Abstract: Japan' s legislation of soil environmental protection has experienced four stages, namely, the construction of legal systems to control farmland soil pollution, the setting of standards to measure soil pollution, the construction of legal systems to control urban soil pollution and the construction of legal systems to control radioactive pollution. Now Japan's legislation of soil environmental protection has born a legislation system with Basic Environmental Law as the center. The core content of this legislation system covers the prevention and abatement of farmland soil pollution, urban soil pollution and radioactive soil pollution as well as a series of environmental standards related to soil pollution. During the legislative process of soil environmental protection, Japan has achieved rich experience, a perfect legislation system of soil environmental protection, scientific standards to measure soil pollution and laws to promptly handle accidental soil environmental pollution, which are of a high reference value for China to formulate the soil environmental protection law.

Key words: Japan, soil environmental protection, pollution control, legislation, environmental standards