Japanese Politics Research Articles

Old party, new tricks: candidates, parties, and LDP dominance in Japan

AbstractIn 2009, after decades of single party rule under the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan had its first taste of a real alteration of power. However, just 3 years later, the LDP regained control of government with no significant challenger in sight. Historically, LDP dominance is a common tale, but its resurgence in recent years poses a significant puzzle in Japanese politics. What exactly has contributed to the LDP's return to power? In the years that have passed, the LDP's strength has come from a combination of cash, clientelistic networks, and strong candidates, but recent research has found that Japanese politics has become more programmatic and party-focused. While LDP dominance since its return to power in 2012 can be attributed in part to its candidates, I find that the appeal of the party label has played a large role in securing the LDP's large majorities.

Geostrategy and Great Power Relations: A Reanalysis of the Basic Trends of Sino-Japanese Relations

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, China and Japan have fought against the epidemic through high-level contacts, donation and so on. The Chinese proverb “mountains and rivers on foreign land, wind and moon under the same sky” gave warmth of friendship to the bilateral relations. However, since Yoshihide Suga won the election, the Sino-Japanese relations have taken a worsening turn. The current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida further takes counterbalancing China as top priority. The “anti-COVID-19 diplomacy” in 2020 had very limited improvement on Sino-Japanese relations. It is clear that since the implementation of the U.S. strategic competition policy against China, Japan, without hesitation, turns to the “national interest theory” and “international contribution theory” by positioning to counterbalance China. Japan has become one of the few Asian countries that have completely sided with US in the China–US strategic competition. Since the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations, the principle of “good-neighborhood” has been totally replaced by the seemingly determined approach of “counterbalance” proposed by Japanese politicians. Japan has gone beyond the issue of its neighboring areas, trying to assist the United States’ strategic containment of China, which has added a new variable to China’s neighboring diplomacy.

일본사회의 국가권력과 종교의 관계

This study aims to examine the relationship between religion and politics. Specifically, the relationship between state power and Shinto was analyzed, focusing on Japanese politics and the Japanese political organization Nihonkaigi. Through this, the ideological background of Japan’s right-wing forces was analyzed. Nihonkaigi is a political organization where right-wing political figures from Japan, created by “the Group to Protect Japan” and “the National Congress to Protect Japan,” are gathered. This organization significantly influences modern Japanese politics based on right-wing forces. The ideological backgrounds of these right-wing forces include “setting the Japanese emperor as the base of power” and “traditional the unity of state and religion ideas”. It means that efforts to abolish the State Shinto in December 1945 and prevent the recurrence of militarism failed. Nihonkaigi is giving material, human, and ideological support to right-wing politicians. They seek a “return to before the 2nd World War” by glorifying nationalism with discourse such as “Strong Japan equals Making a New Japan”. This example explains the unique aspect of Japan’s unity of state and religion.

Still valuable? Reconsidering the role of authoritarian values among Japanese voters

AbstractThe Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has dominated Japanese politics since its foundation in 1955. The party's ability to support the interests of small farmers and its commitment to the middle-class through redistributive economic policies have been regarded as among the primary factors leading to its prolonged hegemony. Yet, the LDP has occasionally relied on non-economic political appeals addressing rather conservative issues such as Japan's military force and the country's traditional values. These appeals have significantly intensified under the premiership of Junichirō Koizumi and his successor Shinzō Abe, whose authoritative leadership styles and nationalist agendas reveal the relevance of non-economic values. This study focuses on the role of authoritarian values in shaping vote choice in twenty-first century Japan. Previously emphasized in The Japanese Voter, the authority–liberty dimension has gradually lost prominence in recent models of voting behavior, where socio-economic factors have had a central role in explaining vote choice. Our inquiry places new emphasis on this value dimension and provides evidence for the enduring relevance of individual authoritarian dispositions in models of vote choice.

Coordinating nominations: how to deal with an incumbent surplus after electoral reform

AbstractHow do parties and candidates react to electoral system reform? While the literature on causes and consequences of electoral reforms is receiving increasing attention, we lack a systematic micro-level account on how parties and candidates adopt to changes in electoral rules and district boundaries. This paper examines the case of the Japanese Liberal Democrats to explore how the party has managed to accommodate a surplus of incumbents to a reduced number of nominal tier seats following the 1994 electoral reform. By using micro-level data, I examine how the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has matched candidates based on their expected electoral strength and ideological positioning to new districts. Moreover, I investigate how the newly instituted party-list allowed the LDP to avoid its disintegration at the local level by systematically defusing local stand-offs through the handing out of promising list positions. My findings help to understand how the LDP could avoid its disintegration and could continue to dominate Japanese politics until today.

