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The intense and extensive globalization process occurring worldwide and the concurrent pluralization of society have weakened the role of the state in managing its own society, as well as its external relationships. Recognizing the dramatic growth of civil society around the world and the critical role it is playing in filling the space left by the state, the authors, longtime observers of the nature of Japanese governance, examine the role of civil society in the governance of Japanese society. The authors analyze in the Japanese context such questions as how civil society responds to new challenges of governance, what are its comparative advantages and limitations, how it interacts with other sectors such as bureaucracy and the corporate community, and what is required to strengthen civil society in Japan. Individual chapters address such issues as the Japanese perspective on "public," the prospects for the development of individualism in Japan, citizen participation in the political process, the emergence of civil society, the role of track two and other nongovernmental efforts in Japan's external relations, and a historical review of the role of bureacracy. ... Read more

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The purpose of this book is to detail the aspects ofpolitical psychology in Japan.It describes and analyzes the majorcharacteristics of political behavior and attitudes in thisnon-western society, starting with the individual level; continuingthrough political leadership, decision-making and choice; and endingin public/mass behavior, attitudes towards foreigners and foreigncountries, and facets related to the culture and national character.The chapters explore such issues as political culture, politicalsocialization and education, social movements and mass mobilization,authoritarianism, voting behavior, lifestyle, xenophobia, andself-other orientation in Japan. ... Read more

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Profound changes are being hewn in Japanese communities, as historical precedents, proven models, established guidelines and fixed rules are challenged and more appropriate alternatives sought. In this volume seven sociologists show how fundamental structures have been undergoing change at the grassroots level in Japan because of decentralization and globalization. Citizen activism in local governance is growing in response to new societal phenomena such as an increase in the foreign resident population and weakened local industries. Along with decentralization, many local authorities are promoting new measures to actively cope with the impact of globalization and to work with non-governmental organizations and community businesses to meet the new needs of citizens. This volume chronicles the practical and incremental changes in community-level governance and how such change has redefined the duties of prefectures and local authorities - clearly pointing toward Japan's new road to pluralism. ... Read more

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The debate over Emperor Hirohito's accountability for government decisions and military operations up to the end of World War II began before the end of the war and has continued even after his death in 1989. Hirohito and War documents this controversy while providing insights into the Showa emperor's role in military planning in imperial Japan. It argues that Hirohito both knew of and participated in such planning and offers evidence that he was informed well in advance of imperial army and navy decisions, including the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Using Japanese primary sources, many overlooked by Japanese and Western historians, it shows that Hirohito's participation in the decision-making process was entirely consistent with his intellectual background and his passionate belief in the significance of the imperial tradition for the Japanese polity (kokutai) in prewar Japan. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

How much does Emperor Hirohito responsible?
Whether or not Emperor Hirohito is the actual top leader of wartime Japan and thus a war criminal is an old -- past -- question in Japan. But from the Western perspective, he was the one -- and no one else -- to decidewhich way the Imperial Japan should go. This book makes us to rethink ofthese critical wartime days and helps us to reach a more balancedconclusion from no one's perspective. You must read it. ... Read more

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Shinoda provides an analytical framework for examining the role of the prime minister in Japan's political decision making. Although the conventional view of Japanese politics is that the bureaucracy and the ruling party are strong, Shinoda argues that the prime minister plays a pivotal role for major policies. ... Read more

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Japan has long wrestled with the memories and legacies of World War II. In the aftermath of defeat, war memory developed as an integral part of particular and divergent approaches to postwar democracy. In the last six decades, the demands placed upon postwar democracy have shifted considerably—from social protest through high economic growth to Japan’s relations in Asia—and the meanings of the war shifted with them.

This book unravels the political dynamics that governed the place of war memory in public life. Far from reconciling with the victims of Japanese imperialism, successive conservative administrations have left the memory of the war to representatives of special interests and citizen movements, all of whom used war memory to further their own interests.

Franziska Seraphim traces the activism of five prominent civic organizations to examine the ways in which diverse organized memories have secured legitimate niches within the public sphere. The history of these domestic conflicts—over the commemoration of the war dead, the manipulation of national symbols, the teaching of history, or the articulation of relations with China and Korea—is crucial to the current discourse about apology and reconciliation in East Asia, and provides essential context for the global debate on war memory.

