Land, property rights, and planning in Japan: Institutional design and institutional change in land management

Planning Perspectives

Volumn 25, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 279-302

  Sorensen, André ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

Innovation; Institutional change; Land reform; Property rights

Indexed keywords

INNOVATION; INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK; LAND MANAGEMENT; LAND REFORM; PLANNING HISTORY; PROPERTY RIGHTS; URBAN PLANNING;

JAPAN;

EID: 77953946890     PISSN: 02665433     EISSN: 14664518     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2010.481178     Document Type: Article

References (143)

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2. P. Hall, Cities of Tomorrow (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988)
3. S.V. Ward, Planning the Twentieth-Century City: The Advanced Capitalist World (Chichester: Wiley, 2002).
4. See especially P. Booth, Controlling Development: Certainty, Discretion in Europe, the USA and Hong Kong (London: UCL Press, 1996)
5. B. Needham, Planning Law and Economics: An Investigation of the Rules We Make for Using Land (London/New York: Routledge, 2006)
6. D.W. Bromley, Environment and Economy: Property Rights and Public Policy (Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991).
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9. D.C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
10. P. Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
11. The core ideas behind this policy approach can be found in H. de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Captitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (New York: Basic Books, 2000)
12. K. Deininger and H. Binswanger, 'The Evolution of the World Bank's Land Policy: Principles, Experience and Future Challenges', The World Bank Research Observer 14, no. 2 (1999): 247-76
13. While critical approaches are well represented by S.J. Borras, 'Questioning Market-led Agrarian Reform: Experiences from Brazil, Colombia and South Africa', Journal of Agrarian Change 3, no. 3 (2003): 367-94
14. E. Fortin, 'Reforming Land Rights: The World Bank and the Globalization of Agriculture', Social & Legal Studies 14, no. 2 (2005): 147-77
15. W. Wolford, 'Land Reform in the Time of Neoliberalism: A Many-Splendored Thing', Antipode 39 (2007): 550-70.
16. See, for example, J.R. Ferguson, 'The Expanses of Sustainability and the Limits of Privatarianism', Canadian Journal of Political Science [Revue canadienne de science politique] 30, no. 2 (1997): 285-306
17. S. Owens and R. Cowell, Land and Limits: Interpreting Sustainability in the Planning Process (London: Routledge, 2002)
18. several issues particular to the Japanese case are discussed in A. Sorensen, 'Major Issues of Land Management for More Sustainable Urban Regions in Japan', in Towards Sustainable Cities: East Asian, North American and European Perspectives, ed. A. Sorensen, P.J. Marcotullio, and J. Grant (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 197-216.
19. P.A. Hall, Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 19
20. also cited in: K.A. Thelen and S. Steinmo, 'Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis', in Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, ed. S. Steinmo, K.A. Thelen, and F. Longstreth (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1-32, 2.
21. K. Thelen, 'Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics', Annual Review of Political Science 2 (1999): 369-404, 387.
22. I. Katznelson, 'Periodization and Preferences: Reflections on Purposive Action in Comparative Historical Social Science', in Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, ed. J. Mahoney and D. Rueschemeyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 270-301, 277.
23. Ibid., 282. He also notes that even during such critical junctures, agency does not operate under conditions of its own making, and even at such moments the universe of conceivable alternatives is much smaller than the full range of hypothetical possibilities.
24. See, for example, G. Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990)
25. T. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992)
26. Thelen, 'Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics', 369-404.
27. Thelen and Steinmo, 'Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis', 9.
28. See, for example, North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance
29. R.B. Collier and D. Collier, Shaping the Political Arena (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991)
30. Pierson, Politics in Time
31. W. Streeck and K. Thelen, eds. 'Introduction: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies', in Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1-39
32. J. Mahoney and K.A. Thelen Explaining Institutional Change:: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power, (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