The Impact of the U.S. Occupation on Japanese Politics and Economy after the End of World War II

During WWII, the US and Japan are enemies, however, after the war, the US occupy Japan and transform it into nowadays Japan. This paper analyzes the impact of the US occupation of Japan after the end of WWII on Japanese politics and economy by using the method of studies literature review. This paper also explores the process that makes Japan transform from feudal militarism into a parliamentary democracy country and summarizes the contributions of the US to Japan’s rebuilding. It can be concluded that the rise of nowadays Japan is built on the foundation of the influence of the US during the occupation.

Taiwan and Japan's Security: Anatomy of Japanese Approaches to the Taiwan Issue

The article analyzes Japan's approaches to the Taiwan issue from the point of view of ensuring its national security. In recent years, as the balance of power between the United States and China has shifted in favor of the latter in the Asia-Pacific region, Japanese politicians, statesmen and experts have increasingly spoken out about Taiwan's place in the country's security sphere. At the same time, they directly link Taiwan's security with Japan's security and openly declare the need to help protect Taiwan from China's "aggressive encroachments." Beijing, on the other hand, considers Taiwan to be a temporary breakaway part of its country and firmly intends to seek the "historical reunification" of Taiwan with mainland China, without excluding the possibility of using armed force for this purpose. In fact, Tokyo began to move away from the policy of delicate balancing between Washington and Beijing in their growing confrontation in the Taiwan Strait and began more clearly to declare its interest in maintaining the status quo in the Taiwan issue, i.e. in maintaining the de facto political independence of Taiwan as a deterrent to a growing China. Despite all the calls in Japan for the need to be prepared for unforeseen circumstances in Taiwan, until recently there was relatively little discussion in the country about why and under what conditions Japan should be involved in resolving the Taiwan issue. However, recently there has been an active discussion of this issue in the political sphere of the country. At the same time, careful preparations are being made for the possible involvement of Japan in military operations if the confrontation between the United States and China over the future fate of Taiwan turns into a "hot" stage.

Abe Road: Kuwata Keisuke’s Beatles Parody

In May 2009, when the Japanese LDP government was in a weakened position, Kuwata Keisuke, lead singer of popular rock band Southern All Stars, performed a parody of the Beatles’ Abbey Road on his weekly television show. Backed by a band performing an uncanny cover of the album, he rewrote the lyrics into commentary on corruption in Japanese politics, fiscal problems, the death penalty, and other political issues. This performance was highly unusual: Japanese recording artists rarely engage in politics. The recording and broadcast industries disallow lyrics on controversial topics, and management discourages artists from engaging in politics. Kuwata staged his rebellious gesture as a “mishearing” of a well-known album. Kuwata transformed Abbey Road into political parody through linguistic sleight of hand. Kuwata chose Japanese lyrics with similar vowels and consonants (as demonstrated by their proximities on the International Phonetic Alphabet) to make them sound like the original English lyrics. By presenting his acrid commentary as a parody of this much-loved album and thus framing it as humorous entertainment, Kuwata was able to publicly criticize Japanese politicians.

