Cleanliness as Culture: What India Must Learn from Japan’s Environmental Discipline

Japan’s pristine image today obscures a polluted past, offering a vital lesson: ecological crisis is a trajectory and not a permanent destiny.

Looking at global ecological rankings reveals a harsh reality. Where Japan sits comfortably with an Environmental Performance Index (EPI) of 61.4, India struggles at 27.6. While optimistic observers might point to the EPI 10-Year Change (2014-2024) to argue that both nations are on an upward trajectory, India’s baseline reality remains quite stark. Climbing marginally from dead last- 180th out of 180 countries in 2022, to 176th in 2024 is less a victory than a glaring mandate for systemic changes. For an emergent power, sitting at the bottom of the global ecological index is a severe geopolitical and developmental liability.

To grasp the severity of this divide, one must understand the Environmental Performance Index (EPI). The EPI evaluates global sustainability based on environmental health and ecosystem vitality. Crucially, it includes cleanliness-related indicators, including fundamental sanitation, waste management and air quality. Everyday civic cleanliness is therefore not merely a local aesthetic concern but a direct mathematical driver of a country's global environmental standing and state capacity.

Global map of countries by Environmental Performance Index, 2024

Furthermore, to understand this divergence deeply, it becomes necessary to analyse the intersection of developmental realities, municipal governance and the sociological differences in how these two nations view public space.

The Scale of the Crisis and Developmental Realities

The magnitude of India’s environmental challenge is immense. The country generates over 62 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, much of which ends up in untreated, towering landfills that frequently catch fire and also choke local atmospheres. India is currently struggling with the brutal trilemma of poverty alleviation, rapid urbanisation, and environmental degradation.

However, Japan’s pristine image today obscures a polluted past, offering a vital lesson: ecological crisis is a trajectory and not a permanent destiny. During its postwar economic miracle in the 1950s and 60s, rapid industrial expansion unleashed devastating ecological consequences.

Japan was essentially forced into environmentalism over issues such as mercury poisoning and air pollution. The resulting "Pollution Diet" of 1970 (64th extraordinary session of Japan's National Diet; kōgai kokkai, passing 14 bills in just three weeks to combat the nation's severe industrial pollution crisis) led to a revolutionised regulatory landscape, effectively proving that rigorous state intervention can reverse extreme environmental decline.

Waste Management: Policy and Infrastructure

The core of the EPI gap lies in how both nations handle waste, particularly Japan's mastery of the "3Ws": Waste Segregation, Waste Recycling, and Waste-to-Energy. Japan’s waste management architecture is a marvel of precision that is backed by strict municipal enforcement. Japanese citizens sort waste into meticulous categories- combustible (moeru), non-combustible (moenai), plastics and specific recyclables (risaikuru). Because land is scarce, Japan relies heavily on highly advanced waste-to-energy (WtE) incineration plants (a type of biomass power generation using high-temperature incineration, gasification melting and advanced thermal technologies). Approximately 73% of municipal solid waste is incinerated, with many of these plants using stoker furnaces or gasification, equipped with rigorous emission controls, turning trash into municipal electricity while minimizing the use of landfills.

Waste Disposal in Japan

India, conversely, suffers from a severe implementation gap. While the legislative framework is robust on paper, enforcement is weak. India’s flagship Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission) was able to successfully mobilize mass awareness and drastically reduce open defecation. Yet, the secondary phase- scientific solid waste management and source segregation- has struggled. This is mainly because Municipalities remain underfunded and often lack the technical capacity to process the waste. This leads to a reliance on informal and unsafe dumping.

The Micro-Level Imperative

To lay the blame entirely at the feet of the state, however, ignores the behavioural realities that dictate environmental outcomes in both countries. On the individual level, the starkest contrast between Japan and India lies in their civic DNA. As observers frequently note, Japan’s environmental success is anchored in a social contract where public space is revered, and it is a collective responsibility to keep spaces clean.

This is a cultural continuity rooted deeply in the nation's spiritual and linguistic history. It is no coincidence that the Japanese word kirei translates interchangeably to both 'clean' and 'beautiful.' In the Japanese socio-cultural psyche, aesthetic beauty cannot exist without physical cleanliness. This linguistic reality mirrors their spiritual framework; in Shintoism, cleanliness is essentially synonymous with godliness, where the concept of kegare (impurity or pollution) represents a societal harm requiring frequent purification. Zen Buddhism further elevated daily cleaning to a rigorous spiritual exercise.

