Democracy In Japan Research Articles

Media politics in Japan: News journalism between interdependence, integrity, and influence

AbstractAlthough Japan is generally considered a liberal democracy with a free press, concerns about media independence have repeatedly been raised. The World Press Freedom Index ranks Japan last among G7 nations. One of the major reasons for its performance lies in a deep-rooted entanglement of the mainstream media with the political establishment, which is said to promote a climate of self-censorship and impede courageous, critical journalism. While the government-approved reporters’ clubs (“kisha clubs”) are often cited as lying at the heart of the problem, there are other relevant structural and historically grown factors hindering the improvement of press freedom: Despite theoretical constitutional protection, media governance in Japan does not provide an adequate framework for journalistic independence; furthermore, revolving door politics, editorial interventions and informal arrangements are well-established practices inside the sphere of media and politics. Nevertheless, there have been those critical moments when the mainstream media, in fact, influenced the course of politics. Setting out from the present condition of media democracy in Japan, this article traces back the historical roots of the seemingly firmly ingrained relationship between journalism and the state. Thereby, it portrays the ambivalent interdependence between the media and politics, and the dilemmatic tension between journalistic integrity, economic interests, and political influence. Finally, it explains why the current hegemony of the legacy media in the public sphere may eventually face a silent, but profound transformation in light of digitization and advancements in artificial intelligence.

Dyadic representation in parliamentary democracy in Japan

AbstractThis study evaluates dyadic representation, that is, the link between the policy preferences of the constituencies and their representatives in the Japanese Lower House (LH). More specifically, this study examines how the within-party variation in policy positions among party candidates corresponds with that across their districts. By examining a series of candidate surveys conducted between 2003 and 2012 as well as the local employment structure, this study maps the association between the policy preferences of constituencies and those of their district candidates for two major parties. Specifically, candidates were found to take more rural-oriented positions on economic policies when running in districts with rural employment structures, while there remained a clear difference between parties. Moreover, this study demonstrates that constituencies accord more votes to candidates who better represent their preferences, strengthening the link by electing those who fulfill the responsibility beyond their party label.

Feminism in Radical Democracy and Japanese Political Theory: Mouffe, Pateman, Young, and “Essentialism”

Abstract This paper examines feminist arguments in radical democracy and Japanese responses to them. Although feminist insights are significant intellectual sources of radical democracy, recent political theorists have tended to exclusively consider radical democracy as agonistic pluralism. The radical democratic thinker Chantal Mouffe, who is very popular among Japanese political theorists and philosophers, criticizes the “essentialist” tendency of two feminist political theorists, namely Carole Pateman and Iris Marion Young. First this paper examines Mouffe’s critique of the two theorists. Second, it evaluates the relevance of Mouffe’s criticism of Pateman and Young by reconsidering their ideas on democracy and citizenship. Third, it engages the works of a few Japanese political theorists who respond to the issue of essentialism and points out the problems involved in the introduction of radical democracy in Japan and in Japanese feminist political theory. Finally, this paper concludes that we are still in the early stages of introducing and absorbing foreign feminist political theories into Japan as opposed to developing original Japanese feminist political theory to share with the world.

Rethinking Political Wellbeing in Representational Democracy in Japan

This study discusses how representational democracy is related to the issues of community wellbeing in that political promises are contested in process of election campaigns. Under the premises that many promises largely reflect issue of community wellbeing, we seek to enhance understanding of how styles of representative democracy impact community wellbeing by comparing aspects of single-member (SMD) and multimember districts (MMD) in the Japan case.Among the questions considered: (1) Do voters’ choices increase in SMD compared to MMD systems? (2) Does issue voting increase in SMD? (3) Do SMD systems expand policy debate? and, (4) Does the voters’ will determine the policies of elected representatives? We measure each of these variables, related to mechanisms for electing representatives, with an assumption that wellbeing is closely related to voters’ participation and satisfaction. Based on our analysis, we conclude that SMD is not better than MMD at promoting these aspects of community wellbeing.

