5
The president was a former high-ranking bureaucrat, and still maintained his
influence over Japan’s energy policies. His hidden intention was to challenge the
current policies of his younger successors. The president wanted to provide a
plausible alternative, with himself as its champion. The world Japanese high-ranking
bureaucrats inhabit is adversarial and competitive in policy-making and propagation.
They behave not only as technocrats but also as politicians. This was a world which
the president did not want to leave. I found ‘his’ scenario was pre-composed. The
scenario research team was expected to write up a BAU (Business As Usual) story
based on current government nuclear policies, and the alternative, ‘his’ story, yielding
a better future.
My scenario practice could not meet the sponsor/client’s expectations. I did not
facilitate the discussion to arrive at the pre-composed storylines. The client’s own
vision was valid and quite consistent, but it was not the only vision, and we did not
discard its rivals.
I now reflect that the sponsor/client expected only to get a neat policy paper, thick and
dense, from the messy scenario study. Bureaucrats make it a habit to write papers in a
sober, repressed style, not dwelling on potential complications. The paper inevitably
becomes colourless, but can include subtle suggestions and room for politicians and
bureaucrats to act upon the paper – in one direction. Contrary to that, scenario
practitioners know that writing scenarios is a different task. The scenario story has to
acknowledge that the present situation may develop in several different ways.
Scenario researchers work to articulate stories that clearly and eloquently
communicate the essence of the relevant issues – including any complications – to the
wider public.
Toward the end of the study some workshop attendants increasingly became worried
about the evocative style of the writing. The sponsor also
found the work
uncomfortable. He expected to have a well-written and watertight advocacy paper,
not easily dismissed, but many things were being left unsettled. This fell short of his
goal to establish a de facto high-powered expert council where, according to rules of
the Japanese political system, he would have a chance to set the terms of the future
policy debate.
2
Nonetheless the research team marched on, and eventually arrived at a distillate of the
issue. The key uncertainty was over unresolved policies for dealing with spent
uranium fuel from nuclear power plants. Japan’s official policy has long been to
construct a reprocessing plant in Japan, hopefully for full reprocessing, which
completes the so called ‘closed fuel cycle’: however, where to construct that plant has
proved a difficult issue.
Over the past forty years, nuclear power plants were built one by one after time-
consuming negotiations between local communities and private power companies.
Government assisted these negotiations with schemes to hand out huge amounts of
2
Academics domestic and foreign generally agree that in Japan the high-profile expert council is the
arena where real political bargains among different interest parties take place, and that the
administrative stake over the expert council is the power base of Japanese bureaucrats. Political
bargaining and coordination among Ministries and Agencies is also tightly worked out in the process of
fixing the official report by the expert council. See [Morita, 2006], and the classic work of [Johnson,
1975]
6
cash to the local governments that committed to take on the burden. Indeed, some
local communities would become dependent on these subsidies. To date the only
major issue which remains is the choice of disposal sites for high-level radioactive
waste. This will have to be stored at deep underground repository, whose only
purpose is to shelter the hazard. Japanese government and power industry were aware
of the problem, but had been putting off tackling the issue. The scenario researchers
jumped in and did so, only to find that they could not work unencumbered by
competing voices and interests.
The study was finished. The scenario researchers had done their work articulating
stories that could communicate the essence of the issue to the public. I tried to weave
a variety of stories into the scenario picture. “Nuclear Power scenarios 2005”
addressed how the spent fuel issue could be solved. One story mentioned the name
of a local community, which was the proposed venue for a high-level radioactive
waste disposal and storage facility. Some experts became hesitant to mention the
name in order not to evoke local NUMBYism. (What is that? It stands for “Not Under
My Back Yard”). Others insisted on mentioning it.
This was the start of a process of deterioration, as one after another, intriguing points
in the scenarios were regarded as ‘best left unsaid’ and were discarded. The work
started to lose purpose and clarity. The research team wallowed in frustration. I was
terrified of being abandoned by the sponsor: and despite the concessions made on the
report, that is exactly what happened. Six months’ work ended up scrapped.
To sum up, this project had eventually turned into a magnetic field for experts’
earnest debate on Japan’s nuclear policy. Seeing this unheralded development, the
president switched off the project abruptly. I lost face to everyone. I could have
shortened the reins when the research team started to rebel and resisted the substantial
changes that were demanded in the scenario that they had made. But I couldn’t. My
heart was with the researchers. Scenarios are an art form, rather than a political
weapon.
2.3. Energy: a successful case of derailment
The “Energy 2030” project was sponsored by METI, the Japanese Ministry of
Economy, Trade and Industry, took nine months to finish, and was published in May
2005.
Renowned experts from inside and outside government were called in, and the
scenario workshop was eventually made up of one-half METI personnel and one-half
outsiders from academia and the private sector. In one scenario workshop, I invited a
co-facilitator from the Shell Group, my old colleague, who was English speaking.
Discussion in a foreign language brought a certain clumsiness to the discussion, but
also a freshness for the Japanese participants. With that, METI recognized that its
outlook should be publicized in English to acquire a wider audience. Hence, “Energy
2030” was later translated, and became available for English speakers.
In making the ‘Energy 2030’ scenario, we employed the inductive approach. In this,
research starts from the issues seen at present, then the present transforms itself in
multiple ways as the current set of issues interact and naturally develop. In ‘Energy