per cent inferred that it was a leading source of popular discontent. As for agricultural policy, just 1.7 per cent of Tokyoites regarded it as important and 2.3 per cent were dissatisfied with it, whereas 24.0 per cent of the candidates responding viewed the issue as important and 19.6 per cent inferred that the electorate were discontented with it.Footnote 78 These surveys showed that the parties underestimated the importance of urban policies prior to polling day and that they placed far greater political value on agricultural policy-making.
As we have seen, there was significant popular frustration over the political parties’ inability to establish a practical urban policy, and this frustration contributed to making the Communist party the third-largest (in terms of seats held) in the House of Representatives election of December 1972. However, the Communist party also opposed implementing an agricultural land tax in the UPAs at the same level as for housing land. Yomiuri criticized the party for this position, arguing that it should take greater responsibility as the second-largest opposition party.Footnote 79 The newspapers urged the political parties to reconsider their weakening of the tax change concerning agricultural land in the UPAs,Footnote 80 but they realized that the ‘underlying fear’ of the political parties about this tax change was the possibility of losing farmers’ votes.Footnote 81 Although farmers engaged in occasional ‘revolts’ against the LDP,Footnote 82 they remained an important source of votes for the party, and, as shown in the annual Central Union of Agricultural Co-operative conferences, the agricultural lobbies maintained ties with all major parties.Footnote 83 Although the supply of housing land was a crucial issue for urban workers, it was seen as unlikely to earn votes, and for that reason the agricultural associations had greater power to persuade legislators.Footnote 84 A Mainichi editorial opined that the parties were ‘taking measures to encourage those who impede the progress of urban planning’Footnote 85 and expressed pessimism ‘that there are no parties working earnestly on land policy for the public at large’.Footnote 86
There is no indication that the urban policies actually adopted, particularly those related to the supply of housing land, appealed to urban voters. The newspapers underscored the policies’ sales-pitch character, the electorate's dissatisfaction with those policies and the discrepancy in perception of the need for urban policy reform between the voters and the candidates. From these factors, although it is true that the political parties were concerned about the potential influence of urban policy positions on their campaign results, it is difficult to assume that any party took the political threat seriously for it substantially to impact its policy-making, let alone to constitute an intensified threat to the LDP government's hegemony.
Nor is there any particular indication that the government tried to incorporate the civic energy of urban dwellers concerning the adoption of policies to govern the supply of housing land. This inaction is understandable, given that politicians underestimated and misunderstood the level of discontent and that they were much more concerned about the views of farmers. In this connection, the 1971 Yomiuri survey found that 42 per cent of the candidates who participated in interviews evaluated citizen movements as reflecting eagerness to participate in politics whereas only 30 per cent regarded it as an expression of discontent. In contrast, 47 per cent of interviewees in Tokyo viewed citizen advocacy as expressing discontent and only 8 per cent interpreted it as positive participation in politics.Footnote 87
Ishida, in an enlarged edition of his general history, indicated that the new planning system centred on the 1968 Law failed to transform city planning based on the principles of democratic civil society, and criticized the government's deregulations of planning that started in the 1980s to favour the business circles.Footnote 88 Ishida's conclusions seem predictable in view of the political parties’ approach in the late 1960s and early 1970s that underestimated the importance of urban policy for urban dwellers and favoured agricultural interests in their actual policy-making, as reflected in the inclusion of public participation provisions in the 1968 Law and the weakening of tax change concerning agricultural land in the UPAs.
