Japanese climate capitalism? Toward an understanding of industry’s changing attitudes toward climate change mitigation in Japan

Despite a history of progressive environmental policies in relation to pollution and energy efficiency, Japan stands out as a country with relatively few achievements on the issue of climate change. While research on Japanese climate change policy up until now has focused attention on the role played by government, to date insufficient attention has been paid to the role and impacts of various sectors of Japanese industry in both directly influencing climate change policy and in shaping the discourse surrounding climate change in Japan, as well as to the ways through which the accumulation strategies of different fractions of capital may be impacted by climate change policy. This article overcomes this gap by surveying business responses to climate change and climate change policy through a mixed methods approach that combines content analysis and critical discourse analysis of major firms’ annual corporate reports, comparing data from 2010, the last year prior to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake that had highly disruptive impacts on Japan’s power generation capacity as well as the discourse surrounding energy more widely, and 2022, the most recent year for which all firms had data available. The content analysis results indicate a substantial increase in attention to climate change related keywords between 2010 and 2022 across all sectors, but particularly for the oil and gas, electric power, and steel manufacturing sectors. Yet a closer look at some of the detailed comments from key firms indicated an ongoing commitment to continued expansion of output and consumption, with carbon neutrality to be achieved wholly through the application of advanced technologies, many of which are currently commercially or technically unviable, raising questions about many firms’ abilities to effectively achieve their emissions reductions targets without more significant changes to their overall business strategies.