Japan's Living Politics: Grassroots Action and the Crises of Democracy by Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Reviewed by: Japan's Living Politics: Grassroots Action and the Crises of Democracy by Tessa Morris-Suzuki Mary Alice Haddad Japan's Living Politics: Grassroots Action and the Crises of Democracy. By Tessa Morris-Suzuki. Cambridge University Press, 2020. 246 pages. ISBN: 9781108490078 (hardcover; also available as softcover and e-book). Japan's Living Politics: Grassroots Action and the Crises of Democracy is a lovely book that takes a deep and long look at the evolution of Japanese democracy through the lens of local, grassroots, everyday political activity. Tessa Morris-Suzuki's historical and anthropological investigation of a wide range of local prodemocratic community engagement turns the usual narrative of top-down, state-centered Japanese politics on its head. Through the intimate stories of Japanese who struggle to imagine [End Page 374] and create an inclusive and progressive society, Morris-Suzuki offers us new perspectives on the development of our own democracies. The book's first chapter elaborates the concept of informal life politics. This notion understands the process of living everyday life as both a key political concern and a mode through which politics is expressed: "Central to the practice of informal life politics is the idea that many of the key problems humans face (not simply as individuals but also as communities) cannot be solved at the level of formal state politics" (p. 13). In this way of thinking, state power has only a limited capacity to solve human problems, so the most productive location for political action is at the grassroots level, in one's own community. In contrast to much of the literature on social movements and political activism, the grassroots action in Japan's Living Politics is not focused on lobbying politicians or seeking to establish new laws. Instead, these activists are making change directly by living a different way themselves and, perhaps, eventually, creating broader changes as their ideas and practices spread to other communities across Japan and throughout the world. Although the stories highlighted in Japan's Living Politics are often hyperlocal—relating to just one school, one small town, one art exhibit—the activists in them are not operating in isolation from broader national and international conversations and political movements. Morris-Suzuki takes great pains to draw these national and transnational connections to the reader's attention, showing how local movements in Japan are inspired and informed by activities abroad. She furthermore shows how these local movements, in turn, feed back into the activities of grassroots actors in communities located very far—geographically, socially, and politically—from their Japanese examples. These transnational connections are theorized more fully in the second chapter, in which Morris-Suzuki argues that Japan's living politics typically represents a "resonance" with rather than a "borrowing" or "adapting" of political ideals that cross time and space (p. 24). The bulk of Japan's Living Politics is concerned with specific examples of a wide geographic and temporal diversity. The oldest group discussed is the White Birch Society, profiled in chapter 3. The organization began in the late 1800s, soon after trade links with the rest of the world opened during the Meiji Restoration. The movement began in a handful of schools and universities that experimented with liberal education models promoting humanist and idealistic visions of society. Teachers and leaders sought to create communities that would nurture the "creative potential of each human being" (p. 44). Viewed as subversive, White Birch schools and thinkers were repressed during the fascist Shōwa period and were revived during the Allied Occupation. In many ways, White Birch thinkers, ideas, and modes of political engagement formed the foundation for the everyday life politics discussed in the rest of the book. The New Village Movement, discussed in chapter 4, explores the formation of intentional (and sometimes utopian) communities in Japan beginning in the early twentieth century and continuing through the movement's heyday in the late 1960s and early 1970s until today. Although each was necessarily unique, the communities [End Page 375] generally emphasized communal ownership and collective living. In these villages, "inhabitants would live as brothers and sisters, combining farm labour with spiritual and artistic creativity, sharing wealth in common and determining their future...

Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context by Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai

Reviewed by: Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context by Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai Satoko Shimazaki Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context. By Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021. 246 pages. ISBN: 9780367150624 (hardcover; also available as softcover and e-book). Akihiro Odanaka and Masami Iwai's Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century: Bunraku Puppet Plays in Social Context is a welcome addition to the small library of monographs on early modern Japanese theater and, specifically, studies of bunraku. Focusing their attention on historical and political plays, the authors discuss various bunraku period pieces (jidaimono) beginning with Chikamatsu Monzaemon's Kokusen'ya kassen (The Battles of Coxinga), first staged in 1715, and ending with Igagoe dōchū sugoroku (Travel Game while Crossing Iga) by Chikamatsu Hanji, which was first staged in 1783. Along the way, they cover plays by Takeda Izumo I; collaborations between Takeda Izumo II, Miyoshi Shōraku, and Namiki Senryū (Sōsuke); as well as earlier plays by Hanji. They trace the trajectory of the [End Page 130] puppet theater from its golden age to the beginning of its decline in Osaka as kabuki came to dominate. The study of bunraku period plays has seen renewed interest in Japan in the last decade with the publication of several monographs wholly or partially devoted to the topic, including Itō Risa's Ningyō jōruri no doramatsurugī (The Dramaturgy of Bunraku; 2012); Hara Michio's Chikamatsu jōruri no sakugekihō (Dramaturgy in Chikamatsu's Bunraku; 2013); and Han Kyoung Ja's Chikamatsu jidai jōruri no sekai (The World of Chikamatsu's Bunraku History Plays; 2019)—all of which build on Uchiyama Mikiko's seminal Jōrurishi no jūhasseiki (The Eighteenth Century in the History of Bunraku) from 1989. The focus of Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century on period plays gives sustained attention in English to works that have been taken up only now and then in translation and critical studies by authors such as Donald Keene, James Brandon, C. Andrew Gerstle, and Stanleigh H. Jones. The meanings of bunraku that the authors explore are distinct from those we might find in Chikamatsu's domestic dramas (sewamono), which still play an outsize role in shaping the image of the art in English-language contexts, perhaps partly because their concise, tightly structured, and poetic nature makes them more accessible and thus a familiar feature in surveys of early modern literature. Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century discusses well-known plays such as Kanadehon chūshingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers; 1748), but also plays that are less familiar in English such as Ashiya Dōman ōuchi kagami (A Courtly Mirror of Ashiya Dōman; 1734) and Ōmi Genji senjin yakata (The Genji Vanguard in Ōmi Province; 1769). The authors argue that "bunraku theatre, despite its aspect as popular entertainment, was often a place for playwrights to manifest their political concerns" and a space of "reflection of the audience's expectations" (p. xvi). At first glance, this countercultural interpretation might seem to follow a well-trodden path in Tokugawa theater studies, recalling writings by Donald Shively that portrayed kabuki theater as a forum for popular resistance against censorship and governmental regulation.1 Analysis of this sort in previous English-language scholarship has tended to focus, however, on the dynamic within the administrative city of Edo as the center of political power and has never fully addressed bunraku, which saw its most dynamic developments four hundred kilometers west in Osaka. Despite drawing heavily on the world of the warriors and on contemporary political material, bunraku may have been shielded by sheer distance from the sort of scrutiny to which kabuki was subject. Odanaka and Iwai home in on this possibility and cultivate a focus on Osaka as a methodology, emphasizing the city's economic significance as an essential non-samurai center in the Tokugawa political body. The preface and introduction position "the rising economic power of the merchants" against the "sovereignty of the warriors" (p. xvi). Exploring the geographical division of Osaka into administrative spaces and areas of economic activity...

Yasukuni Fundamentalism: Japanese Religions and the Politics of Restoration by Mark R. Mullins

Reviewed by: Yasukuni Fundamentalism: Japanese Religions and the Politics of Restoration by Mark R. Mullins Saitō Kōta Yasukuni Fundamentalism: Japanese Religions and the Politics of Restoration. By Mark R. Mullins. University of Hawai'i Press, 2021. 270 pages. ISBN: 9780824889012 (hardcover; also available as softcover and e-book). Despite the vast number of books and essays that have been written on it, Yasukuni Shrine remains a difficult subject for academic discussion. The difficulty stems first [End Page 170] of all from the complex history of the shrine from the Meiji period to the present. But another major factor is the violent political debate that the shrine still inspires in Japan and abroad. Discussions of Yasukuni tend to strongly reflect the political position of the debater, sometimes leading to an oversimplification of his or her viewpoint. While some attempts at empirical historical research have been made in the interest of avoiding such problems, even they have not been able to wholly escape the ideology that inevitably surrounds Yasukuni Shrine. Especially challenging is the question of how to understand the ideology of rightists who are trying to revitalize the role of this shrine in current Japanese politics. Calling that ideology State Shinto would be one possible solution, but that only invites the more difficult question of what this academically and politically contentious term really means. In Yasukuni Fundamentalism, Mark R. Mullins, who has published many important studies on religion in modern Japan, tackles these issues from the perspective of the historical sociology of religion. As reflected in the title, the key to this book is the concept of fundamentalism, which Mullins deploys to reveal the process by which the changes Yasukuni Shrine underwent during the Allied Occupation led to the rise of right-wing political forces seeking what they saw as restoration. The introduction explains the author's framework for examining Yasukuni Shrine. Mullins focuses on the new relationship between nationalism and organized religion in contemporary Japan, seeing it as part of the rise of global religious nationalism. As a central example he cites the movement toward cooperation between the Shinto shrine community and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)—a push for desecularization or deprivatization that seeks to restore the official role that was taken away from Shinto by the policies of the Occupation. This movement is sometimes understood as "an effort to restore State Shinto" (p. 20). However, Mullins himself does not choose to employ the concept of State Shinto, noting that the movement includes no claim to revive the prewar control of shrines under the Bureau of Shrines in the Home Ministry. He also observes that many in the Shinto community are not sympathetic to the movement. His argument and its rationale are solid. Mullins contends, rather, that the contemporary Japanese neonationalist movement is best understood as religious fundamentalism, given that it emerged as a response to the confusion caused by modernization and secularization, and is a "politics of inclusion" that seeks to reclaim the "essential" beliefs and values of the past and enforce them on the entire population (pp. 23–24). Inspired by the discourse of the movement's critics, Mullins describes it as "Yasukuni fundamentalism" in acknowledgement of the symbolic meaning the shrine holds in the movement's goal of restoring an old Japan (pp. 25–27). Part 1 (chapters 1 to 3) of the book delineates the postwar history of Japanese religious nationalism. Chapter 1, "Imperialist Secularization: The Restructuring of Religion and Society in Occupied Japan," details the establishment of the separation of religion and state in occupied Japan. As is well known, the Shinto Directive [End Page 171] issued by GHQ/SCAP in 1945 severed the relationship between Shinto and the state. This was a forced secularization by a foreign power and a typical example of what N. J. Demerath calls "imperialist secularization."1 Mullins notes, however, that the US State Department had been aware of the complex nature of "military shrines" such as Yasukuni from before the Occupation (pp. 38–39). The difficult decision of whether to apply the principle of freedom of religion to military shrines was left to the Religions and Cultural Resources Division of the Civil Information and Educational Section, which...

