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This paper examines the ways in which Japanese women strive for the recognition of new gender norms through their family law reform movements. Drawn on one year`s dissertation research in Japan, I define Japanese women`s movements to reform the post-war Japanese family law as `movements without activism.` Despite their claim to challenge state`s family law system, Japanese women`s movements concentrate mostly on self-recognition and self-help among their members rather than engaging `conflictual politics` with dissident social groups and the state. My explanation for this non-engaging, anti-political form of women`s movements emphasizes three factors among others: lack of leadership in women`s groups, the Japanese state`s primacy over civil society, and socially constructed gender norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nation-states and multinational corporations are the principal agents that comprise the international political economy. Yet, the pattern of bargaining between them has been severely understudied by international relations theorists. This paper examines the evolution of risk during the life cycle of an investment project. During the early phase of an investment project in an underdeveloped sector, market risks are unusually high. Most foreign firms are reluctant to enter an environment of high market risks without guarantees. State protection was sought by the foreign manufacturers so as to minimize risks and maximize returns. Since most countries were more dependent on foreign capital in this early phase, MNCs were able to negotiate favorable terms. However, once the projects reached a level of development, market risks began to dissipate. Consequently, during this second phase, host countries became attractive to would-be investors. Increased market attractiveness due to declining risks created the incentives for reforms of the once protected sectors. Liberalization of the economies led to the influx of new foreign investment activity. The increase in new projects after market openness reduced the level of state dependence on the original manufacturers. Host governments were able to substitute the original relationship with alternative ones. The presence of such substitutable alternatives reduced the degree of state dependence on any one firm. As such, host countries were able to play one MNC against another in order to increase their bargaining power. Japanese automobiles investments in Asia are presented as case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is to examine whether the industrial policy is still feasible for developing countries in the epoch of globalisation based on the comparison between the Japanese and Chinese automobile industries. Sharing the same goal of catching up with high-income countries, both Japanese and Chinese governments selected the automobile industry to achieve industrial development and build up a few large firms with international competitive capability. In the postwar period, Japan successfully nurtured its leading automobile producers such as Toyota and Nissan with protectionist industrial policies. Conversely, with the similar package of industrial policies, the Chinese state-supported large automobile producers face tough competition from the global conglomerate automakers and the domestic indigenous producers. Drawing on the success of Japan and the failure of China, intense international competition, low-level technology and institutional inefficiency are the main obstacles for automakers from developing countries to catch up with their global competitors. In the near future, it is still difficult for developing countries to utilize industrial policies to nurture “national champions” in this highly consolidated industrial sector. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid 1980’s, anti-Japanese mass protests in China have been conducted on the streets, college campuses, and, in recent years, on the Internet. While the Chinese and Japanese governments increasingly tie their fate together economically, growing rancor among the Chinese public over WWII and contemporary issues threatens to tear apart. Opinion polls conducted in China show that rampant nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiment is prevalent among Chinese “Generation Y” youths (Chinese citizens born between 1981-1995). Chinese nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiment is not new phenomena, yet Gen Y nationalists vary from their predecessors in significant ways. This paper will (1) explore this new breed of nationalism and (2) examine the tools that Chinese youths currently use to impact the complex and conflictive Sino-Japanese relationship. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is political realism different depending on the nation? There is a school of thought called ‘political realism’ whose core principles are supposed to be universal. But what matters is not so much the principles themselves but how they are applied to specific cases, because political realism is useful only when it solves the problem well in practice. .x000d.Political realism depends on how to perceive and interpret reality. And such perception and interpretation depend on political culture. Therefore, political realism must reflect cultural values of each nation, and the application of must reflect such values, if the essential principles are. In this paper, I will examine political realism in Japan. .x000d.In practice, I will examine the political realism of Tsuneari Fukuda, a literary critic in post-WWII period and known for political realist and particularly influential today’s Japan. His view is deeply rooted in traditional Japanese culture, so that his political realism reflect her culture. This study is important because it will enable us to understand the thoughts in Japanese politics today, for he is very influential on the intellectuals as well as some political leaders, guiding them how to cope with political situations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I trace the origins of Article Nine, the 'peace plank' of Japan's postwar constitution, to the American outlawry of war movement and investigate its relationship to the transformation of Japanese