1. Environmental and energy issues

2007 was an important year in the struggle against global warming. As you all know, the IPCC and former American Vice President Al Gore were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This was the moment when people recognized that greenhouse gases are major contributors to global warming and that the global warming issue can no longer be ignored. At COP13 held on the island of Bali in Indonesia, a roadmap was unveiled for the reduction of greenhouse gases following the Kyoto Protocol, and an international framework with the participation of the major greenhouse gas-emitting nations was finally drawn up. One could say that 2007 was the year that people around the world could clearly see the starting line in the race against global warming.

The Kyoto Protocol came into effect in April 2008. Japan’s reduction target over five years is to reduce greenhouse gas emission levels to 6% below what they were in 1990. However Japan has increased them by more than 8% since 1990. In line with international treaties that call for a 50% reduction by 2050, people are demanding that drastic measures be taken.

Carbon dioxide accounts for about 90% of Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions. Most of this comes from the combustion of petroleum, coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels. To reduce emissions of greenhouse gases we need to develop technologies that allow us to use energy efficiently and we need to switch over to using renewable sources of energy.

Although environmental issues and energy issues appear to be two separate problems, it all depends on whether we look at human economic activity as an input or as an output. The energy problem is clearly an input, and environmental problem is clearly an output. In creating a sustainable society, the truth of the matter is that we have to reduce the inputs and make them renewable, and we have to use the inputs in our economic activities more efficiently, and reduce outputs and make them safe.

2. Japanese civilization

The opening sentence of Yukichi Fukuzawa’s Gakumon no Susume (Encouraging Learning, published in 1882) reads, “It is said that heaven creates no man above other men and creates no man below other men.”

The historian Samuel P. Huntington divided up the world into eight civilizations (Western European, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic, Latin American and African), counting Japanese civilization as one of the eight great civilizations of the

world. The historian Arnold J. Toynbee reaches the same conclusion, writing that in Asia, Japan has been the only country to succeed in rapid modernization and become a nation of affluence, and that Japanese civilization is different to Confucian (Chinese) civilization.

Through Gakumon no Susume, the great Fukuzawa spoke of the importance of practical science. Fukuzawa reasoned that while heaven might create all men the same, the fact that some were above others was the result of learning. He worked to quickly introduce practical science (learning) to replace traditional Japanese literature which until that time had been based on Confucianism and the Chinese classics. Science would clearly show the principles and fundamentals of natural phenomena and enable them to be put to practical use. One can say that Japan’s modernization follows this extending line, and as a result, Japanese civilization achieved enlightenment.

3.The fundamentals of traditional ways of thinking

Before looking at the status of material science in Japanese civilization, I will introduce the traditional Japanese way of thinking.

According to Takeshi Umehara, religion is the foundation of all civilizations. Western Civilization is founded on monotheistic Christianity. In the Middle East it is Islam. Huntington’s grouping of the world’s civilizations can also be based on religion. Since the Meiji Period in Japan, on what religion has Japanese Civilization been based?

Shichihei Yamamoto makes a clear analysis that it is the reli- gious-like belief of the Japanese that the framework of society is static and unlikely to change over time. Yamamoto points out that this belief originated in the Edo Period, which clung to an immovable social system for 250 years based on a policy of international isolation. This social system, that included a rigid class system under which children of farmers would be destined to be farmers, where foreign trade was prohibited, and where Christianity –– which believed in the absoluteness of God –– was suppressed, was a means to create a sense of value based on an unchangeable societal structure and to stabilize political power.

The Japanese have traditionally viewed nature as something that does not change over time. Unlike Westerners, Japanese rather like the expression of “letting nature take its course.” They probably feel that this is the natural way things should be. In the Edo Period, people’s sense of value changed, from those based on nature to those based on society.