33. Pierson, Politics in Time, 98.
34. Thelen, 'Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics', 369-404.
35. G. Roland, 'Understanding Institutional Change: Fast-Moving and Slow-Moving Institutions', Studies in Comparative International Development 38, no. 4 (2004): 109-31, 116.
36. There is a large and excellent literature on the Meiji period and the transformation from the earlier system; for an overview, see M.B. Jansen and G. Rozman, Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).
37. The processes of institutional borrowing and innovation during this critical juncture are detailed in D.E. Westney, Imitation and Innovation: The Transfer of Western Organisational Patterns to Meiji Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
38. This section on the Meiji land reforms is based on K. Yamamura, 'Pre-Industrial Landholding Patterns in Japan and England', in Japan: A Comparative View, ed. A.M. Craig (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 276-323
39. K. Yamamura, 'The Meiji Land Tax Reform and its Effects', in Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji, ed. M.B. Jansen and G. Rozman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 382-99
40. R.P. Dore, Land Reform in Japan (London: Athlone Press, 1959)
41. J. Nakamura, Agricultural Production and the Economic Development of Japan, 1873-1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966)
42. J. Nakamura, 'Meiji Land Reform, Redistribution of Income, and Saving from Agriculture', Economic Development and Cultural Change 14, no. 4 (1966): 428-39
43. S. Vlastos, 'Opposition Movements in Early Meiji, 1868-1885', in The Cambridge History of Japan: The Nineteenth Century, ed. M.B. Jansen, vol. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 367-426
44. G.M. Beckmann, The Making of the Meiji Constitution: The Oligarchs and the Constitutional Development of Japan, 1868-1891 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975).
45. H. Ito and M. Ito, Commentaries on the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1906/1978).
46. The lower estimate is cited in Nakamura, Agricultural Production, the higher one is in Dore, Land Reform in Japan, 12.
47. J. Nakamura, 'Meiji Land Reform', 432. In some parts of Japan, tenancy was the result of earlier large landholdings that had not been completely converted before and during the early years of the Tokugawa period to the new honbyakusho system of 'listed' cultivators working land owned by Daimyô. For a summary of land ownership transitions in the pre-Tokugawa period.
48. see K. Nagahara, 'Land Ownership Under the Shoen-Kokugaryo System', Journal of Japanese Studies 1, no. 2 (1975): 269-96
49. Yamamura, 'Pre-Industrial Landholding Patterns'.
50. Vlastos, 'Opposition Movements', 368.
51. Ibid., 373.
52. Yamamura, 'Meiji Land Tax Reform', 14.
53. Ito and Ito, Commentaries on the Constitution, 57
54. Vlastos, 'Opposition Movements', 373.
55. Vlastos, 'Opposition Movements', 374; there were, however, many other protests that indicate just how important land rights were to those affected. Gluck describes one telling example of poor villagers in the Kiso valley in Nagano prefecture who fought for over two decades from 1881 to 1905 against the confiscation of their farmlands and village common lands for imperial forestland. Even during a period when the Emperor was worshipped as a god and when criticizing policies carried out in his name could be considered lèse majesté (a capital offense), villagers stubbornly refused to accept the government's confiscation without compensation, eventually accepting a lump-sum compensation in 1905. This case is also, of course, a strong indication of how completely Japanese landowners had accepted the logic and promises of the new system of property ownership.
56. C. Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 98.
57. Beckmann, Making of the Meiji Constitution, 24.
58. Vlastos, 'Opposition Movements', 377, suggests that the newly centralized government was better able to resist protests than the earlier, decentralized feudal regime in which Daimyô were closer to their people and more closely linked to their fortunes.
59. Nakamura, 'Meiji Land Reform', 435.
60. The Daimyô's income from domain tax revenue was commuted to long-term bonds, and they were also given titles in the new aristocracy. See also Y. Inamoto, 'The Problem of Land Use and Land Prices', in The Political Economy of Japanese Society: Internationalization and Domestic Issues, ed. J. Banno, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 229-64.
61. This discussion of the Meiji constitution is based primarily on J. Banno, The Establishment of the Japanese Constitutional System (London: Routledge, 1992)
62. Beckmann, Making of the Meiji Constitution
63. K. Colegrove, 'The Japanese Constitution', The American Political Science Review 31, no. 6 (1937): 1027-49
64. Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths; A. Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
65. Ito and Ito, Commentaries on the Constitution.
66. See Gordon, A Modern History, 84.
67. Ibid., 92.
68. Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths, 21.
69. Ibid., 25.
70. Ito and Ito, Commentaries on the Constitution, 57.
71. Ibid., 57-8.
72. The stress on laws is significant, as laws can only be passed by parliament, while imperial ordinances could be passed by the government without parliamentary approval. See Colegrove, 'The Japanese Constitution', 1045, for a discussion of the Prussian influence on the property rights clause.
73. Gordon, A Modern History, 127.
74. Colegrove, 'The Japanese Constitution', 1045.
75. Pierson, Politics in Time, 111.
76. See Banno, Establishment of the Japanese Constitutional System.
77. Nakamura, 'Meiji Land Reform'
78. P. Francks, Technology and Agricultural Development in Pre-War Japan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984).
79. Dore, Land Reform in Japan, 19.
80. Ibid., 145.
81. Francks, Technology and Agricultural Development, 153.
82. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, 286.
83. Ibid., 291.
84. Although it is important to note that serious questions have been raised about the applicability of Moore's broader thesis to the Japanese case, for a review of these debates, see J. Mahoney, 'Knowledge Accumulation in Comparative Historical Research: The Case of Democracy and Authoritarianism', in Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, ed. J. Mahoney and D. Rueschemeyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 131-74.
85. This discussion of the occupation reforms is based on G.D. Allinson, Japan's Postwar History. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997)
86. J.W. Dower, Embracing Defeat. Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999)
87. K. Inoue, MacArthur's Japanese Constitution: A Linguistic and Cultural Study of its Making (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991)
88. S. Tsuru, Japan's Capitalism, Creative Defeat and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
89. N. Ukai and N.L. Nathanson, 'Protection of Property Rights and Due Process of Law in the Japanese Constitution', in The Constitution of Japan: Its First Twenty Years, 1947-67, ed. D.F. Henderson (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 239-55.
90. Inoue, MacArthur's Japanese Constitution, 9.
91. Ibid., 12.
92. Ibid., 16.
93. Ibid., 19.
94. Ukai and Nathanson, 'Protection of Property Rights', 251.
95. S. Tsuru, The Political Economy of the Environment: The Case of Japan (London: Athlone Press, 1999), 27.
96. The English wording of the Meiji constitution is found in Ito and Ito, Commentaries on the Constitution, 54
97. the SCAP draft wording in Inoue, McArthur's Japanese Constitution, 307; and the 1946 constitution wording in the same work, 281. The English language versions of both the Meiji constitution and the 1946 constitution are the officially adopted translations, while the SCAP draft was originally written in English. To date, no revisions have been made to the 1946 constitution, although the issue has seen heated debate several times during the last half century, and proposals for revision are currently being debated, although not to Clause 29.
98. Inoue, McArthur's Japanese Constitution, 90.
99. See L. Wenar, 'The Concept of Property and the Takings Clause', Columbia Law Review 97, no. 6 (1997): 1923-46
100. R.A. Epstein, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).
101. Dore, Land Reform in Japan, 138.
102. Several landowners took the government to court claiming that the land reform contradicted the just compensation clause of Article 29 of the constitution. The test case was rejected by the Japanese Supreme Court in 1953 with the reasoning that the fair value of farm land was calculated based on the capitalized future income realized from the land. Compensation was relatively low because rice prices were at the time controlled by the government at a low rate, so that it could be argued that technically the government did not violate the constitution. See Ukai and Nathanson, 'Protection of Property Rights', 252.
103. Y. Hayami, Japanese Agriculture under Seige (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988)
104. D. Kornhauser, Japan: Geographical Background to Urban-Industrial Development (London/New York: Longman, 1982), 49.
105. Y. Hanayama, Land Markets and Land Policy in a Metropolitan Area: A Case Study of Tokyo (Boston, MA: Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Hain, 1986)
106. A. Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2002).
107. See Sorensen, Making of Urban Japan
108. A. Sorensen, 'The Developmental State and the Extreme Narrowness of the Public Realm: The 20th Century Evolution of Japanese Planning Culture', in Comparative Planning Cultures, ed. B. Sanyal (New York: Routledge, 2005), 223-58.