Japanese Democracy After Shinzo Abe

The Shinzo Abe administration, the longest in Japanese history, came to an abrupt halt in September 2020 This article argues that while the Abe administration has strengthened democratic control at the institutional level in certain respects, he has gone too far in undermining the norms and practices that underpin democracy in Japan While the Yoshihide Suga administration is expected to continue along these lines, the prospect of growing economic disparities in society, as well as the spread of misinformation and disinformation, will weigh on Japanese democracy

The depiction of democracy in Japan’s newspapers

ABSTRACT The goal of this article is to understand what ‘kind’ of democracy is being depicted by two Japanese major newspapers. The kind of democracy being disseminated and normalised by the media can be relevant as it can potentially shape how citizens see themselves in democracy and later influence how they may or may not engage in political affairs. In order to capture the wider spectrum of how this normative concept is being articulated, 493 articles were chosen from Asahi and Sankei newspapers, which are located at opposing ends of the political spectrum. It was found that between 2000 and 2017, the articulation of democracy in the news was highly diversified, at times contradictory but most of the times ambiguous lacking articulation over its normative and political attributes. Mentioning democracy in the news may contribute to its familiarisation, but the tendency seen in this study may also lead to provoke a sense of uncertainty over the concept and discourage citizens to engage in something they are not confident nor familiar.

The influence of ‘Imposed Constitutionalism’ and Democratization Movements upon the Transition to Constitutional Democracy in Japan and the Republic of Korea

This working paper critically analyses the post-World War II constitutional transitions to democracy undertaken in Japan and the Republic of Korea. This comparison is particularly noteworthy due to the means in which the post-war legal systems of Japan and the Republic of Korea are strong examples of the successful establishment of democratic norms such as the separation of powers and the rule of law within the East Asian region. This working paper argues that the primary force behind the success in establishing democratic constitutional governance within these two case studies fundamentally stems from long-term grassroots democratization movements. This paper argues that democratization movements were essential in creating the cultural conditions which are necessary to allow liberal democratic constitutionalism to establish itself as a valuable and sustainable norm amongst the citizenry. This working paper concludes that the success of these constitutional transitions did not stem solely from the ‘imposed’ characteristics of these political and legal reforms, but instead can be attributed to widespread democratic demand for legal and constitutional change.

Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan ed. by Jeff Kingston

Reviewed by: Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan ed. by Jeff Kingston Tracy Dahlby (bio) Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan. Edited by Jeff Kingston. Routledge, London, 2017. xiv, 322 pages. $160.00, cloth; $54.95, paper; $54.95, E-book. Donald Trump loves to pound away at the press, as he has amply demonstrated by tweet-storming his contempt for the "fake news" media. But when it comes to actually curbing press freedoms, Trump is no match for Abe Shinzō. Neither the U.S. president nor his supporters in Congress have dared, at least to date, to suggest laying a finger on the First Amendment or [End Page 134] to stop the mainstream media from lacerating Trump with one unflattering scoop after another. The Japanese prime minister is the real infighter. He has acted, far more pointedly, to cow Japan's press and quash the nuisance it presents to his ambitious political agenda. Abe's war on the media is the subject of this timely and engrossing book, and the dangers it poses for Japan's democracy animate many of its 21 essays. Authors assert that since taking office for a second time in 2012 (after his first term ended in 2007), Abe and his political allies have been busy: they've proposed constitutional limits on free speech, leveraged the nation's broadcast code to throw TV news units off balance, toughened state secrecy laws to penalize journalists, and helped sideline critical voices. While Abe has worked coercive charm on financially pressed newspaper moguls, simpatico right-wing bloggers have menaced reporters and scholars alike. Harrying the press, as Jeff Kingston points out, isn't "unprecedented, or indeed unique to Japan" (p. 2). Yet various contributors make the case that Abe has audaciously tightened the screws. And that is precisely why Japan's example is important for the rest of us to consider. With liberal democracies under siege across the planet, and the currency of "alternative facts" on a roll, the erosion of a free press carries risks for all. As Yale historian Timothy Snyder pithily observes in his 2017 book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century: "To abandon facts is to abandon freedom."1 The Abe that Kingston and his authors portray fits the zeitgeist to a tee. Scion of a heavyweight political family, Abe finessed his rise on promises of "normalizing" Japan, which means ditching a post–World War II system that critics argue locks Japan into an uneasy dependency on the United States as its geopolitical go-between and protector. It also means seeking a freer hand in military affairs by dumping the antiwar provisions in Article 9 of the constitution U.S. occupiers imposed on Japan in 1946. And under Abe's stewardship, it has meant a stepped-up campaign to whitewash the country's record of wartime atrocities in favor of make-believe versions of history. It is worth noting, as Kingston and others do, that most Japanese citizens shy away from supporting Abe's play on the constitution and, by extension, his view that it contains Western values incompatible with Japan's traditional identity. Thus, at its core, as a number of authors argue, Abe's media assault is really part of a broader culture war pitting liberal democratic values against an illiberal agenda. To win out, Senshu University professor of media law and journalism Kenta Yamada contends, "Abe's government is trying to prioritize the national interest over individual freedom and rights, a [End Page 135] revanchist agenda out of synch with twenty-first century democratic values and norms in Japan. Suppressing and intimidating the press is a means to stifle the necessary debate and scrutiny [Abe's] agenda deserves" (p. 130). Right-tilting news media have been only too happy to oblige. In 1990s Japan, such players "started to escalate the rhetoric … in attacking what they saw as biased, left-leaning media," writes Sophia University political scientist Koichi Nakano (p. 34). Their campaign, says Nakano, rallied conservative intellectuals, pundits, and rising neonationalist politicians, including Abe Shinzō, to protest purported liberal bias and an anti-Japanese, self-hating take on modern history. Riding such ideas to his second term two decades later, Abe...

Beyond formal representation: Case studies of women's participation in civil society in Japan

Japan is the third wealthiest country in the world and its women are the most highly educated and literate among the 144 countries included in the 2017 Global Gender Equality report issued by the World Economic Forum. Yet, according to this report and the Inter-parliamentary Union's data on women across national legislatures, Japan ranked 114th out of 144 countries for gender equality, and 159th out of 193 countries11As of March 2018 according to the Inter-parliamentary Union archive http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm for the percentage of women in its national legislature. These international reports document persistent gaps in Japanese women's representation, rights, and opportunities in politics and the economy, yet by going beyond formal representation and a focus on the official institutions of political power in the society, which are and have been dominated by men, women's labor, leadership, and contributions become more visible. What are the implications for Japan's democracy when women's political participation and leadership are segregated into spaces outside of the formal institutions of power? Through three case studies, this article shows how and why some women engage in this sphere, and how their different identities and interests shape the nature and the meaning of their participation in civic life. Further, qualitative analysis provides insights into the complex and multidimensional ways in which women participate in political life in Japan.

Embedded film, embodied reception: Tsurumi Shunsuke’s autobiographical film criticism

ABSTRACTReflecting on the aftermath of WWII in the emerging Cold War context of Japan’s compromised sovereignty, members of the intellectual group Science of Thought (Shisō no kagaku) sought possibilities of ‘thought’ (shisō) in ‘the people’ and turned their attention to the production and reception of mass culture. Jidaigeki (Japanese period films) presented a unique challenge for envisioning postwar modernity and democracy in Japan. US Occupation censors and progressive Japanese critics alike regarded jidaigeki with suspicion, calling into question its relationship to the past. This paper focuses on the group’s founder Tsurumi Shunsuke’s review of 1952 jidaigeki The Mad Woman in Kimono (Furisode kyōjo) and examines his populist defense of jidaigeki. Born into one of Japan’s most politically and intellectually prominent families and educated in the philosophy department at Harvard, Tsurumi struggled to define the significance and political utility of jidaigeki by negotiating his own position in relation to not only ‘the people’, but also with regard to the compromised sovereignty of occupied and post-occupation Japan. By unpacking interrelated negotiations in Tsurumi’s review and the film itself, I argue for the utility of jidaigeki as an analytical lens through which we begin to understand the dynamic historicity of postwar Japanese cinema.

