The plant would ensure a stable supply of electricity for the capital in the aftermath of the nuclear meltdowns in March at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But more important, the city government says, it could spur desperately needed change in Japan. By weakening Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, reformers hope to finally break the linchpin of the collusion between business and government that once drove Japan’s rapid postwar rise, but that now keeps it mired in stagnation.
“Now’s our chance,” said Naoki Inose, Tokyo’s vice governor, invoking an ancient proverb about attacking a wild dog only after it has fallen into a river: “On March 11, Tepco became the dog that fell into the river. Only then can you fight against such a formidable foe.”
So formidable a foe, in fact, that just eight months after Japanese leaders vowed the nuclear disaster — like the end of World War II — would lead to a kind of rebirth, the chances for fundamental change are rapidly slipping away.
Already, the reformers have lost a crucial ally: Naoto Kan, who as prime minister had called for an end to nuclear power and major changes to the power industry. He was eased out of office with the help of Japan’s most powerful corporate lobby, a faithful Tepco supporter that, like many members of Japan’s establishment, has benefited from the company’s largess.
And Mr. Kan’s successor, Yoshihiko Noda, whose party came to power promising to build a new Japan, instead joined the old guard to rally around nuclear power, and Tepco.
“In the early months after the accident, I thought there was a real chance for change, but now the move to turn Fukushima into an opportunity for radical reforms is losing steam,” said Hiroshi Okumura, an economist and the author of “Dismantling Tepco.” “There’s a very big risk that Japan’s lost decade, which became the lost 20 years, will now become the lost 30 years.”
It is difficult to overstate the influence of Tepco, which rivals the American defense industry in its domestic reach.
Thanks to a virtual monopoly and a murky electricity pricing system, it has become one of the biggest sources of loosely regulated cash for politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen, who have repaid Tepco with unquestioning support and with the type of lax oversight that contributed to the nuclear crisis.
The pockets of insurgency against Tepco are being led by politicians like Mr. Inose, who successfully took on the nation’s road construction monopoly a few years ago; a team of bureaucrats who lost power after an earlier aborted attempt at energy deregulation; and some of Japan’s most innovative businessmen.
Arrayed against them are the interests that have long profited from the virtually unchallenged hold on the market enjoyed by the company and the nation’s nine other utilities. The corporate lobby, the Japan Business Federation or Keidanren, came out clearly against deregulation, leading to a public clash with one of its highest-profile members, Hiroshi Mikitani, an entrepreneur whose 14-year-old company, Rakuten, has grown into Japan’s largest online shopping mall and is rapidly expanding overseas.
Over Twitter, Mr. Mikitani, 46, said the utilities’ “monopoly and the collusion among politicians, bureaucrats, businesses and the news media” were preventing deregulation.
In leaving Keidanren, the business federation, he accused it of furthering Japan’s “Galapagosization” — a neologism signifying Japan’s growing tendency to turn inward, relying on a shrinking home market as it fails to compete globally.
Supporters of the power industry argue that deregulation will only hurt the country, blaming it for causing blackouts in countries like the United States with deregulated markets.
“The revolutionaries feel it’s fun to smash existing things,” said Yosuke Kondo, a lawmaker and a former deputy minister in the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which oversees the energy sector. “Why do they feel the need to smash something that we can boast to the world about?”
Kantaro Suzuki contributed reporting.
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