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Although Sino–Japanese relations have been on a recovery course, the deterioration of ties in the first one and a half decades since 2000 should not be forgotten. This article aims to unpack China's perception formation mechanism toward Japan during these turbulent fifteen years by introducing the perspective of strategic perception. Because China's strategic perception toward Japan is largely derived from its overall perceptions of the international system, this article focuses on China's strategic elites to systemically trace the evolution of China's perception of Japan and its policy implications, and to provide a new perception equilibrium that reduced the US factor in the formation of a mutual Sino–Japanese perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Abe era has produced a significant increase in Japan's geopolitical assertiveness, which is likely to endure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Japan's success in combating COVID-19, despite the absence of strong leadership from the prime minister, an efficient bureaucracy, or the use of advanced technology. Topics covered include the reasons for Japan's COVID-19 outcomes, evidence that it was the people themselves who saved the country from the pandemic by voluntarily staying at home and limiting their movement, and the impact of the pandemic on the country's social and political landscape.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The emerging crisis at the plant was complex, and, to make matters worse, it was exacerbated by communication gaps between the government and the nuclear industry. An independent investigation panel, established by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, reviewed how the government, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), and other relevant actors responded. In this article, the panel’s program director writes about their findings and how these players were thoroughly unprepared on almost every level for the cascading nuclear disaster. This lack of preparation was caused, in part, by a public myth of “absolute safety” that nuclear power proponents had nurtured over decades and was aggravated by dysfunction within and between government agencies and Tepco, particularly in regard to political leadership and crisis management. The investigation also found that the tsunami that began the nuclear disaster could and should have been anticipated and that ambiguity about the roles of public and private institutions in such a crisis was a factor in the poor response at Fukushima. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nambara Shigeru was a rara avis of Japanese liberal academics at hard times in that he survived difficult times without being punished by the oppressive government in the pre-war Japan and the occupation authorities in the immediate post-war Japan. He specialized in Western political philosophy especially in Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, known as proponents of German idealism and nationalism. His magnum opus was published, without being punished, in 1944, arguing that the Nazi politics was totally against the Western political tradition. In 1945–46, he made clear his opposition to the draft new Constitution in which the emperor be symbolic and the armed forces be abolished. In 1949–1950, he made clear his view that Japan, once Japan admitted to the United Nations, what would become Japanese Self-Defense Forces should donate portions to what would become United Nations Peace Keeping Operations. On the basis of his writings in the war period and the occupation period, comparisons of his positions with Roger Scruton, Vladislav Surkov, Yanaihara Tadao, Akamatsu Kaname, Nitobe Inazo, and Yanagida Kunio on such concepts as democracy promotion, national self-determination, peace keeping are attempted to see the extent to which the pent-up Wilsonian moment burst in the immediate post-war period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this special issue is to give a new spin to the study of the impact of the liberal Wilsonian moment on Japan, with a focus on the interwar period in a broader historical span. The Wilsonian liberal international order encompasses its fledgling (1914–1945), formative (1945–1952), competitive (1952–1989), and maturity (1989–2018) periods. In this special issue, the four articles deal with the first and second periods. Yutaka Harada and Frederick Dickinson adopt this longer perspective – not just President Wilson's moment of Fourteen Points – each focusing on (1) the vigor of Japan's industrialization and open economic policy in 1914–1931 and (2) the basic continuity between the prewar and postwar periods in terms of normative and institutional commitments with the fledgling, if volatile, liberal international order such as those with the Versailles and Washington treaties after World War I, the war prohibition treaty of 1928, and the naval disarmament treaty of 1930. Ryoko Nakano and Takashi Inoguchi take up the re-examination of two tiny minorities of liberal academics, Yanaihara Tadao and Nambara Shigeru, who at most kept their integrity. Nakano recasts Yanaihara's academic life with its intellectual agony of believing in a national self-determination policy for Japanese colonies. Inoguchi underlines Nambara's stoic self-discipline under wartime dictatorship and active political involvement under US occupation regarding the newly drafted Japanese Constitution. An emphasis is placed on the considerable positive influence of Wilsonian ideas on Japan, an influence that faded in the late 1930s, but re-emerged with considerable vigor after 1945. