After winning battles over Landfill No. 8 and the cleanup of Seki harbor, the Seki movements were buoyed with enthusiasm. The movements wanted to delay fulfillment of the Three Conditions as long as possible, in order to keep No. 8 at bay. In contrast, their nemesis, the pro-growth business coalition, felt stymied and betrayed. The pro-growth group hated the Three Conditions, and wanted them fulfilled as soon as possible. Governor Taki was caught in the crossfire, bitterly criticized by each side. He was somewhat embarrassed by the extensiveness of his own concessions, and he depended on LDP support to win the next election (Table 6.2).

Implementing the Three Conditions immediately became Governor Taki s quandary and quagmire. In granting the Three Conditions, the Governor had surrendered much more, substantively, than his electoral backers thought necessary. The LDP, DSP, and business and industrial union groups complained bitterly. Once granted, however, proper political form and the watchful eye of the Environmental Agency demanded some kind of implementation. From that point on, the terms consensus, normalization, and assessment became political footballs, contested in definition and practice (Boulle, 1994; Grafstein, 1988).

In all ACID societies, policy implementation is fraught with pitfalls. Failed policies litter the political landscape. Sometimes policies are merely symbolic from the start, something which can be said of Japan's NIC law (Chapter 2), so their failure is no surprise. At other times, interest groups (within and outside the state) may twist the meaning of a policy and prevent its proper implementation (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1973). In particular, the decline of protest by watchdog groups may initiate a “natural cycle” of decay, of increasing regulatory ineffectiveness.