Given Japan's economic growth after World War II -- a period often termed "miraculous" -- it is not surprising that the worst problems of ecological destruction were experienced here. The generation then at work was not very concerned with sulfur dioxide in the air, mercury in the rivers or toxic waste in landfills. Smokestacks belching out poisonous gas were a symbol of economic growth that promised a better life, not environmental degradation. And it worked: By 1976, the economy was 55 times its size in 1946.
Japan also produced the world's worst health damage from industrial pollution, environmental havoc on a scale unmatched in any country.
Once the disastrous dimensions of industrial pollution and its consequences were recognized, Japan implemented a series of antipollution measures, far outperforming American and European advanced industrial democracies. In the early 1970s, the Japanese Diet passed the world's strictest environmental-protection laws and established an Environmental Agency to enforce them.
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