This philosophy is institutionalised through the education system. For twelve years, Japanese students have to participate in daily cleaning rosters (o-soji) in school, where they are engaged in cleaning classrooms, corridors and even scrubbing toilets. This fosters an ingrained responsibility for shared spaces, deeply rooted in values of cleanliness, kindness and respect for others, and humility (also influenced by Buddhist and Shinto traditions). 

Japanese students cleaning their own school. Cleanliness is a part of the culture and is instilled into its people from early childhood.

This ingrained responsibility extends seamlessly into adulthood and corporate life. It is common to see white-collar workers collaboratively cleaning the streets surrounding their offices. Moreover, local bodies heavily leverage the "spirit of voluntarism." Massive public gatherings, such as Shibuya's Halloween, are routinely followed by thousands of volunteers mobilizing to clear the area. It even manifests globally as a potent element of Japanese soft power, famously visible when Japanese football fans voluntarily clean stadiums at World Cup tournaments.

Most strikingly, this civic discipline functions effectively even in the absence of basic municipal infrastructure like public dustbins. Following the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, the Japanese government removed public trash receptacles nationwide as a counter-terrorism measure. Rather than resulting in an epidemic of urban littering, the Japanese public absorbed this security mandate seamlessly, culturally conditioned to carry their waste home. This "Keep It With You" mentality shows that citizens are accustomed to carrying their waste until they find a place to recycle or dispose of it properly. This goes on to show that littering is a profound social taboo and a failure to consider others. It highlights a crucial governance lesson: state security and environmental policies can withstand infrastructural deficits only when backed by an unbreakable civic contract.

India, by contrast, presents a destructive spatial dichotomy. While domestic spaces are maintained with rigorous purity, the public square is often treated as an unregulated common. This apathy is historically compounded by a rigid social stratification that traditionally delegated waste management to marginalized communities. This historical legacy has severed the broader public’s sense of personal and moral accountability for communal sanitation.

The Domestic Blueprint: The Indore Model

Yet, civic transformation in India is entirely possible. The city of Indore, in Madhya Pradesh, serves as the definitive proof of concept. Consistently ranked as India's cleanest city since 2017, Indore relied on behavioural engineering as well as political will.

The municipal corporation initiated 100% door-to-door waste collection with mandatory segregation. Crucially, they also levied strict spot fines for littering and engaged in massive community outreach. This resulted in turning sanitation into a matter of civic pride. Indore proves that when authorities provide reliable infrastructure and enforce rules impartially, the Indian public easily adopts high standards of civic discipline.

From Waste to Responsibility

Comparing these two nations extends beyond simple environmental metrics; it offers a critical roadmap for governance. If India is to escape the bottom decile of the EPI, it must treat environmental regulation as a cornerstone of national development. Several lessons from Japan are essential. India must empower local municipal bodies with the independent funding and prosecutorial power seen in Japanese prefectures. Furthermore, subsidizing the transfer of Japanese waste-to-energy technologies can immediately target India's lowest EPI metrics. Finally, integrating community-led sanitation practices into the foundational education system is vital to dismantling the social stigma around waste management.

Ultimately, overcoming this deficit cannot be outsourced entirely to the state machinery as its progress is bottlenecked by public ignorance and a limited internalization of basic civic responsibility among the Indian public. The collective responsibility that citizens assume for the environment they inhabit serves as the starting point. Until the Indian public sheds its ingrained apathy, overcomes its ignorance regarding waste and assumes active, moral stewardship of its shared spaces, India’s development will be overshadowed by the grim reality of ecological collapse.

About the Author

Kaveri Jain is a doctoral researcher in International Relations at the Amity Institute of International Studies, Amity University, Noida. Her work focuses on India-Japan relations during the Shinzo Abe era. She has presented at academic conferences, published in peer-reviewed platforms and written on various aspects of India-Japan ties, including foreign policy, technology cooperation, cultural exchange, diaspora diplomacy and engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.