“no public awareness about watersheds, catchments etc.”
You can easily find lots of pages like this on the internet about people actively cleaning seashores and rivers as their volunteer works.
http://www.portland.ne.jp/~shokokai/seinenbu/seisou016_05.html

“no pollution traps.”
Japan has very strict anti-water pollution laws. Rainwater can go straight to the river, but other water like water from kitchen or washing machine must go through sewage system.

“no bins in public locations.”
That’s because everyone is supposed to bring back his own garbage. Polluter must clean up. The other reason is that there is a public concern that terrorists may set bombs in public garbage bins at busy stations.

“no ownership of the beach.”
Beaches belong to the national government. So are the rivers. What’s wrong with it?

When people start talking based on non-facts, the quality of the discussion deteriorates rapidly. Why don’t we stick to the facts?

Not that these people get off scot-free, by any means. Yuki-jirushi was just about brought down by two major food scandals, in 2000 (milk) and 2002 (meat) or so. Their milk sales stopped for a while, and now survive in disguise, as it were, as MegMilk.

They certainly do exist.

this way of thinking thru the nationalistic lens seems symptomatic of east asians.

koreans are enraged by historical abuse of korean women by japan and yet are silent on the current violations committed in modern korea.

chinese hate japan for historical atrocities but wont apply that vitriole to their own current abuses.

japan is up in arms about dodgy chinese imported food, in a period with scandal after scandal of locally produced substandard and dangerous processed foods.

Dumping wastes into its own territorial water is also prohibited by London Convention. So, Japan does not have to ask Korea to change the current in the Sea of Japan. Japan should just demand Korea to keep its words.

“Also, in the article it says that of the 15,000 containers on the beach only 1/3 of them had Hangul characters on them. That doesn’t lessen Korea’s responsibility in dealing with its own trash any, but there are still 2/3 or 10,000 containers that are presumably Japanese in origin.”
I used to live on the Sea of Japan side in Japan and participated in beach clean-ups a couple of times. I can testify that those wastes on the beach had either Korean letters or no letters at all. In the latter case, labels had been pealed off. I have never seen wastes with Japanese letters on beach.

Sea of Japan is much better place, once Korea stops marine dumping.

I’m just trying to point out that focusing on the origin of the garbage seems pretty silly to me and even more so when only Korea is singled out. They can appeal to the Korean government to put stricter restrictions on toxic dumping, but even in the article, it’s not clear if this dumping is intentional:

“The officials said it is possible that plastic containers left on the coast of South Korea have drifted to Japan as seaweed farmers in the country use acidic liquids to disinfect nets.”

That being said, it’s not just Korean garbage that’s floating onto the shores of Japan. If you look at that link that James posted it mentions that even nuclear materials used in Soviet submarines were washing up on the beaches:

そして日本海の東方には，ロシア語が書かれたゴミが漂着するそうである．旧ソ連の原子力潜水艦など原子力関連の物質も放置されてたままという。

Also, in the article it says that of the 15,000 containers on the beach only 1/3 of them had Hangul characters on them. That doesn’t lessen Korea’s responsibility in dealing with its own trash any, but there are still 2/3 or 10,000 containers that are presumably Japanese in origin. Maybe this article should have been titled Japan pollutes its own beaches.

So, you’re saying that, since there is already a litter problem in Japan, what’s the difference if more trash floats in from a foreign nation? Japan is an open, international waste dump?

I understand this man’s point about not wanting to use tax money to clean up foreign trash so maybe the regional government can work something out with Korea so both countries can more effectively deal with the situation.