When I was in Japan, I was told that in the 1960s, cities and prefectures welcomed polluting industries because of the better paid jobs they offered.
At that time, shipping companies used like to go to Tokyo because the pollution in Tokyo Bay was so bad that it would clean all the barnacles off their ships. That made them sail faster.
Japanese incomes and wages doubled over the course of the 1960s.
In the early 1970s, the LDP stole the environmental policies of their opponents in a really big crack down on pollution because the country could now afforded them. The Japanese voter was now prepared to support stricter pollution standards and environmental controls.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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