This paper aims to survey overall environmental governance and climate change policies in the city of Kitakyushu, Japan. It sets out to explore the major actors, important environmental laws, regulations and standards, the relationship between the central and local governments, and overall environmental policy performance of the city, and see if it matches the general pattern of Japan's environmental governance. Kitakyushu is a city located in the Fukuoka Prefecture in the Northwest Japan. It grew out of a very typical Japanese history of modernization and industrialization, and became one of the most prosperous industrial cities in Japan. However, it soon became a pollution hell, and the government and local business began to react to the citizen complaints very quickly and in a timely manner. The paper demonstrates that the environmental governance of Kitakyushu city shows similar pattern of Japan's general environmental governance, which is top down and more centralized. It also finds that this pattern continues to dominate even in the case of climate change policy of the city, such as eco town project approved and sponsored by the central government. However, in the long term perspective, climate change policies in Japan would be decentralized to a certain degree, and it might affect other local governments in Korea, China, and other East Asian countries in terms of their environmental performance and cliamte change policy patterns.