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Transnationals and Governments offers an appraisal of what governments are currently doing to regulate transnational corporations across the world, and highlights a marked contrast in the concern different countries have over transnationals' activities. ... Read more

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Wilson's book presents an orderly picture of the organs of government and the men who staffed them during the period. ... Read more

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Making Japanese Citizens is an expansive history of the activists, intellectuals, and movements that played a crucial role in shaping civil society and civic thought throughout the broad sweep of Japan's postwar period. Weaving his analysis around the concept of shimin (citizen), Simon Avenell traces the development of a new vision of citizenship based on political participation, self-reliance, popular nationalism, and commitment to daily life. He traces civic activism through six phases: the cultural associations of the 1940s and 1950s, the massive U.S.-Japan Security Treaty protests of 1960, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the antipollution and antidevelopment protests of the 1960s and 1970s, movements for local government reform and the rise of new civic groups from the mid-1970s. This rich portrayal of activists and their ideas illuminates questions of democracy, citizenship, and political participation both in contemporary Japan and in other industrialized nations more generally. ... Read more

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The topic of "corporate governance" is of growing interest to academics and research students because it focuses on major differences between national business systems and their performance. Yet few works undertake necessary direct international comparisons or reach beyond evidence free generalizations. Comparative study is used in this book to analyse national, legal, cultural and industry-specific contexts and contributory factors. But historical insight, notably into the origins of corporate governance systems and the impact of institutional legacy, is needed to unravel development pathways in Japan and Britain. The contributors to this book consider a number of themes within the framework of corporate governance and its history. These include the particularity of the textile industry in both Japan and Britain; the service and insurance sector; the practice and role of holding companies and groups; the intervention of the state; changes in sources of finance; and the evolution of management structures and operational methods. The book is the result of genuine international co-operation between established Japanese and British business historians and management academics. ... Read more

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This book charts the changes in Japanese agricultural policy in the post-war period and looks at the level at which such policy is designed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries to protect its own interventionist powers. ... Read more

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This book reveals how the Japanese national ministries can exploit their Special Status Corporations (public corporations, supported primarily with public funding from a state-run banking agency) in order to intensify their administrative power over industries and local governments and to perpetuate the interests of elite civil servants by facilitating the migration to post-retirement positions in the private sector.The book explains why the existence of these organizations inhibits the Prime Ministers efforts to implement structural reforms.
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This is the first study in English to focus on and put into historical context interparty relations in Japan.Western scholars and media heretofore have focused either on the LDPs successes or the peculiarities of the individual opposition parties, ignoring interparty relations that are well known to the Japanese.Ray Christensen offers here a new perspective on the interaction among members of the Democratic, New Frontier, Japan Socialist, Japan Communist, Democratic Socialist, and Clean Government parties, as well as on their general political orientation and tactics.He challenges the assumption that the LDPs accomplishments can be attributed to its being the most efficient, capable, and intelligent party, and describes in detail the strategies of the opponents, demonstrating the political savvy of their leaders.His analysis of key data on cooperation and elections reveals that opposition parties actually outperformed the LDP.

This study not only fills a gap in our understanding of modern Japanese politics, it is also adds a critical non-European perspective to analyses of opposition politics and social democracy.It argues that the Japanese experience requires a modification of analytical frameworks, which are based almost exclusively on Western European examples, and questions those who support a more authoritarian, Asian model of democracy by revealing the vibrancy of the opposition in Japan and the technical reasons for the LDPs success.Ending the LDP Hegemony amply demonstrates that democracy, indeed Western-style democracy, can take root and flourish in the fertile soil of East Asia and offers the experience of Japans opposition parties as crucial evidence of Japanese democracy.It will be essential reading for all those interested in the functioning of democracy in Asia and other non-Western settings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Too much micro
Year 1993 was the big surprise to the Japanese and marked the watershed in the Japanese postwar politics. It was the end of longstanding ¡¯55 system which ruled and patterned the political scene of postwar Japan since 1955. for the first time, the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) was ousted from the power. With brief episode, the LDP returned to the power. But nobody thinks it¡¯s the powerful hegemonic party of yesterday. This book is about how the LDP lost the power and what would like the Japanese politics after 1993. He concludes that the patterns of 1996 election will be maintained. There will be a flurry of coalitions, alliances, and mergers. Contrary to the intention of single-seat district system¡¯s founders, if the electoral system wont guarantee the competing double party system. Electoral and party cooperation has prevailed over postwar Japanese politics. Those are the key to sustain multi-party system. Thru electoral and party cooperation, wasted votes could be minimized and support base of each party could be traded.
It seems persuasive and realistic. But the problem lies in the style of explanation: too much micro. The typical case is like this: when the LDP has a bare majority, or when the LDP is facing an election in which it could likely lose its majority, talk of coalitions, defections, and party reformulations is common. When the LDP is ascendant and strong, such plans are shelved, and opposition parties concentrate on building their own bases or on cooperating electorally to reduce the LDP majority.
Sure, such an account has the explanatory power. The writer proves that his case is valid against the postwar political history. He story-tells the postwar electoral and party cooperation. His picture seems persuasive. I can¡¯t find much glitches in his inferences. But those share the defects of micro-logics like game theory. Such logics could explain why the actor choose which option. But could not do so with why there are options before the actor at all. Reasoning of the writer is no exception. ... Read more