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I describe an important aspect of the intellectual tradition of Japanese political theory while focusing on the Japanese scholar Fujita Shōzō’s political and scholarly activities. Not surprisingly, he has been chiefly considered a thinker or a historian of ideas, due to his being a pupil of Japan's brightest political scientist, Maruyama Masao. It must be stressed, however, that his scholarly works do not confine his academic scope to their ingredients; they are composed of theoretical requisites for the disciplinary activity of political theory, as can be seen particularly in his early contributions. He requires his theory to constitute integral aspects of practice, experience and perspective on the basis of his political concerns and practices in terms of detachment realism. From this perspective, I explore how Fujita changed his primary purpose from criticising Japan's ‘Tennō system’ (Tennōsei) to criticising its ‘high-speed growth’ (kōdo seichō) by highlighting the psychological transformation of his self-critical and self-reflective political thinking and acting according to his optimistic state of ‘hope’ (kibō) and his pessimistic state of ‘despair’ (zetsubō), especially in terms of his early work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines patterns of demand statement distribution in newspaper editorials during the 2013 Japanese House of Councillors (i.e., Upper House) election in anticipation that their ideological slant will become salient in the skewed patterns of certain linguistic forms. Distribution patterns in this study contradict the predictions inferable from the ideological slant of newspapers. In particular, this study finds that a conservative newspaper distributes its demands equally at both sides of the political spectrum. However, this study finds that this newspaper frequently - and exclusively - employs partisan follow-ups (wherein a demand statement directed at all parties or candidates is followed by an example of concrete action/inaction by a certain party) in an implicit attempt to express its view in favor of the ruling coalition of conservative parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of comparative family policy research have raised concerns about potential negative outcomes of generous family policies, an issue known as the "welfare state paradox." They suspect that such policies will make employers reluctant to hire or promote women into highauthority jobs, because women are more likely than men to use those policies and take time off. Few studies, however, have directly tested this employer-side mechanism. In this article, we argue that due to employer heterogeneity, as well as different modes of policy intervention such as mandate-based and incentive-based approaches, generous family policies may not always lead to employer discrimination. Adopting a quasi-experimental research design that classifies employers based on their differential receptivity to family policy changes, we compare their hiring and promotion of women before and after two major family policy reforms in Japan, one in 1992 and another in 2005. Our analysis using panel data of large Japanese firms finds little evidence of policy-induced discrimination against women. Instead, we find that employers who voluntarily provided generous leave benefits prior to government mandates or incentives actually hired and promoted more women after the legal changes, and employers who provided generous benefits in response to government incentives also increased opportunities for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Japan's foreign policy elite has started to increasingly securitize China in their security discourse. The harsher tone from Tokyo is widely evaluated as a direct reaction to China's own assertive behavior since 2009/2010. Yet, the change in the Japanese government's rhetoric had started changing before 2010. In order to close this gap, the present article sheds light on an alternative causal variable that has been overlooked in the literature: a change in Japan's security institutions, more specifically, the upgrade of the Defense Agency to the Ministry of Defense, in 2007. While utilizing discursive institutionalism and securitization-approaches, the present article demonstrates that a strong correlation indeed exists between the institutional shift and the change in Japan's defense whitepapers in the 2007-10 period. It thus opens up a research avenue for the further scrutiny of the hitherto understudied but significant causal linkage in the study of contemporary Japanese security policy toward China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until 2003, Japanese lawyers were prohibited by law from entering full-time employment in governmental bodies. That year, in line with recommendations by the Justice System Reform Council, the Lawyers Act was amended to permit lawyers to undertake such employment. Incorporating information and insights from interviews with former government lawyers and other concerned parties, this article examines the rise in the hiring of government lawyers and its impact. The article considers factors that have contributed to the increase, examines the roles played by these lawyers, considers prospects for the future, and discusses implications for government, the legal profession, clients, and legal education and training. The article also seeks to identify a range of issues raised by these developments that warrant further in-depth research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For voters with bounded rationality to emulate the formation of policy preferences under full information, party cues provide effective heuristics. Although the effect of party cuing has been robustly established in US-centered studies, the literature indicates that the characteristics of modern US politics, such as political polarization, magnify the effect of party cues. Therefore, the effect of party cues has been subject to only lenient empirical scrutiny, as empirical evidence exists primarily for the US. The present study aims to test the generalizability of the effect of party cues by focusing on Japan, where the ideological positions of parties have become increasingly vague. Furthermore, in light of the fact that the media system in Japan is