At a time when there is growing disillusionment with the institutions of advanced industrial democracies, there is also increasing interest in new ways of involving citizens in the political discussions. The phrase “deliberative democracy” gained currency in the early years of the 1990s after the era of participatory democracy, and since the mid 1990s deliberative institutions that deepen citizen participation in the political decision-making process have been designed. This article provides concrete examples of successful efforts to expand public input in decision-making, including mini-publics, popular assemblies, e-democracy and direct legislation. Each design has its strength and weakness. As G. Smith argues, it is important to recognize the institutional complementarities of democratic innovations.

The Deliberative Citizen Forum (DCF) is based on the Planning Cells (PC) invented by Peter C. Dienel in the early 1970s. PC has standardized principles, such as randomly selected participants, payment for participants, a four day program with about 15 discussion units, and organization by an independent institution. DCF, in contrast, is a compact model of one or two days with three to seven discussion units. It has rapidly expanded in Japan on a local level since 2005, totaling more than 100 cases. This paper shows DCF as a kind of social movement with repeated organization in the same places. This bottom-up movement is a distinct feature in comparison to the application of other deliberative methods throughout the world. In Mitaka City, local authorities authorized DCF in 2005, and it has been implemented continuously since then. DCF has become an ordinary participatory method and, due to the random selection of forum participants, it involves ordinary people who normally refrain from taking part in public meetings. In 2010, the NPO “Machipotto” organized a DCF in Shinjuku, which shows the potential of NPOs as organizational institutions and their expected important role for civil society. Repeated DCF can strengthen local autonomy in the future.

The consensus conference was first developed by the Danish Board of Technology (DBT)in the 1980s as a tool for participatory technology assessment. In the 1990s, Japanese researchers in science and technology studies introduced the method and implemented it on a trial basis. Since then, about ten consensus conferences have been held in Japan under various themes such as gene therapy, the Internet, genetically modified crops, brain death and organ transplants, and nanotechnologies. Through the decade of its introduction and trials in Japan, it became obvious that the consensus conference functions effectively in Japanese society as a means for public engagement in science and technology. The method proved flexible to a variety of topics, resources and time constraints. The next agenda is to magnify the method's prevalence in society and increase its influence on the policymaking processes. In order to achieve this, there are several actions. One option is incorporating the consensus conference into administrative agencies; while another is building an independent agency or nongovernmental networks to organize public deliberation.

Deliberative Polling was first developed by James S. Fishkin in 1988 to overcome the deficiency of representative democracy. Two democratic values, political equality and deliberation, were achieved in ancient Greek city-states. However, as the scale of society increased, it became quite difficult to keep the balance of these two values. Modern states are designed to pursue political equality by sacrificing deliberation. This is the fundamental flaw of the modern states and is the major cause of inability to cope with emergent problems in public arenas. Deliberative democracy is the institution to achieve these two values in complex modern society. DP is designed to incorporate deliberation into the opinion poll. By doing so, it is conceived to achieve the two democratic values at the same. Since the inception of the method, DP has spread to over nine countries involving more than forty projects. The first DP in Japan was carried out last December in Kanagawa prefecture. This article discusses the lessons learnt from the first DP experience in Japan.

This paper presents why and how the Settsu lawsuit helped to expand local subsidies in the 1970s. The Settsu lawsuit was the first case in which a municipality sued the central government. The lawsuit clarified that there was a large gap between legal regulations and actual operations of the government concerning welfare policy. This gap had led to the possibility of a change in regime. To avoid such a regime change, the government worked on this problem, resulting in an increase in subsidies. This was a mechanism that had expanded the subsidies in the 70s.

There are complex and diverse changes within urban space, especially in retail agglomeration. These changes, such as the establishment of new stores, conversion from one store to another, rehabilitation of buildings and so forth, are mostly affected by fast moving social and economic trends. It is necessary to clearly understand retail agglomeration to prevent inconveniencing residents and visitors of a city.

This paper proposes a method for classifying retail distribution by differences in formation processes using a buffer radius to observe topological relationships between the existing distribution and new stores. Empirical analysis is performed with the NTT Townpage data for Shinjuku ward and Shibuya ward.

Japan has been depopulating since 2008. An official projection indicates we will lose 10 percent of the population by 2035 and 30 percent by 2055, based on the population recorded in 2005. Impacts of population decline are expected to occur on infrastructure management; however, previous research projects in Japan have not analysed the situation or numbers in detail.

This survey was conducted in municipalities of depopulated regions in Hokkaido to explore actual impacts on infrastructures. Public officers in the municipalities provided details concerning the occurrence of impacts, the history of infrastructure developments and other related factors.

Main findings of this research show the importance of factors other than population decline itself, such as geographical factors, the financial situation of depopulated municipalities, and the speed and causes of population decline. Characteristics specific to Japan, such as severe geographic features and the local public financial support system, seem to mitigate the impacts on infrastructures. In other words, it can be considered that the public finance system supporting depopulated municipalities is key to controlling the impacts of population decline on infrastructure management.