Japan's Liberal Research Articles

Updating the analysis of rice import liberalization in Japan: a dynamic-stochastic CGE modelling approach

ABSTRACT Food self-sufficiency is a central pillar of agricultural policy in Japan, and a high import tariff strictly protects the domestic rice market. Most existing studies investigate the deterministic impacts of the rice trade liberalization policy in the country; one, in particular, developed a static-stochastic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to estimate how risky the policy would be in securing the food supply, which fails to account for the long-term effects of a free trade policy. We analyse the impacts of rice trade liberalization in Japan, constructing the first global-scale dynamic-stochastic CGE model. We update the policy analysis of the previous study by extending the static-stochastic model to a dynamic-stochastic framework that allows us to analyse the long-term impacts of the policy in a probabilistic manner. The primary findings are that household welfare converges at a higher level in the long term than in the short term. Second, the shocks to household welfare from abroad persistently become more significant over time. Finally, we have determined that the optimal level for government strategic rice reserves is 300 thousand tons. Therefore, it is apparent that the current stock level of 1000 thousand tons is not cost-effective.

Geographical Divides in Protectionism: The Social Context Approach

Previous studies on public opinion of trade liberalization have looked at factors such as individuals' socioeconomic status and sociotropic economic evaluations. However, they overlook one important factor: social geography. In this paper, we argue that people in different areas are exposed to (i) social networks of different characteristics and (ii) distinct news coverage from local media, which lead to distinct opinions on international trade. We examine these hypotheses using public opinion surveys and media data in Japan. First, we demonstrate that individuals in rural areas are less likely to support trade liberalization and Japan's membership in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Next, we investigate the mechanisms, showing that (a) an individual whose communication network involves people working for the primary sector, which is considered to be vulnerable to trade liberalization in Japan, tends to oppose free trade regardless of the industry they work for and that (b) newspapers circulated in rural and urban places tend to cover TPP differently, which also impacts people's attitudes toward the agreement.

Womenomics under Abe's Leadership Signs of Feminisation of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party?

Japanese Prime Minister Abe is known for his efforts to advance gender equality through womenomics. This seems to put Japan in line with other countries where conservative leaders have embraced gender equality to win back young and female voters and to modernise the image of conservative parties. While electoral calculation drives feminisation in the majority of cases, we argue that this is not the case in Japan. Instead, economic and international pressures are more important drivers than electoral calculations.

The double dividend of agricultural trade liberalization: Consistency between national food security and gains from trade

National food security is one of the main justifications for opposition to agricultural trade liberalization in Japan. Opponents of liberalization argue that because food crop production is subject to high variability, over-reliance on imports would be risky. To assess the risks to Japan with and without trade liberalization, we conducted Monte Carlo simulations of productivity shocks within a computable general equilibrium model for the four crops of greatest significance in the Japanese diet – rice, wheat, maize, and oilseed. Our results indicate that productivity shocks for rice and maize have a substantial effect on welfare. Liberalizing trade for these crops would both raise expected welfare and reduce welfare fluctuations. This double dividend was forecast even when we limited the simulation to cases of extremely poor crop yields in Japan's major source countries.

【シンポジウム報告：論文】／TPP合意における日本の農産品自由化の規定要因

【シンポジウム報告：論文】／TPP合意における日本の農産品自由化の規定要因

Quota Nonadoption in Japan: The Role of the Women's Movement and the Opposition

In 2003, Japan's dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) committed to the goal of 30% female representation in management and political positions by 2020 to conform with the international norm to promote women's leadership. This nonbinding commitment received widespread media attention. In 2012, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe reemphasized this goal before the lower house election. Yet, in his first cabinet, Abe appointed only two women. Moreover, in the 2013 upper house election, the LDP fielded only 9 women out of 79 candidates, nowhere near the 30% candidate goal (Torres 2013). In September 2014, Abe appointed five new women in his cabinet reshuffle, two of whom were forced to resign a month later due to scandals. Four women currently sit on the cabinet due to one female replacement (Flackler 2014). Despite Abe's attempts to increase women in his cabinet, most agree that Japan is not on target to meet the 30% benchmark (Gender Equality Bureau 2012).

Between Pork and People: An Analysis of the Policy Balance in the LDP's Election Platforms

In this article I examine changes in the election manifestos of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party. While the existing literature agrees that the LDP's policy platform has changed considerably since the introduction of the new election system in the 1990s, their analysis focuses on material policies such as pork barrel and welfare. Postmaterialist policies such as environmental protection have hardly been discussed, even though they have been relevant since pollution swept progressive mayors into power in the 1960s. I examine election platforms from 1956 through 2013, and argue that the LDP has carefully adjusted its policy mix by putting a greater emphasis on postmaterialist policies. My analysis also shows that while electoral reform has had an impact on the policy balance between postmaterialist and materialist policies as well as clientelist and programmatic policies, these changes are not linear, but vary from decade to decade.