Local Direct Democracy in Japan: Town and Village general Councils of Voters

Local Direct Democracy in Japan: Town and Village general Councils of Voters

「戦後民主主義」の克服と社会科の再生(シンポジウム「今,社会科とは何かを問う」)

「戦後民主主義」の克服と社会科の再生(シンポジウム「今,社会科とは何かを問う」)

The Discussion of Prospect and Status of Environment Politics and Ecology Democracy in Japan

The Discussion of Prospect and Status of Environment Politics and Ecology Democracy in Japan

Growing Democracy in Japan: The Parliamentary Cabinet System since 1868 by Brian Woodall

Reviewed by: Growing Democracy in Japan: The Parliamentary Cabinet System since 1868 by Brian Woodall Marie Söderberg (bio) A number of books have tried to explain how Japan, a non-Western democracy, is governed. Karel van Wolferen’s path-breaking work, The Enigma of Japanese Power, made it clear as many as 25 years ago that decision making in Japan was not working in a way that might be expected for a democratic [End Page 462] country.1 In fact, the decision-making process was very blurred and no cabinet, prime minister, or group of ministers seemed to be in charge. Van Wolferen’s book, which sought to analyze the political-corporate relationship, was published in 1989 when the Japanese economy was booming. Other scholars have pointed instead to the strong power of the bureaucracy, party government, or government by individual ministers in Japanese policymaking. In this book, Brian Woodall tries to answer the question of why cabinet government has failed to take root in Japan although Japan has a Westminster-style parliamentary system. Why is Japanese governance different in practice and how did it get its characteristics? The author addresses these issues through an institutional approach, emphasizing the historical development of institutions but still using the approach of eclecticism in the analyses. According to Woodall, the Japanese cabinet system underwent a transformation at each of eight historical junctures. In prewar times, these were the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the advent of party-led cabinets in 1898, and their demise in 1932. In the postwar period, the Allied occupation, the emergence of the party system in 1955, the shocks of the early 1970s, the advent of coalition cabinets in 1993, and the emergence of “twisted Diets” (different majority in the two houses) in 2007 were decisive. We need to understand what happened at each of these historical junctures to be able to understand how Japanese democracy works today. Other books have tried to explain democracy in Japan. One of the most recent is Mary Alice Haddad’s Building Democracy in Japan (Cambridge University Press, 2012), which takes a state-society approach showing how local voices can effect change. Brian Woodall’s book is quite different. There are not many local voices here, but the multidisciplinary approach he uses is very effective in understanding the complexity of the question of democracy in Japan. He clearly shows that we need a historical account as well as different theories to be able to understand the way it has developed. There are no simple answers and no easy patterns for achieving democracy—that is the take-away the reader gets. The book gives a detailed account of the historical development of the Japanese parliamentary system. It is so detailed that the reader at times almost loses track of the main threads. We get information about numerous different councils and movements and their formal decision-making structure as well as about key persons who might not all have been of equal importance. Sometimes the text almost reads like an encyclopedia that covers everything. What saves the text is that the author himself seems to have realized this and ends each of his chapters with a section labeled “Findings” in which he summarizes the main points. [End Page 463] The first chapter, “The Anti-Westminsterian Roots of Japan’s Parliamentary Cabinet,” covers all the prewar historical junctures and takes us up to the arrival of General Douglas MacArthur and the occupation. There is almost no account of the war or of the way in which the government was structured at that time. Personally, I would have considered the war another historical juncture that had an effect on the postwar parliamentary system. The fact that the Japanese cabinet did not have a minister of defense until 2007 is just one of those effects. The second chapter deals with the Allied occupation which, under strong U.S. leadership, imposed a constitution that laid the basis for the present parliamentary system in Japan. Forced onto the country as the new constitution was, it might not be so strange that democracy in practice failed to take root. The fact that the Americans, not formally but in practice, were running...