109. Sutcliffe, Towards the Planned City.
110. Sorensen, Making of Urban Japan, 115-6.
111. See J.E. Hanes, City as Subject: Seki Hajime and the Reinvention of Modern Osaka (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)
112. Y. Ishida, 'Local Initiatives and Decentralisation of Planning Power in Japan', in Cities, Autonomy, and Decentralization in Japan, ed. C. Hein and P. Pelletier (London: Routledge, 2006), 25-54
113. Sorensen, Making of Urban Japan, 109.
114. Sorensen, Making of Urban Japan, 110.
115. Y. Ishida, 'The Building Line System as a Method of Controlling Sprawl', Comprehensive Urban Studies [Sôgô Toshi Kenkyû] no. 6 (1979): 33-42
116. Sorensen, Making of Urban Japan, 119.
117. Y. Ishida, The Last 100 Years of Japanese Urban Planning [Nihon Kindai Toshikeikaku no Hyakunen] (Tokyo: Jichitai Kenkyusha, 1987).
118. See N. Huddle, M.R. Reich, and N. Stiskin, Island of Dreams (New York: Autumn Press, 1975)
119. J. Ui, ed., Industrial Pollution in Japan (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1992).
120. See T.E. MacDougall, 'Political Opposition and Big City Elections in Japan, 1947-1975', in Political Opposition and Local Politics in Japan, ed. K. Steiner, E. Krauss, and S. Flanagan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 55-94.
121. M. McKean, Environmental Protest and Citizen Politics in Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).
122. E.S. Krauss and B. Simcock, 'Citizens' Movements: The Growth and Impact of Environmental Protest in Japan', in Political Opposition and Local Politics in Japan, ed. K. Steiner, E. Kraus, and S. Flanagan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 187-227.
123. Sorensen, Making of Urban Japan, 221.
124. See M. Hebbert, 'Sen-biki amidst Desakota: Urban Sprawl and Urban Planning in Japan', in Planning for Cities and Regions in Japan, ed. P. Shapira, I. Masser, and D.W. Edgington (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994), 70-91
125. Sorensen, Making of Urban Japan, 217.
126. Y. Ishida, The Development of Modern City Planning in Japan 1868-2003 [Nihon Kindaiteki Toshi Keikaku no Tenkai 1868-2003] (Tokyo: Jichitai Kenkyusha, 2004), 257.
127. Hebbert, 'Sen-biki amidst Desakota'
128. A. Sorensen, 'Building Suburbs in Japan: Continuous Unplanned Change on the Urban Fringe', Town Planning Review 72, no. 3 (2001): 247-73
129. M. Mikuni, 'The Real State and Problems of the Changes in Land Use in the Urbanisation Control Area: A Case Study in Inage-Ward, Chiba-City', Journal of Architecture Planning & Environmental Engineering, AIJ 34, no. 524 (1999): 185-90.
130. See Sorensen, Making of Urban Japan, 226.
131. See M. Hebbert and N. Nakai, 'Deregulation of Japanese Planning', Town Planning Review 59, no. 4 (1988): 383-95
132. Y. Inamoto, 'The Problem of Land Use'
133. H. Otake, 'The Rise and Retreat of a Neoliberal Reform: Controversies over Land Use Policy', in Political Dynamics in Contemporary Japan, ed. G. Allinson and Y. Sone (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 242-63.
134. See The Basic Land Act, 'Japan Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport', in Summary of White Paper on Land (Tokyo: Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport, 2006), http://tochi.mlit.go.jp/h18hakusho/Annex/annex_eng.html (accessed October 16, 2007).
135. See S. Fujii, J. Okata, and A. Sorensen, 'Inner-City Redevelopment in Tokyo: Conflicts over Urban Place, Planning Governance, and Neighborhoods', in Living Cities in Japan: Citizens' Movements, Machizukuri and Local Environments, ed. A. Sorensen and C. Funck (London: Routledge, 2007), 247-66.
136. I. Ishihara. For the Landscape: Fighting the Kunitachi Manshon Lawsuit [Keikan ni Kakeru: Kuni- tachi Mansion Soshô wo Tatakatte] (Tokyo: Shinhyoron, 2007).
137. Although Haggard notes that the relatively weak property rights protection in China suggests that the relationship between strong property rights protection and rapid growth is not a simple one. See S. Haggard, 'Institutions and Growth in East Asia', Studies in Comparative International Development 38, no. 4 (2004): 53-81
138. M. Aoki, H.-K. Kim, and M. Okuno-Fujiwara, The Role of Government in East Asian Economic Development: Comparative Institutional Analysis (Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press, 1997).
139. T.C. Smith, Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization, 1750-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
140. U. Hohn, 'Townscape Preservation in Japanese Urban Planning', Town Planning Review 68 no. 2 (1997): 213-55.
141. A. Sorensen, 'Consensus, Persuasion, and Opposition: Organizing Land Readjustment in Japan', in Analyzing Land Readjustment: Economics, Law, and Collective Action, ed. Y.-H. Hong and B. Needham (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, 2007), 89-114.
142. Katznelson, 'Periodization and Preferences', 277.
143. Pierson, Politics in Time, 111.