La prospective publique au Japon. De l'orientation à l'accompagnement des changements

This article is the sixth in the series started by Futuribles in June 2004, in partnership with the Aleph group of the French Commissariat général du Plan. The aim of the series is to enlighten readers about what specialist bodies are doing in other countries in the area of futures studies and strategic thinking geared to public decision-making. The earlier articles looked at what is happening respectively in Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Quebec and South Africa. This sixth article focuses on Japan. Évelyne Dourille-Feer describes how public futures studies have evolved in Japan since the Second World War. Two periods can be distinguished. The first, from the end of the war until the end of the 1980s, saw a burgeoning of global foresight studies devoted to the economy in general and to the manufacturing sector – mainly dynamic and quite interventionist studies conducted by large public bodies in collaboration with the various actors concerned. Then, confirming a shift first observed during the 1980s, the period after 1990 saw the emergence of a new way of looking at future problems and therefore of conducting public futures studies: against a background of economic crisis and reform, the state narrowed the ambitions of its foresight exercises and opted for a more targeted approach that is more “societal” and more concerned with particular sectors; the aim is to adapt to changes rather than to try to influence them.