Japan's New Politics

In December 2012, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, led by Shinzo Abe, achieved a landslide election victory. After three years of rule by the Democratic Party of Japan, Abe, who first served as pr...

Electoral Consequences of Municipal Mergers

The dominance of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was long buttressed by the existence of a strong political support base in the rural areas led by local politicians who worked on behalf of national LDP politicians seeking reelection. In recent years, municipal mergers have drastically weakened the LDP's support base by reducing the number of local politicians and redrawing electoral district boundaries. Surprisingly, the main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), could not take full advantage of these new institutional arrangements. Instead, local politicians have become more independent of both major parties. As a result, at a time of increasing numbers of floating voters, neither of Japan's two major parties has a reliable local base across the country. To succeed, both parties must pay attention to the changing needs of the increasingly independent—and very often still rural—localities.

Steadfast Yet Reluctant Allies: Japan and the United Kingdom in the Vietnam War

During the Vietnam War there were high expectations from the Johnson and Nixon Administrations for Japan and Britain to provide practical and political support for American military and strategic objectives in Indochina. The leader of Japan's conservative Liberal Democratic Party, Sato Eisaku, and the British Labour Party's Harold Wilson, balanced political support for the United States with significant public pressure at home to eschew any entanglement in the highly unpopular conflict. As junior allies of the United States both Sato and Wilson did not want to see the United States fail in Vietnam or the communist sphere expand in Southeast Asia. Both leaders accrued significant foreign policy advantages as a result of politically and publicly supporting American actions in Vietnam. But to placate domestic electorates that clearly felt uncomfortable over their governments providing explicit, albeit non-military, support to the United States in Vietnam, Sato and Wilson expended substantial prime ministerial diplomacy in attempting to play a mediatory role in the conflict. Each was highly successful in balancing domestic and American demands, whilst maintaining their security partnerships with the United States.

Regional Effects of Trade Liberalization in Japan: A CGE Analysis Based on an Interregional Input-Output Table

Since the 1990s, computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis has been widely used as a tool for evaluating the quantitative effects of trade policy, and many CGE studies have concerned trade liberalization in Japan. However, no study has attempted to examine the regional effects of liberalization; that is, how trade liberalization affects individual Japanese regions. Given that trade liberalization is likely to generate dissimilar effects in different regions, and because concern with regional disparities has grown, it is of great importance to analyze the regional effects of trade liberalization. Using a bottom-up regional CGE model, this paper quantitatively evaluates the regional effects of trade liberalization in Japan. We use a static single-country model with 23 sectors and 8 domestic regions and the Interregional Input.Output Table for Japan 2000 as the benchmark data. The main results are as follows. First, trade liberalization increases welfare and GDP in Japan as a whole. This finding is consistent with previous studies in this area. Second, the magnitude of the GDP and welfare effects differs significantly across regions. In particular, high-income regions like Kanto, Chubu and Kinki have large gains while low-income regions like Hokkaido, Tohoku and Kyushu-Okinawa have small (or negative) gains. That is, trade liberalization exacerbates existing regional disparities. These results indicate that if policy makers have an interest in regional disparity, they should implement some form of redistributive policy in conjunction with trade liberalization.

Empowered? Evaluating Japan's national energy strategy under the DPJ administration

In August 2009, after 54 years of virtually unbroken rule, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was ousted from power by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). The DPJ's campaign platform included a pledge to facilitate extreme reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Yet, at the COP16 meeting in Cancun, Japan announced that it would not accept further emission reduction targets without broader commitment from all nations. This paper seeks to explain this dichotomy by employing a targeted stakeholder evaluation based on surveys with 321 Japanese citizens to assess the extent to which influential stakeholder groups in Japan supports a potentially costly transition to a low-carbon energy infrastructure amidst severe economic challenges that the nation faces. Findings help explain Japan's adversarial role in COP16 negotiations in Cancun, despite the stated GHG reduction ambitions of Japan's current ruling party. The analysis concludes that if the DPJ does embrace aggressive CO2 reduction targets in the future, the strategic focus will likely mirror the former ruling party's energy policy of bolstering nuclear power generation capacity and promoting energy efficiency improvements while exhibiting lukewarm commitment to supporting capacity development in alternative sources of energy supply such as solar panels and wind turbines.

