The public interest in planning in Japanese jurisprudence: the limits to participatory democracy

While mainstream academic literature tends to emphasise the place of ‘participatory democracy’ as key to realising the public interest in planning policy, this paper argues that the statutory framework as well as a fair judicial system both need to underpin the ideal of the public interest in planning development. The legal cases analysed in this paper illustrate why citizen participation have failed to change values or practices in Japanese planning, even in recent years. The paper demonstrates how the hierarchy of law, such as the statutory power between central and local government and the separation of power between the executive and judiciary, has essentially defined the idea of the public interest in Japanese planning.