Foreigners residing in Japan for the first time are frequently struck by the complexity of municipal garbage separation requirements. While most Japanese cities have about 8-15 garbage separation categories, some have as many as 34. There are many reasons for these requirements, including national laws promoting recycling of plastic packaging and other materials. However, municipal waste separation requirements in Japan predate the global recycling boom by at least half a century. As early as the 1930s, municipal authorities in Tokyo, Osaka and other large cities were asking residents to separate their household garbage on the basis of whether it could be burned.

Incineration became popular as a waste management technology in Japan in the late nineteenth century. Although most other countries abandoned incineration as a major waste treatment method in the early twentieth century, in Japan incinerator construction was booming. Significantly, incineration remains the dominant method of waste treatment in Japan today. The primacy of incineration as the primary form of waste disposal has meant that citizen cooperation has become a central component of the Japanese waste management system.

This paper will examine the history of municipal waste management in early twentieth-century Japan by focusing on the case of Tokyo, which set trends in waste management and whose policies influenced national laws, with an emphasis on the contributions of citizens and civil society groups. From the structure of neighborhood associations to the gendered division of household labor, waste management history has had a major influence on Japanese society today.