Examination of double degree programs between Graduate Institute of Japanese Political and Economic Studies Master Degree, Tamkang University in Taiwan and graduate schools in Japan

On February 27, 2020, the Graduate Institute of Japanese Political and Economic Studies Master Degree, Tamkang University in Taiwan signed a master's degree double degree agreement with Okayama University Graduate School of Social and Cultural Sciences in Japan. This paper clarifies the actual situation of this double degree system, and examines the problems. The Graduate Institute of Japanese Political and Economic Studies Master Degree, Tamkang University has a double degree agreement with the Graduate School of Law, Doshisha University, and although Tamkang University students may study abroad in Japan using the double degree system, Japanese students are not able to study abroad. It is clarified that there are no examples of students who have come to study abroad at Jiang University using the double degree system. In addition, it is argued that the internationalization of graduate schools has been accomplished simply by concluding a double degree agreement with Japanese graduate schools, and that the students who use this double degree system between Japan and Taiwan are one-sided. It is also pointed out that it does not appear to be a "diplomatic relationship" between Japan and Taiwan, rather that it is based on "private business relations," and that there should be a demand for Japanese students to study in Taiwan.

Use of Hedges ~to Omoimasu to Soften Speech and Its Implications for Japanese Politeness Teaching

In Japanese society, the main concept in communicating is to consider the other person's feelings by not speaking directly, too frankly or to the point. One of the grammatical features this concept is Verb ~omoimasu which means in English ~I think (I think…, I think….). In the result of the essays by the students who take the Japanese Popular Writing course. In his essay students should use these verbs which also function as hedges to express opinions or ideas but ignore them because they may not understand that the use of these functional verbs is to maintain language politeness, especially in communicating in Japanese. Seeing this phenomenon, the writers tried to find out by identifying student essays that do not use these hedges, and the possible causes. Then by adopting the concept of communicating in Japanese that considers the feelings of the other person, the writers have found out how the implications of using these hedges have on the values of politeness in language that have effect on the politeness of behavior of students who take Japanese Popular Article Writing lectures. With research that adopts the concept of communicating in Japanese society, the writers can create a language politeness learning model that is expected to influence behavioral aspects.