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good primer
This slim book does a solid job of showing "that Japan's democracy does not work very well and has not worked as designed since the end of World War 11." The author clearly details how "personalism, graft, cronyism, favoritism, bribery, money politics, factionalism, and collusion" are all rife within the Liberal Democratic Party which has ruled Japan almost without interruption since the War.
He outlines how pork politics have been the deciding factor in Japan, and why Japanese politicians and the factions they belong to must build relationships with cash rich businesses if they wish to exert significant influence in a corrupt society where political favors are regularly bought and sold.
He continually points out how Japanese culture implicitly condones corruption: Politicians like former Primer Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro were, despite their convictions for serious fraud, regularly returned to parliament with huge majorities. Bowen details how kingmakers like Nakasone who specialized in secret, backroom deals made Japan the dysfunctional democracy that it is.
He shows us that "power, the ability to deliver pork - not ethical behavior - is what Japanese voters reward." Because the ability to bring home the bacon is imperative, the Japanese Communist Party, which has never been able to get close to the trough, is essentially powerless and irrelevant in Japan. For much the same reason, the author believes that Koizumi Junichiro, the current prime minister, will be dumped by the LDP kingmakers when the time is right. The prime minister is, Bowen alleges, a more figurehead, a puppet controlled by the kingmakers who stay out of public view and, therefore, out of public scrutiny.
The book also explains such things as why the election of prime minister is usually rigged, how the Japanese constitution is largely irrelevant to Japanese politics, how and why Japan's bureaucrats are so important and why the pre war inheritance of authoritarianism, fascism and imperialism remain vital keys to understanding the modern Japanese political system.
Despite his clear elucidation of all these points, the author also reminds us on pages 99/100 that the Japanese economy is "the world's second largest, the Japanese people live longer, healthier lives than Americans, its people are one of the world's most literate and well-read, its social welfare structure is one of the world's most advanced, its economic system is one of the world's freest."
Japan, in other words, is, on balance, an economic, social and political success. Although modern Japan is not a model of Athenian democracy, yet it must be noted that neither is the United States or any other major world power. The Japanese people elect, by and large, members of the Liberal Democratic Party to parliament and they, working in tandem with the country's bureaucrats, give them what they want: a more hi tech version of the bread and circuses formula so beloved by Roman emperors, who were not the world's greatest exponents of the democratic ideal either.
In building his thesis that Japanese democracy is dysfunctional, he quotes far too many polls. But, as any politician could tell him, the only poll that really counts is the one that happens via the ballot box on election day. And despite the very valid and important points made in this valuable book, the LDP will probably have little to fear from that poll for many years to come. Therefore, although Bowen's book is a good exposition of the problems inherent in Japanese democracy, because there is little new or novel in it, the LDP's kingmakers will not lose any sleep over it. ... Read more

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The relationship between the United States and Japan is torn by contrary impulses. We face each other across the Pacific as friends and allies, as the two most powerful economies in the world--and as suspicious rivals. Americans admire the industry of the Japanese, but we resent the huge trade deficit that has developed between us, due to what we consider to be unfair trade practices and "unlevel playing fields." Now, in Altered States, historian Michael Schaller strips away the stereotypes and misinformation clouding American perceptions of Japan, providing the historical background that helps us make sense of this important relationship.

Here is an eye-opening history of U.S.-Japan relations from the end of World War II to the present, revealing its rich depths and startling complexities. Perhaps Schaller's most startling revelation is that modern Japan is what we made it--that most of what we criticize in Japan's behavior today stems directly from U.S. policy in the 1950s. Indeed, as the book shows, for seven years after the end of the war, our occupational forces exerted enormous influence over the shape and direction of Japan's economic future. Stunned by the Communist victory in China and the outbreak of war in Korea, and fearful that Japan might form ties with Mao's China, the U.S. encouraged the rapid development of the Japanese economy, protecting the huge industrial conglomerates and creating new bureaucracies to direct growth. Thus Japan's government-guided, export-driven economy was nurtured by our own policy. Moreover, the United States fretted about Japan's economic weakness--that they would become dependent on us--and sought to expand Tokyo's access to markets in the very areas it had just tried to conquer, the old Co Prosperity Sphere. Schaller documents how, as the Cold War deepened throughout the 1950s, Washington showered money on what it saw as the keystone of the eastern shore of Asia, working assiduously to expand the Japanese economy and, in fact, worrying intensely over the American trade surplus. Fear of Japanese instability ran so deep that Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson approved secret financial help to Japanese conservative politicians, some of whom had been accused of war crimes against Americans. Then came the 1960s, and the surplus faded into a deficit. The book reveals how Washington's involvement in Vietnam provided the Japanese government with political cover for quietly pursuing a more independent course. Even in the 1970s, however, with America's one time ward turned into an economic powerhouse, the Nixon administration failed to pay much attention to Tokyo. Schaller shows that Kissinger openly preferred the more charismatic company of Zhou Enlai to that of Japanese technocrats, while economics bored him. The United States almost missed the fact that Japan had developed into a country that could say no, and very loudly.

Michael Schaller has won widespread acclaim for his earlier books on U. S. relations with Asia. His fearless judgments, his fluid pen, his depth of knowledge and research have all lifted him to the front rank of historians writing today. In Altered States, he illuminates the most important, and troubled, relationship in the world in a work certain to cement his reputation. ... Read more