In Japan, wildlife is viewed as unclaimed property, and hunting rights have not been established; it has long been pointed out that there is a lack of resources in wildlife administration and that the location of rights and responsibilities in hunting management are unclear. Under these circumstances, during the GHQ occupation period, the Natural Resources Section, which viewed overhunting and the decline in the populations of wildlife as a problem, demanded a coercive isomorphism to a government-led hunting management system. The ideal system would be based on the American-style public trust principle, which positioned wildlife as “property common to the people”; however, this demand was not realized. In order to elucidate the factors behind this situation, I conducted an analysis of the policy process of hunting management under the occupation, relying on the analytical framework of policy paradigm theory. The analysis suggests that, while most of the technical hunting regulations demanded by the Natural Resources Section were realized, this particular demand was not realized because the difference between “national common property” and “unclaimed property” was not understood at the bill-making stage of the Forestry Agencyʼs Hunting Policy Research Office. Thus, a shift in the policy paradigm did not occur.

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