Growing Democracy in Japan: The Parliamentary Cabinet System Since 1868

Quite often the best ideas seem so obvious in retrospect. As soon as you start reading this, it strikes you as odd that no one has previously thought of tracing the evolution of Japan’s cabinet system from its mid-19th century origins, through its mid-20th century forms and into its 21st century incarnation. Brian Woodall has produced a readable, lively and provocative addition to the literature on Japan’s political structures that I am sure all of us who teach about the politics of Japan will be recommending to students as well as using to enliven their lectures. The two basic questions to which he seeks answers are firstly why cabinet government has failed to take root in Japan and, secondly, why has Japan’s cabinet system assumed its characteristic form and function? (p. 29). Unsurprisingly, he answers the second question more convincingly than the first. He structures his political history of the last 150 years around eight historical junctures. This gives him eight periods for his narrative. The first three are prewar and are covered in a single long chapter: the Meiji restoration, 1869–1898; ‘the fleeting age of quasi-party cabinets’, 1898–1932; the period of the ‘techno-fascist cabinets and the total state’, 1932–1946. He then has five relatively brief chapters on: the occupation, 1946–1955; the emergence and demise of the 1955 system (1955–1972 and 1972–1993, respectively) and finally two chapters that he entitles ‘Disjoined Cabinets I and II’, which take us up to 2013 and the start of the second Abe cabinet. This narrative structure is supported by a conceptual framework that draws eclectically on institutionalisation theory and historical institutionalism. This he uses to describe and assess how Japan’s cabinet system has evolved. He supplements this with comments derived from a database he has created that contains information on the 141 cabinet formations, 1350 individuals and 3612 portfolios allocated between July 1871 and May 2013.

Linkage of Domestic and International Policies: Asian Experiences

Linkage of Domestic and International Policies: Asian Experiences

Social Networks, Interpersonal Trust, and Support for Democracy in East Asia

Civil society has been regard as a prerequisite for democracy, and social networks and interpersonal trust are two important elements of civil society. By using data from the Asian Barometer Survey, this study investigates the effects of social networks and interpersonal trust on public support for democracy in three East Asian democracies – Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The results of statistical analysis show that social networks, rather than interpersonal trust, exert significant positive effects on public support for democracy in Japan and Taiwan. By contrast, it is interpersonal trust to affect public support for democracy in South Korea. Nonetheless, it should also be noted that trust in political institutions, democratic values, and education far outweigh social networks and interpersonal trust to impact public support for democracy in these East Asian democracies.

The presence of nuclear power and the postwar democracy in Japan - ‘the realistic idealism’ and its political limits

The presence of nuclear power and the postwar democracy in Japan - ‘the realistic idealism’ and its political limits

Updating Japan's Constitutional Debate Through Dialogue with Kataoka Tetsuya and Hannah Arendt

Since the beginning of 2013, debate over the question of Japanese constitutional amendments has escalated, triggered by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s declaration of intent to change the country’s post-World War II constitution. In July the same year, the coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito had a decisive victory in the upper house election, the house which had been controlled by the Democratic Party of Japan, which largely opposes constitutional amendments. Underlying a series of conservative party triumphs has been controversial Article 9 – Japan’s claim to renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the possession of a standing military – which may pacify the country but raises the question as to the nation’s security, autonomy and sovereignty. Not surprisingly, Japan’s move to consider amendments has triggered powerful oppositions, both domestically and internationally, being received as an alarming shift to the right and reviving nationalism. These fears and suspicions notwithstanding, this paper turns to Kataoka Tetsuya and Hannah Arendt to consider the democratic consequences such amendments may produce. Kataoka’s study of postwar constitution argues that Japan could make a greater promise of peace to its citizens and to the international community by taking steps to amend the constitution rather than by sacralizing it. Kataoka’s position finds support in Arendt’s work on the political public realm, which stresses the need to negotiate with the past, as distinct from radically departing from it. This paper contends that the revisions of the postwar constitution, originally not drafted by Japanese, may be a necessary path for furthering democracy in Japan.

