Japanese political studies: where are we? How did we get here? Where are we going?

We offer a historically grounded analysis of major works in the study of Japanese politics with a focus on the period since the Second World War. The article traces an evolution from early assessments of Japanese democracy and modernization through the focus on the political economy of high growth to the current disciplinary-based emphasis on narrower but more empirically defensible research. We close with a call for future research to take greater risks at synthetic analyses of Japanese politics broadly considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]