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Japan?s new electoral system for the Lower House eliminated the necessity of intraparty competition at the election stage, which many political reformers and scholars hope will make money less necessary to ?buy? votes. In addition, new campaign finance regulations were adopted to make the flow of money more transparent. However, elections may not have become any less expensive because candidates appear to be spending considerable sums to boost their vote shares in the single-member districts. For this reason, money and votes should be positively correlated in Japan?s new system. In this paper, I examine the empirical relationship between campaign spending and vote shares for politicians in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). I uncover a strong and positive correlation between candidates? expenditures and vote shares, which underscores the continued importance of money for election campaigns in Japan?s Lower House. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine changes in institutional rules governing the relationship between actors in the legislature by comparing the experience of Japan and the US in the early 1990s. In both cases, reform-minded governments replaced very long-lived parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper distinguishes between politicians' policy expertise and policy specialization and explores changes in MP policy expertise and policy specialization in Japan related to changes in the electoral system. Traditional measures of policy expertise for Liberal Democratic Party House of Representatives MPs (membership in seisaku zoku - 'policy tribes') in Japan show a decline in the number of policy experts since electoral reform. However, this paper shows that the decline in policy experts is attributable to the nature of the measure of expertise and the decline in the overall seniority of the LDP party caucus, rather than changes in the electoral rules. However, political career path analysis of LDP House of Representative MPs in Japan shows that policy specialization, particularly by junior MPs, has declined since electoral reform. We attribute this decline in policy specialization to the need to represent a broader range of constituents as most MPs moved from multi-member districts to single-member districts following electoral reform. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]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 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]

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]

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]

Japan is facing the difficulties of declining population, and yet still seems unwilling to embrace immigration as a source of new citizens. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study challenges the conventional wisdom that investment on highways and bullet trains was the key to the electoral success of Japan's LDP. A formal model and empirical evidence corroborates the above claim. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructing a formal model and drawing on data of factional affiliations in LDP cabinets between 1956 and 1991, I demonstrate that portfolio allocation is an instrument the prime minister uses to handle intra-party and inter-party pressures. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]