知事選挙における敗北と県連体制の刷新

This paper is a case study of organizational transformation in a prefectural party unit of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Ibaraki prefecture was one of the bulwarks of LDP dominance and the prefectural organization (“kenren”) had been proud of own strength. But, at the defeat in the 2009 gubernatorial election, many conservative local politician and interest organizations were against the “kenren” and supported the incumbent governor, Masaru Hashimoto, and let him win. The defeat broke the previous regime at the “kenren”, and the Ibaraki-kenren was forced to rebuild its organization and to try transforming itself from being a prefectural member-centered organization to becoming a more inclusive organization. The purpose of this article analyzes the process of the gubernatorial defeat and the organizational reformation in the kenren following that defeat, to claim the necessity of further accumulation of analysis about local organizations of political parties, not only from perspective of national level confrontation among parties, but also local conflict among local politicians and interest organizationswith a peculiar dynamism.

Factors behind the Historic Defeat of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party in 2009

This study seeks to identify the factors that caused the historic defeat of Japan's longdominant party in the 2009 election. Employing district-level data, I show that a large national swing occurred that overrode district-specific characteristics, and that the electoral coordination of opposition parties helped bring about victory.

Agricultural Trade Regime and Japan's Import Liberalization

Agricultural Trade Regime and Japan's Import Liberalization

Can FTAs deliver market liberalization in Japan? A study on domestic political determinants

ABSTRACT The last decade has witnessed Japan's transformation from one of the last hard core multilateralists to an active negotiator of free trade agreements (FTAs). This striking policy shift raises the question as to whether FTAs can finally deliver substantial liberalization of the Japanese market, a goal long sought by Japan's trading partners and domestic champions of structural reform. I argue that Japan's ability to negotiate such high-yield FTAs (with large trading partners, and encompassing substantial market access concessions and multiple WTO plus commitments) will hinge upon the intensity of lobbying by the internationalized business sector to overcome the resistance of uncompetitive sectors; and the centralization of domestic policy-making in order to break the protectionist inertia of traditional subgovernments. In developing this argument, I modify existing demand/supply models of FTA policy to factor in the preferences of societal actors in the game of selective and discriminatory liberalization and to take into account the influence of domestic political institutions through the logic of principal–agent relations.

The Rise and Fall of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party

THE SUMMER 2009 ELECTORAL victory of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) holds historical significance, not only for political scientists but also for the people of Japan, and possibly for the country’s Asian neighbors and the United States as well. The LDP can boast of being the most successful political party operating in a democracy since the mid-twentieth century. The party held power nearly continuously from its formation in 1955, a scant three years after the end of the U.S. occupation. In the House of Representatives (the lower but substantially more powerful house in Japan’s bicameral system), the LDP compiled an amazing record: the party did not lose a single election in more than a half century, until August 30, 2009, when the Democracy Party of Japan won a stunning upset victory. Generations of Japanese have grown up knowing no governing party other than the LDP. The only interruption to the party’s rule was a brief ten-month period in 1993–94, when a small group split from the LDP to seize power as part of a disparate coalition that did little more than pass an electoral reform bill before falling apart. Much more significant than that episode, this electoral result seems likely to have important implications for the way in which Japan’s democracy works. Nearly 60 percent of LDP incumbents were turned out, and many sitting and former ministers, even a former prime minister, lost their seats. For the DPJ, on the other hand, election night brought only smiles. The party captured an amazing 308 of the 480 seats in the Diet—an all-time record—and only seven DPJ district candidates did not find their way into the Diet. The DPJ more than doubled the LDP’s 119 seats. What makes this election result even more surprising is that in the last House of Representatives election in 2005, the LDP engineered its greatest triumph

The Impact of Policy Making on Agricultural Liberalization in Japan

The Impact of Policy Making on Agricultural Liberalization in Japan

A Study on the Response of Stakeholder to the Agricultural Trade Liberalization in Japan

A Study on the Response of Stakeholder to the Agricultural Trade Liberalization in Japan

Infrastructure as the Magnet of Power: Explaining Why Japanese Legislators Left and Returned to the LDP

By examining party-switching decisions among members of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), this article shows how distributive policy programs exclusively available to the governing party attract incumbents to the party in power. In a stable electoral environment where the government party is likely to stay in power, legislators elected from infrastructure-poor constituencies are effectively tied to the party. However, when the party's electoral prospects are uncertain, legislators behave more sincerely and switch parties to match their policy preferences. It is also found that defectors elected from infrastructure-poor constituencies tended to return to the LDP once the party installed a stable surplus coalition.