political culture from one that was illiberal and authoritarian to one in which democracy came to be associated with antimilitarism. While the role of constitutional frameworks has been investigated in terms of democratic transitions and consolidation, the present study considers the impact of Japan’s peace constitution on the development of a pacifist political culture, one in which citizens continue to “renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” (Article Nine, Paragraph One) ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine the effectiveness of political communication among citizens, media, and parties during election campaigns..x000d.Election campaigns play important roles in democracy. Despite that, Japanese election campaigns are short and restricted. It is said that effects of Japanese election campaigns are limited, but, there are little research that disputes the truth of such declarations. My paper tests whether Japanese campaigns work for voters or not, and, I reveal who is affected. Especially, on the views of political information and changing people’s cognition, I check the democratic dificit during election campaigns. My hypothesis is that restricted conditions, such as Japan, produce gaps and inequalities during election campaigns. In less regulated systems, information reaches most citizens, but regulated systems function only for more motivated people. This structure leads to information gaps and inequalities, political distrust and less political efficacy for example, in democratic countries..x000d.I use data from the 2003 Japanese National House of Representatives Election(JES?: Japanese Election Study ?) and analyze information processing. This research will show the significance and shortcomings of Japanese election campaigns. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hayden (1990) writes, “The awareness that every citizen’s history is important can generate a new kind of pride in a multicultural city.” Can every non-citizen’s history generate an equal kind of pride in a multicultural city? In the age of migration - predominantly an urban phenomenon - what are the possibilities for migrants to be part of a multicultural city? How far are we in implementing Sandercock (2003) dreaming of a Cosmopolis where “we (all of us), in all of our differences, [are] ‘at home’ in the multicultural and multiethnic cities of the 21st century”? And how aware are we of the existing visible and invisible inscriptions of migrants’ ethnic diversity, which occur in the urban landscape without an overarching discourse that openly grants them rights to the city? This paper answers these questions focusing on the Tokyo urban landscape and presents preliminary findings on Japanese Brazilian place-making inscriptions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are clientelistic behaviors and programmatic position-taking of legislators substitutive, complementary, or orthogonal? Existing literature has theorized the two modes of political competition as substitutes, yet, empirical support for this assumption has been provided by data that involves extensive dichotomous coding of party platforms and dichotomous framing of public opinion questionnaires. Consequently we do not know much about how these two modes of political competition relate to each other when they coexist. Using Japanese legislator surveys, this paper develop two independent measures of programmatic position-taking using a multidimensional scaling procedure developed by Poole (1998) and test competing hyptheses. Our results do not lend strong support to the substitutive argument widely believed in the literature. We find that the levels of clientelism and programmatic position-taking are weakly complementary for economic issues and weakly substitutive for security issues. Only the effort-based measure of clientelism has substitutive effects on programmatic position-taking, although the effect is moderate. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine political processes of labor market deregulation policies with an analytical focus on Japan. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will analyze japanese nationalism by using the opinion polls that have been poorly utilized. It will indicate the nature of the nationalism. Then it will comperhend how such a nationalism will affect japanese alliance with the US ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the argument that SNTV is subproportional. This test is superior to previous tests because the data are from a country not previously examined and include multiple parties and a change in government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes seriously political leadership in reform processes and its relationship with other political variables in explaining the very divergent economic reform outcomes in South Korea and Japan a decade after crisis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between social capital and support for democratic principles, performance and institutions in Japan, with specific focus on the effects of different types of civic associations, as well as urban-rural differences. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of ministerial and legislative post experience on incumbents’ electoral fortunes. The result shows the distinct effects of different posts depending on the rank and policy areas of posts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines China's and Japan's popularity campaigns toward Southeast Asia, a vital neighbor to both. It contextualizes soft power campaign in democratic and non-democratic settings and discusses their similarities and differences. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the Japan Times¡¯ seeming inattention to important events in China in 1997 is better understood as the contemporary Japanese practice of ¡Â*withdrawing for universality. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explain how employment affects Japanese women’s partisanship and policy attitudes, using a survey data before and after the Lower House election in 1996. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines Japan’s and Germany’s policy responses to a low birth rate and aging population and analyzes how distributional conflicts between the elderly and young have played out since 1990. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State initiatives may empower women but not necessarily because they are either state funded or feminist. This paper applies state feminist literature to Japan and seeks to expand the definitions and activities examined by scholars in this field. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questioning the tianxia concept in relation to the study of postcolonialism, this paper investigates the (im)possibility of disrupting the self/other division in the Japanese context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research will attempt to explain the phenomenon of state destruction utilizing a synthesis of historical process tracing, cognitive approaches, and classical realist/first image theories. The main theoretical puzzle that this research will address is why statesmen choose to inflict devastating losses to their state's land, labor, and capital by continuing an interstate war when there is no prospect of victory. To examine this puzzle, this research will focus on the cases of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and the roles that Hitler and Hirohito played in ending WWII in Europe and Asia. Why did Hitler order his forces to resist Allied forces and accept the total destruction of Germany while Hirohito choose to end hostilities comparatively early and to embrace American occupation. To analyze this puzzle, this paper uses a combination of process tracing and rational choice methodology. Ultimately, this research concludes that regime/personal security is the primary motivation for autocratic leadership decisions resulting in state destruction. Because leaders seek security for themselves, they are willing to surrender only when they can ensure their personal safety. Hitler was afraid of retribution from his Soviet adversaries and was thus unwilling to submit peacefully to Allied rule, whereas the Japanese explicitly protected Emperor Hirohito as a condition of surrender and were thus able to terminate the conflict before an American invasion. In effect, Hirohito was provided with an exile option and was able to save himself and his nation from further destruction. Conversely, Hitler was unable to ensure his personal security and chose the total destruction of both his regime and his nation rather than the uncertain prospect of surrender. In an attempt to model this behavior, this research proposes the "Louis XIV Theory" which is an extension of classical realist and cognitive theories regarding human nature and the survival imperative. In these cases, aggressive/revisionist leaders radically revise their preferences to provide for the prolongation of their own regime even at the expense of their nations and thus echo the sentiment of Louis XIV who famously said, "I am the state." This theory posits that autocratic leaders will rule their nations based on ideological preferences and the desire to attain greater power but will subvert these preferences for their own personal safety. Using this theory, this work will conclude with a brief discussion of similar cases such as Cetshwayo, Hussein, Lopez, Bonaparte, Khomeini, and Wilhelm and will attempt to generalize these findings for policy prescriptions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a new dataset covering interest group lobbying on trade before Diet committees from 1950 to 2002 in Japan, this paper investigates when regional competitions, as opposed to class or sectoral competitions, prevail in trade politics. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chief concern of this paper is to provide an analysis as to how the mutually-reinforcing phenomena of conflicting identities and conflicting interests have caused and are serving to exacerbate the current tensions between China and Japan. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how political institutions and incentives can help us understand the timing and nature of decentralization reforms in two highly centralized unitary states in East Asia, Japan and South Korea. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relation between the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the redistribution of public investment in Japan. Contrary to general beliefs, it is found that the LDP has only weak power over the redistribution of public investment. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to a currently dominant view, the causes of economic development are to be found in “institutions.” These include well-defined property rights in land, the substantive focus of this paper. But what are the political origins of such growth-promoting underpinnings of capitalism? In an important strand of the literature it is argued that rulers will improve the institutional structure, thereby raising the rate of economic growth, when faced with national security threats. The cases of Thailand and Japan both faced the threat of colonialism in the latter half of the 19th Century. The response was non-developmental in Siam and developmental in Japan. What accounts for the different outcomes? This study advances the paradoxical argument that institutional underdevelopment is, under certain circumstances, a viable survival strategy in response to external threats—an international relations equivalent of the “weapons of the weak.” The case of Siam fits this model, whereas Japan's response follows the logic of bellicist theories. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests whether representatives to Japan's Lower House of the Diet influenced the distribution of public expenditures during the period from 1977 to 1995. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to solve an endogeneity problem in the study of the so-called "contamination" effects in mixed electoral systems and evaluate the real amount (if any) of the impact of the district component on the PR component in the Japanese system. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and analyzes the results of a survey administered to 200 Japanese businessmen in Nagoya, Japan on the topic of karoshi ("death by overwork"), and the role of the government to protect workers against dangerous work conditions. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates how and why the rise of global finance in Japan since the early 1990s has expanded, rather than eroded, the role of the state in the issue area of fiscal and financial policy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine competing nationalisms in contemporary Japanese politics, focusing specifically on the controversy surrounding prime ministers’ visits to Yasukuni Shrine. I trace the contestation over Yasukuni Shrine in regard to identity formation and negotiation, showing that it is wrong to assume that the Japanese subscribe to one, monolithic nationalism. Next, I assess the shrine’s role in state-(re)making, especially as that concerns the will to sacrifice. The dialectic of remembering and forgetting that nationalism entails is particularly relevant in this regard. Finally, I show how Yasukuni Shrine has become a symbolic focal point for the fusion of state and society, a vehicle for the melding of the private, particular identity of the citizen and the public, universal identity of the state with the prime minister attempting to serve as an exemplar nationalist. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the pork barrel politics in Japan from 1991 to 2000. The impacts of the changes in the electoral system and the end of LDP's one party rule on the budget transfer from the national to local governments are analyzed. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains how different paths led to the same outcome, the low female labor force participation, by focusing on Germany and Japan, which both are categorized in conservative welfare states and specific skill systems, in the 1990s. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the question why democracy put down roots in Japan by examining a process through which culturally fragmented communities are integrated into a political community through state making, nation-building, and democratization. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tests the theory of the contamination effect according to which, in a mixed-member electoral system, small parties obtain additional PR votes by nominating candidates in SMD. Some studies show the substantial size of the effect, and attribute the inflated number of parties in the SMD contests that contradicts Duverger's law to the contamination effect. In contrast, Maeda (2008) recently shows that the contamination effect was negligible in Japan with the Heckman's treatment-effects model. This article shows that those studies obtained inconsistent results primarily because they estimated different estimands. I employ the genetic matching approach (Sekhon forthcoming) for the Japanese electoral data, and indicate that a small party clearly gained more PR vote-share in the districts where the candidates were nominated, though a substantial impact of the effect is questionable. This article indicates the importance of elaborating the concept to choose appropriate estimands and statistical approaches. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comfort women case in South Korea has been a polemic issue in the context of inherited responsibility. The Japanese government who emphasizes on state as an agent for taking the responsibility tends either to deny collective responsibility of historic wrongdoings or to limit the scope of its roles to superficial ways such as reparation. Meanwhile South Korea demands not only reparation but official apology, emotional compassion, and material compensation on the ground that nation, not state, should be accountable for historic injustice, but this claim still encounters a difficulty of application to cases originated in multinational countries. Based on these observations, we will develop two arguments: (1) that reciprocal nondomination conceptualized with civic responsibility will better the comfort women case in the context of inherited responsibility because this contains full ground of deliberation in which those who come from regardless of state or nation can participate; (2) that reciprocal nondomination embodied with civic responsibility can be operated as a regulative principle which prompts both victims and wrongdoers to have their deliberative stances and to reach an agreement conducive to transitional justice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in the OECD has played a significant financial role in providing foreign aid for AIDS. In accounting for the convergence in AIDS funding, constructivists would claim that the norms of global response to AIDS motivate foreign aid for AIDS by reshaping and redefining donors' identity and preferences. More interestingly, the countries vary in the timing of initial funding decision and the size of funding as well as the pattern that the norms are transferred into domestic arena. The variations, I argue, are based upon distinctive domestic structure and domestic norms. I will examine the case of Japan which posed a lagged pattern of global AIDS funding in terms of its initiation and increase of funding. When it comes to public awareness and perception on HIV/AIDS, basically Japanese people were not aware of what AIDS was and how they should respond. In addition, foreign perception was so strongly intensified that even risk groups such as homosexuals did not change their sexual behavioral pattern. In terms of civil society and domestic structure, Japanese government has a rigid structure that has strong bureaucracy at the top of the society with weak civil society. The bureaucracy was not responsive to the new demands of society under the situation that civil society did not play active roles in encouraging government to respond to the need by adopting new agenda in its priority. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government is responsible for the peace and safety of citizens in its territory, and is thus interested in deaths by cause. Similar to other countries, Japanese government has collected death data from autopsy documents, which have been analyzed by epidemiologists. .x000d.However, most analyses have focused on heredity, lifestyle, and exposure to viruses and germs. They tend to downplay how governmental policy affects death rates. For example, in a prefecture where there are free or subsidized health checkups, there may be fewer deaths from diabetes or breast cancer. There may be other prefectures that have developed superior social security systems and thus have more deaths from old age, which is preferable to premature death..x000d.In addition to the results of epidemiology, I am interested in how political economic factors influence the rates of each cause of death. .x000d.To achieve this purpose, I combined the number of deaths, population, and potential factors that may affect death rates in Japan. Although in a seminal stage, I have found tuberculosis and viral hepatitis C are higher in Tokyo and Osaka. This could be a result of patient migration, climactic conditions, and unfavorable local policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Why did Japan respond with diplomacy and money in the first Gulf War and diplomacy and troops in the second?" I argue that the demise of an ideological opposition party was structurally significant for making changed policies possible. This political realignment widened the parameters of viable policy options. Utilizing the concept of schema, I argue that how decision-makers thought about international events also mattered. In 1990, five categories of schemata existed amongst decision-makers that prioritized a variety of, sometimes mutually exclusive, policy options. Due to the lessons learned from the traumatic experience of the Gulf War, best captured in the phrase "too little, too late," schemata converged around the idea that monetary contributions are not enough and that Japanese policies need to address issues as a responsible member of the global community. Changes in both the political structure and decision-makers account for the differences in Japan's security-related foreign policies. My findings are based on over 100 interviews with Japanese decision-makers during the Kaifu and Koizumi Administrations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new categorization of international organizations to account for the fact that within multilateral international organizations, states may engage in "bribery," in order to advance their policy preferences. Thus, to the traditional multilateral/bilateral categorizations we substitute a hard multilateral/soft multilateral and reciprocal bilateral/bilateral taxonomy. For illustration purposes, we use the well-known case study of Japan and the International Whaling Commission (IWC). Using a modified gravity model to analyze Japan's Official Development Assistance from 1973-2005, we find that Japan has a very traditional - and generous - assistance policy broadly defined, but when it comes to the IWC, some of the general principles driving the aid policy are put aside to possibly influence vote outcomes. Given this finding, we conclude that the IWC is best categorized as a soft multilateral organization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how immigrant political rights have evolved in Japan, discussing the case of immigrant voting right in local elections. The recent increase of international immigrants has been accompanied by immigrant rights claims in Japan. International human rights and the local level of immigration politics have contributed to ameliorate human, civil, and cultural rights for immigrants in Japan. With the new debate on the immigrant right to vote in local elections, however, immigrant political identities and the national level of immigration politics (in the Diet), which have been overlooked thus far, have come on the central stage of immigration politics. The debate on immigrant voting rights issues began with a 1990 lawsuit filed by eleven Korean immigrants from Osaka, Japan. This lawsuit could be seen as an extension of a series of lawsuits that had previously been filed by members of the 'resident' Korean identity groups against various instances of discrimination. This legal struggle by the new Korean resident identity, which is different from North Korean diasporic identityâ??rejecting the voting rightâ??and South Korean transnational identityâ??appropriating the voting right as 'Korean' right, produced an opportunity structure in which various organizations, opposition parties, and local governments come together in their common struggle for immigrant voting rights. The 1995 ruling of the Japanese Supreme Court, an interpretation of law based on legal positivism, shifted its location of the decision from the Court to the Diet by stating that the voting right can be granted if it is passed through appropriate legislative processes. Finally, the Diet, dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party, turned down bills for the immigrant right to vote for local elections in 2000, showing that the final instance to decide the political rights for (old and new) immigrants is still in the hand of nationalist politicians in the LDP. In conclusion, this study suggests three potential developments of the post-war immigration politics in Japan, according to political positions on the issue of the voting rights and immigrant identities. The 'no voting right for foreigners' position will preserve the notion of the post-war Japanese nation attached to the ideas of citizenship and state, while maintaining political exclusion of all immigrants. The 'voting rights only for South Koreans (Taiwanese)' position would bring the pre-war empire back into the picture by selectively including immigrants, while excluding various new immigrant groups as well as North Koreans. Finally, this study argues that the 'voting rights for all foreigners' position, based on human/civil rights and Jumin consciousness, will facilitate the building of a broad incorporationist coalition among old and new immigrants, human right activists, immigrant advocacy groups, local governments, and political parties, This final option would provide the pivotal basis for the beginnings of post-national politics in Japan ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project aims to form a theoretical model of the U.S.-Japanese conflict in the early twentieth century, and link the model to empirical cases (15 cases). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My project examines the efforts of the Chinese government, particularly in education and propaganda, and its effects on nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiments in youth. Is nationalism a result of independent mobilization and thinking on the part of the ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I develop a model of status stratification in the international system and demonstrate the implications of the model in the case studies of Turkey and Japan, and their common inability to deal with past crimes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I demonstrate how Japan's electoral system gave an incentive to some socialist politicians to wish their party not to become larger and hence to resist the proposed change to their leftist platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political science’s common understanding is that elections are normally genuine contests -- that is, that there are losers. The prototypical statement is the district-level application of “Duverger’s Law,” which Cox has extended to SNTV election rules in multi-member districts of M seats (including standard plurality-rule single-member districts, at M=1). This conventional wisdom holds that Duvergerian strategic processes tend to whittle the field of parties down to M+1, but then grind to a halt once M+1 remain, preserving competition. But no endogenous mechanism can explain why these processes should halt at all. As I have argued elsewhere, Duvergerian processes, and strategic party entry in particular, tend to drive the number of competitors down toward M, not M+1. That is, they tend to undermine competition, even in “competitive” party systems. Contested races – including those with M+1 parties, not to mention those with more than M+1 – represent “non-Duvergerian” equilibria. They are sustained only by “friction” exogenous to Duvergerian processes: either impediments to short-term instrumental strategic decision-making, such as uncertainty, or abandonment of strategic decision-making outright. But all this tells us is that in equilibrium, elections can be either uncontested or contested (with varying degrees of closeness). The theory says nothing about how often either type should occur. This is an important finding in itself: it undercuts the idea that uncompetitive races are exceptional or out-of-equilibrium cases. But it is also unsatisfying. If we care to think about what constitutes a “normal” proportion of uncontested districts or a “normal” proportion of closely-contested districts, or about what institutional features might shape these proportions, theory provides no benchmarks. I attempt to wrest some amount of predictive traction from this theoretical indeterminacy through a set of simple simulations. In each, I construct a hypothetical set of districts, and randomly assign values on various parameters of interest, including district magnitude, the number of potential entrants, potential entrants’ relative strengths, how keenly voters can perceive these strengths amid uncertainty, and how strategically voters and parties tend to behave. In practice, of course, more than pure randomness may be at work, but these simulated districts yield generic patterns of heuristic value, and allow for clear illustrations of comparative statics. The results show that we have strong reason to expect frequent uncompetitive elections, even under “reasonable” assumptions about uncertainty and district sizes, and especially in SMDs. I then show that the simple causal mechanisms driving the simulation also are likely driving parties’ electoral strateiges in practice. Real-world distributions of uncompetitive and competitive elections, and how these vary across different sets of institutional features, strikingly resemble the simulated results. I examine a large, richly-varied, and novel set of Japanese Lower House, gubernatorial, and prefectural assembly elections, as well as U.S. Congressional elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many view globalization as a process fundamentally reshaping the way individuals, communities, and nation-states interact, the emergent patterns of social and political order are unclear and often contradictory. Between the neo-Marxist critics ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major explanations for voter turnout is mobilization: people go to the polls because they are asked to do so. To test this hypothesis, we take advantage of a natural experiment using Japanese local elections. The Japanese system of local government is composed of prefectures and municipalities. Elections of chief executives and assembly members have been held, in principle, every four years on the second (prefectural elections), and fourth (municipal elections) Sundays in April. Although all the first postwar municipal elections were held simultaneously, today, a significant proportion of municipalities do not participate in these “concerted local elections” due to reasons specific to non-political reasons. Therefore, whether municipal elections are held in April (a treatment group) or at different times (a control group) can be regarded as a naturally occurring “random assignment.” We expect and find voter turnout in prefectural assembly elections to be higher in municipalities in the treatment group than those in the control group. This suggests that municipal-level candidates join prefecture-level election campaigns to support their fellow candidates, although their purpose is to mobilize their own supporters. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a personal aid to the past five Prime Minister of Japan, I would like to analyze how and why each Prime Minister has shifted his foreign policy especially toward North Korea based on the U.S.-Japan alliance. There can be seen a distinctive difference among each administration. .x000d..x000d.Prime Minister Koizumi showed a tough attitude toward North Korea. So did PM Abe. However, PM Fukuda, as a more pro-China leader, showed a soft-line attitude based on the dialogue rather than sanctions toward North Korea. There was no change in the North Korean policy toward Japan and there is no progress in our abduction issue. Incumbent PM Aso is known as more hawkish leader..x000d..x000d.Analyses will be made who each Prime Minister was obliged to shift his position toward North Korea. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]