Love, Sex, and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation by Mark McLelland (review)

Reviewed by: Love, Sex, and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation by Mark McLelland Sarah Frederick (bio) Love, Sex, and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation. By Mark McLelland. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012. xii, 240 pages. $90.00. This richly detailed and highly readable book examines cultures of love and sexuality during the Occupation of Japan, with particular attention to the places where representation of these topics intersected with master narratives of postwar democracy. The book remains consistently smart in its balanced approach to its subject: Full of memorable, entertaining, and even intimate stories of postwar writings about sexuality, the book never degenerates into the salacious or sensationalizing. While always clear about the particularities of late 1940s Japan, the book does not essentialize this period, or Japanese culture. American models are shown to be highly important, but such influences are never made to be all-encompassing or completely determinative. Boldly exploring the ways in which women often embraced promotion of love marriage and sometimes relationships with GIs as forms of sexual expression, the book is also cognizant of the ways in which women’s situation was compromised by the sex industry, rape, policing institutions, and other power relations of the period. Not lacking in a theoretical perspective, its use of critical theory remains extremely straightforward and accessible. With all of this even-handedness, at times some readers might hope for a more intense or provocative treatment of these subjects. But gained instead is a highly accessible, well-researched, and thoughtful volume that will be fascinating and informative for students and scholars in a range of disciplines. The book largely eschews theoretical terminology, but Mark McLelland sets up his argument about the importance of the occupation era through use of Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of “fields” to elaborate new cultures of dating in postwar Japan: If we consider American-style courtship routines to be a new kind of “field” introduced into Japan after the war, not only through imported Hollywood movies but also through the very visible presence of the many GIs and their Japanese girlfriends on the streets and in the parks of Japan’s major cities, then we can begin to understand why the press was so full of advice on how to navigate this new set of relations. (p. 3) Rather than a model of sexual “liberation” where pent up sexual energies were released by the ending of wartime repression, transformation of censorship practices, or U.S. democracy, McLelland emphasizes the transformation [End Page 203] in habitus, with couples learning new ways of being on multiple levels. Referring regularly to Marcel Mauss’s concept of “techniques of the body,” he shows how dating and coupling practices were transformed by a complex combination of new representations and an altered political and social context. Foucault is not a major player here, but his influence is felt in this move away from a repression and release model of discourses of sexuality. McLelland points out that it was not always “democracy” that enabled sexual liberation but rather that democracy “proved a remarkably flexible sign,” so that sometimes “making claims to democratic principles was a useful tactic for reformers who wished to open increased space for sexual expression in Japanese society” (p. 116). This did not necessarily mean that these expressions were “spontaneous or free,” being themselves potentially subject to new forms of power, “a whole new regime of sexual scrutiny and management” (p. 180). Thus, although the book emphasizes the voluminous discussion of and radical change in sexual customs during the occupation era, which on balance the author tends to view positively, the theoretical framework and the close, detailed analysis of specific materials work to present a nuanced view of the dynamics of the period that goes beyond that of a free and easy burgeoning of democratic love and liberalized sexuality. The emphasis on the particular “sexual scripts” (p. 3) in the postwar context is especially important to understanding how this period differs from Meiji and interwar-era transformations in the same realms, a question this topic is likely to evoke in many readers. Indeed, McLelland is highly attentive to the ways that the Meiji and Taisho eras saw...