Voyage to Innumerable Star Worlds: A Forgotten 19th-century Japanese Political Scientific Novel with a Radical Message

ABSTRACT In 1882 Nukina Shunichi, a heretofore unknown ex-samurai from Hikone-fief, published his debut novel Voyage to Innumerable Star Worlds. The novel fits within the theoretical narrative according to which, following exposure to Western literature, early science fiction budded within political novels in Meiji-era Japan. Like other political works with science fiction elements from that era, this novel demonstrates negotiations between traditional literary tools and imported styles, content and themes. It is, however, remarkable from a thematic point of view. Nukina presents a critical futuristic vision of industrial progress, which is intertwined with his broader political message that describes the loss of social equality and liberty during the civilising process and ends with a utopian vision of anarchy. It is one of the earliest, if not the earliest, pro-anarchism declarations written in Japan. By combining biographical research and textual analysis that are contextualised within literary and historical settings, this novel is a case study of the nuanced local reworking of cross-cultural flows during a period characterised by the influx of new tools and ideas. Moreover, it enables a glimpse into the active political lives of the anonymous Meiji ex-samurai, and into the wide range of their political deliberations.

Japan's Remilitarization, Passive Constitutional Amendment Discourse

This journal aims to observe the Japanese remilitarization plan of some elements of Japanese politics to amend the Pacifism constitution in article 9 related to military capabilities and the factors behind it. Japan's plan to amend Article 9 is a step that is considered important to make it easier for Japan to fulfil its national interests in the field of defence and security in the Pacific and East Asia regions. A qualitative approach is carried out to observe the facts that occur and is followed by using several concepts in analysing the phenomenon. The data collection technique that will be used is to find library research data. The perspective of Neorealism, the Concept of National Interest and Foreign Policy are used as the basis and direction to answer issues related to Japanese remilitarization and the discourse on the amendment of Article 9 of the Japanese Pacifism Constitution and the reasons behind the plan.

Alignment, persuasiveness and the putative reader in opinion writing

AbstractThis paper explores a new line of analysis for comparing opinion writing by reference to differences in the relationships being indicated between author and addressee. It draws on recent work within the appraisal framework literature to offer proposals for linguistics-based analyses of what has variously been termed the ‘intended’, ‘imagined’, ‘ideal’, ‘virtual’, ‘model’, ‘implied’ and ‘putative’ reader (the ‘reader written into the text’). A discussion is provided of those means by which beliefs, attitudes and expectations are projected onto this ‘reader in the text’, formulations which signal anticipations that the reader either shares the attitude or belief currently being advanced by the author, potentially finds it novel or otherwise problematic, or may reject it outright. The discussion is conducted with respect to written, persuasive texts, and specifically with respect to news journalism’s commentary pieces. It is proposed that such texts can usefully be characterised and compared by reference to tendencies in such ‘construals’ or ‘positionings’ of the putative reader – tendencies in terms of whether the signalled anticipation is of the reader being aligned or, conversely, potentially unaligned or dis-aligned with the author. The terms ‘flag waving’ and ‘advocacy’ are proposed as characterisations which can be applied to texts, with ‘flag waving’ applicable to texts which construe the reader as largely sharing the author’s beliefs and attitudes, while ‘advocacy’ is applicable to texts where the reader is construed as actually or potentially not sharing the author’s beliefs and attitudes and thereby needing to be won over. This line of analysis is demonstrated through a comparison of two journalistic opinion pieces written in response to visits by Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, one published in the English-language version of the mainland China newspaper,China Dailyand one in the English-language version of the JapaneseAsahi Shimbun. It is shown that one piece can usefully be characterised as oriented towards ‘flag waving’ and the other towards ‘advocacy’.

Review article: Reflections on compressed development: Time and timing in economic and social development

Hugh Whittaker, Timothy Sturgeon, Toshie Okita, and Tiambiao Zhu propose a new way to approach comparative international development. They distinguish their theory from earlier development theories and develop a two-level historical analysis of the capitalist economy focusing on time and timing. Timing refers to the differences in historical periods in which development takes place. Time refers to the pace of development in the empirical analysis of individual capitalist economies using models created in concrete historical settings. “Time” is accelerated such that sequential processes experienced earlier have given way to simultaneous processes. In their empirical analysis they pay special attention to the relation between Economic and Social Development. They find that the Fordist development model in the embedded liberalism era had a virtuous loop between economic and social development. This virtuous loop disappeared in the subsequent neoliberal era to which the compressed development model applies where economic change is taking place both at a much faster rate and in an international context that allows states far less control. The two-level historical analysis shows that the problem with stagist development models is that they generalise past development in a particular historical era as a general tendency. It also shows that institutions are shaped by the context in which they emerge, and they may subsequently prove difficult to change, even if the environment changes. In the last few years, the Japanese Political Economy has covered similar topics in its special issues. The present issue provides a good opportunity to review and compare my and their approaches and achievement. I found the concept of capitalist world systems complement their theory. Many of the difficulties in the compressed development era relate to the approaching second interregnum. Solving the difficulty in the compressed development era requires the creation of a new stable world system.

