Sachihiko HARASHINA, Takuya SUGIMOTO and Takashi SHIMIZUTANI Japanese government introduced a common SEA guideline in 2007 and a few local governments have already their own SEA systems prior to it. Though such state in Japan, it is still difficult to conduct good practice of SEA because of the requirement of more advanced information disclosure and public participation. As the situation might be better in local governments than national level, a panel survey was conducted on SEA in major local governments. Two individual surveys in 2002 and 2006 were done by the mailing method and additional interviews. All of the 60 autonomies responded to the survey. The analysis including statistical ones tells us the symptoms of the SEA movement, although these are not dominant in Japan. Based on the analysis, the sources of the difficulties of introducing SEA system into Japan are discussed.
