An essay examining how a manufactured public consensus—blaming TEPCO and invoking anti-nuclear sentiment—enabled electricity liberalization and power unbundling. It exposes the shock-doctrine tactics and the suspicious alignment between bureaucratic reformers and anti-nuclear activists.

2016-03-24
This is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Before anyone realized it, a so-called “public will” had been created: “TEPCO is the culprit behind the nuclear accident. Crush TEPCO. Strip TEPCO of its privileges. Liberalize electricity. Separate generation and transmission. Zero nuclear power.”
This was precisely the kind of development the so-called “reformist” bureaucrats at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry had long hoped for.
What had effectively been shelved—the theory of separating generation and transmission—suddenly spread among the public under the banner of denuclearization, and one can imagine them weeping tears of joy.
Perhaps, with the exception of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, METI bureaucrats collectively converted to the anti-nuclear camp (a joke, of course).
Had METI now declared, “Let us continue the Koizumi–Takenaka reforms,” the public would have erupted in anger, saying, “Don’t be ridiculous—who caused unemployment to rise and society to become so unequal?”
But with “denuclearization” as the banner, there was hardly anyone in Japan who would oppose it.
Thus, using the enormous disaster of the nuclear accident as leverage in a shock-doctrine-style approach, the interests of METI’s reformist bureaucrats and Mr. Iida converged.
Yet how suspicious it is that the standard-bearer of denuclearization and the command center of nuclear promotion should present the very same reform proposal.
It is almost as if “Power Unbundling” were an original work by METI, with adaptation, direction, and starring role all played by Tetsunari Iida.