Russian–Japanese Relations at the Turn of the Century: Patterns, Routes, Leaders

This article analyzes why, during the post-Cold War period, Tokyo became aware of the need to reconsider its hard-line relations with Moscow, which had been developed in previous decades. Even in the period preceding the collapse of the USSR, Tokyo did not conceal its intentions to use the difficult socio-economic situation in the USSR and then in Russia to obtain territorial concessions. Even then, however, the Russian side mostly determined the agenda of the Russian-Japanese dialogue, which was largely due to serious mistakes made by Japanese politicians. After Russia emerged from the economic and political turbulence that began unexpectedly for the West and Japan in the 2000s, Tokyo’s new hopes were connected with concessions on the “territorial case” because of Russia’s interest in Japanese investments and technological cooperation, especially for the development of the Far East and adjacent areas. Nevertheless, even here Tokyo faced a fiasco. Before the arrival of the Abe era in late 2012, Japan’s foreign policy toward Russia became increasingly “reactive,” and even later Tokyo’s high-profile initiatives related to the Russian-Japanese agenda often turned out to be old proposals from Moscow that had been made during the time of Michael Gorbachev, and favorable moments for their implementation were largely missed.

Linkage between ABO Blood Type and Occupation: Evidence from Japanese Politicians and Athletes

In Asian countries, e.g., Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan, many studies on the relationship between ABO blood type and personality have been conducted. Recently, it has been estimated that more than half of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese people feel that this relationship is legitimate. Therefore, when data from these countries are used in personality tests, it is theoretically difficult to eliminate the effects of the “contamination of knowledge,” even if differences are found. To avoid this issue, this study examined the linkage between ABO blood type and occupations in Japan. The results showed that personality traits corresponding to blood type appeared in the data of each of the three groups of politicians and athletes, and all differences were statistically significant. We observed a clear and significant relationship between blood type and personality. Additionally, it is also necessary to consider the influence of social background.

TRANSFORMATION OF THE JAPANESE MEMORY POLITIC IN THE II HALF OF XX-XXI CENTURIES IN THE CONTEXTS OF PAN-ASIAN AMBITIONS

The article is devoted to the analyses of the role of Pan-Asianism in the formation of the Japanese policy of memory in the period after World War II. Since the Meiji period, Japan has had a dual relationship with Asia: on the one hand, as a region of high spirituality and culture, on the other, as a region lagging behind the West or Europe in terms of economic, political and technological development. In the 1950s, when Japan was experiencing a period of economic crisis caused by the defeat of the war, the occupation regime, and the formation of military memory, we see a trend of Japanese intellectuals classifying Japan as "Asia". If during World War I Pan-Asian ideology was used to correct imperial ideology and colonialism, modern Pan-Asian concepts tend to create a union of Southeast Asian countries for support and mutual development. The further development of these sentiments depends on the implementation of existing ASEAN projects and the specifics of the adopted political and economic strategies of the Asian Commonwealth.
 The articles provide the first comprehensive analysis of the constitutional documents, editions and speeches of Japanese politicians, which show the transformations of Japanese memory politic. The main terms of development of this policy, which consist in patient orientation and gradual formation of new Asianism, are separated. Discussions around Yasukuni-jinja and Japanese history textbooks as examples of these trends in Japanese politics are analyzed.
 Provided that Japan's pacifist position is enshrined in the constitution, there are conservative and nationalist views on the Japanese war in Asia. As part of Japan's policy of remembrance, Pan-Asianism fosters an ambivalent attitude toward Japanese expansion in Asia. Subject to Japan's official admission of guilt to neighbouring countries, condemnation of expansionism and colonialism, and the transition to pacifism, there are conservative and nationalist views on the Japanese war in Asia. Within the conservative position, Japanese guilt is questioned and the need to recognize the heroic participants in the war is proclaimed, the "Great East Asian War" is interpreted as a war of self-defence, or the correctness and truth of Pan-Asian ideals of Taisho and Showa Japan are recognized.