Crisis Management

Throughout the half-century after World War II, natural disasters occurred frequently in Japan, but major crises were not faced either domestically or externally. In the 1990s, however, Japan experienced unprecedented large-scale natural disasters domestically, while internationally, North Korea and China increased their military power and threats to Japan materialized. Japan’s crisis management objectives include major natural disasters, security and new infectious disease outbreaks. Previously, national crisis management had not been an important issue for Japanese politics and public administration, and organizational and legal readiness were not sufficient. However, serious crises have been directly faced, and organizations and the legal system have been successively enhanced. There has also been a shift from the principle of ministries sharing the affairs to that of the Prime Minister’s initiative, whereby information is centralized in the Prime Minister’s hands, and he takes command of it.