more stable and ideologically polarized than its party system, we also test whether press cues (i.e. newspaper names) serve as substitutes for party cues. A survey experiment demonstrates that the effects of party and press cues in Japan are muted, and therefore these two types of cues do not serve as effective shortcuts in forming policy preferences. These results indicate that issue voting based on cognitive heuristics is difficult under an unstable multiparty system. Therefore, the extant literature on party cues that presupposes the US-style party system cannot be easily generalized to other political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International migration and mobility raise a host of economic and security concerns for states in the Global North and the South. The garrison state linked with the trading state in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. The 20th and 21st centuries have seen the emergence of the migration state, where managing migration is vital for national security and development. Despite a reputation for social, political, and legal closure and a reticence about admitting immigrants, Japan is making halting moves toward a national immigration policy, what could be a 'Meiji moment' with policy innovation and potential transformation of Japanese society. The Japanese case is instructive for the study of migration policy as the only liberal state that has resisted immigration and paid the costs in terms of sociodemographic, economic, and political challenges. This article lays out a framework for analysis of Japan as an emerging migration state and explores the extent to which Japan has made the transition to a country of immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effects of local and national newspapers on local political accountability. Local newspapers are expected to monitor local governments' behavior. However, national newspapers could also contribute to local governments' accountability by attracting nationwide attention to a local policy issue. Using the method developed by Snyder and Strömberg (J Polit Econ 118:355-408, 2010), I construct a variable that measures the weighted market share of locally circulated newspapers in an administrative district in Japan. I find that an increase in the market share of local newspapers is associated with a reduction in local public works spending (seen as rents for local interest groups), which indicates an improvement in political accountability. In addition, the accountability effect of local newspapers becomes greater one year after national newspapers focus readers' attentions on the issue of unnecessary public works. This result suggests that national newspapers serve as an agenda setter and complement local newspapers for strengthening local political accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the conclusion of the Comfort Women Agreement (December 2015) and the General Security of Military Information Agreement (November 2016), it has been widely believed that Japan-South Korea relations have hit bottom and begun to rebound. How soon and how much they will recover depends on the Japanese and South Koreans themselves. Can the people of Japan and South Korea escape the fetters of the past? Can the two countries have as much security cooperation as the United States desires? This paper argues that the recent development in Japan-ROK relations provides little hope that the two countries will be freed from their historical yoke as the two governments have wished. Sincere reconciliation on history between America's two essential Asian allies will be impossible for several decades because domestic politics in both countries rewards nationalistic approaches to Japan-ROK relations. In its policy toward East Asia, the Trump administration will face the same dilemma as did its predecessors as long as Japan-South Korea history disputes widen the mismatch in the two countries' policy priorities toward China and North Korea, a problem that is beyond U.S. control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family policy addresses some of the important challenges of post-industrial societies, and represents an important dimension of the recent transformation of advanced welfare capitalism. This article analyses the development of family policy in the two East Asian latecomer countries of Japan and South Korea, where we witness significant policy expansion starting in the 1990s—with the latter displaying much bolder expansion and defamilization. Explaining the difference in policy expansion, we show that the Korean electorate displays a much stronger pro-welfare orientation, which produced an environment for much fiercer party competition on the grounds of social and family policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese government provides information on local fiscal performance through the Fiscal Index Tables for Similar Municipalities (FITS-M). The FITS-M categorize municipalities into groups of 'similar localities' and provide them with the fiscal indices of their group members, enabling municipalities to use the tables to identify their 'neighbors' (i.e., those in the same FITS-M group) and refer to their fiscal information as a 'yardstick' for fiscal planning. We take advantage of this system to estimate municipal spending function. In particular, we examine whether the FITS-M help identify a defensible spatial weights matrix that properly describes municipal spending interactions. Our analysis shows that they do. In particular, geographical proximity is significant only between a pair of municipalities within a given FITS-M group, and it does not affect competition between pairs belonging to different groups even if they are located close to each other. This would suggest that the FITS-M work as intended, indicating that spending interaction among Japanese municipalities originates from yardstick competition and not from other types of fiscal competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]