Negotiating modern landscapes: The politics of infrastructure development in modern Japan

This dissertation examines the politics over infrastructure development in modern Japan from the late 19th century to the postwar era. Contemporary Japan is said to be among the most overbuilt, over-bulldozed, and over-paved nations of the world, and the phrase "construction state ( dokken kokka)" is often used to describe contemporary Japan's obsession with infrastructure development projects as well as the triad of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), bureaucracy, and construction industry which continuously generates public work projects for their own institutional and private gains. The analysis of this problem has been mostly confined to the realms of journalism and social science where it is normally treated as a problem of the postwar Japanese political and economic system, but this issue needs to be examined through the lens of history.;The dissertation shows how development of infrastructures, particularly those related to transportation such as roads, railroads, and harbors, constituted a highly politicized realm where various interest constituents and political ideologies competed as well as negotiated with each other in prewar Japan. Political battles and ideological debates in this realm evolved through the wartime into postwar years. The dissertation argues that the postwar politics of infrastructure development should be seen in this context of historical quest for national and local development and evolving debate over resource allocation.