Voting Rights of the ‘Marginal’: The Contested Logic of Political Membership in Japan

Abstract

The right to vote ultimately expresses political membership in democratic states. The logic behind franchise rules in a particular state tells us much about how that state conceives its polity. This becomes clear if we study voting rights of marginal groups, as these people often define boundaries of the polity in question. From this perspective, this article scrutinizes the question of voting rights for Japan's resident foreigners. Utilizing Elaine R. Thomas's analytical framework, the study isolates competing conceptions of political membership expressed in Japanese debates about voting rights of this marginal group. Its finding is that the logic of political membership in Japan is more complex than one would expect given the conventional notion of the Japanese community being ethnically and racially homogenous.