The idea of sustainable development gained prominence in world politics during the 1992 Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro. Despite the popularity and the fashionability of the concept, it remains a multi-dimensional term as well one that attracts a great deal of political rhetoric. It is increasingly becoming more important to evaluate how successful sustainable development is as an ideology, as a policy objective and as a policy tool. This paper sets out to examine one particular dimension of sustainable development in the context of one particular country. The paper will discuss the biodiversity element of sustainable development in the context of Japanese environmental policy-making and Japanese people's perceptions of environmental issues. The paper concludes that the value of biodiversity in Japan has not been sufficiently realized, nor has it been included in measures of national wealth. The challenge for the Japanese is to recognize the social, political and economic value of protecting biodiversity, and then it might be possible for them to achieve ecologically sustainable development as an integral part of public policy-making.