Mr. Tomino goes to City Hall

Outraged local citizens have waged an eleven-year struggle to reverse a 1982 decision of the Japanese government to build housing for U.S. Navy personnel in a pristine forest in the city of Zushi. The citizens’ movement swept a young political amateur, Tomino Kiichiro, into the office of mayor. Only forty at the time of his election, Tomino not only attempted to rule for the people throughout his tenure in office, but to reform the administrative structure of the city government to permit more citizen participation between elections. Tomino, now a major spokesman for the environmental movement, is one of the most colorful figures to emerge recently from local politics in Japan. By focusing on Tomino's final years in office, when the mayor continued to fight for the environment while pursuing controversial social policies, this article traces how the Zushi experiment in grass-roots democracy greatly changed politics and administration in that city. The author suggests in conclusion that the case of the Zushi citizens’ movement provides evidence of the Japanese people's strong commitment to democracy

Administration (probate law · Amateur · Democracy · Environmental movement · Government (linguistics · Local election · Local government · Navy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Public Administration · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

• Competing Publics

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• Green Politics and Citizen Power in Japan

  Purnendra Jain, Purnendra C Jain•Asian Survey•1991

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