Japanese Political Culture

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

This volume provides a perceptive background to modern Japanese culture. Ishida attempts a balanced evaluation of modern Japan, seeking to explain why the basic characteristics of Japanese society permit two almost opposite assessments. He divides the development of modern Japan into two stages: first, the period starting from the Meiji Restoration (1868) up to the end of World War II; second, from the defeat of Japan in World War II up to the present. Ishida investigates the essential features of the modern Japanese value system and the social structure, which comprise both traditional and modern elements. He examines how Japanese society has adapted Western influences to suit its own needs-the real "miracle" of modern Japan. As the Japanese economy grows and Japan becomes an economic superpower, political self-confidence is also emerging. Ishida, however, remains critical of Japanese society, because he feels that Japan lacked the internal resources to change the political system from within until its defeat by the Allies forced it to introduce various reforms ordered by the occupation authorities. Despite the rapid changes taking place in Japanese society, certain attitudes, such as conformity and competition, are common to both the prewar and postwar periods. The final section is devoted to the field of peace research. Ishida presents differences of meaning in the concepts of peace in ancient Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Chinese, and Indian cultures in order to characterize the Japanese concept of peace, which, akin to the Chinese, emphasizes harmony rather than justice. He goes on to discuss Japan's images of Gandhi, which, according to the author, were projections of ultranationalist prejudice and missed the significance of his nonviolent direct action. Ishida emphasizes the importance of such nonviolent action as a means to carry out social change toward the realization of justice.

This title was first published in 1992: This book compares stability and change in the political culture of the relatively new Asian democracy Japan and the much older Western democracy Britain. While the democratic polity emerged incrementally and indigenously in Britain, it was essentially a modern and in many ways foreign implant in Japan. By analysing long-term trends and recent changes in political attitudes, support for government institutions, participation, voting behaviour, and policy-making in the two polities, the authors seek to bring us a unique perspective on these two dynamic island political cultures on opposite ends of the Eurasian land mass. This study will be useful as a supplemental text in upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in comparative political systems or political cultures, particularly those focusing on industrial democracies. It can also be used in courses on either British or Japanese politics.

As a former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and academic, Inoguchi (Chuo U.) is considered one of the foremost political scientists in Japan. In this treatment of the political issues facing modern Japan, he makes sure readers receive the correct background needed to understand the complexities of political behavior ...

This study of Japanese political culture from c. 1940 to 2009 challenges standard periodizations of «postwar» Japan, arguing that the postwar period began, much later than previously argued, when a culture of pacifism developed. We can see evidence of this in feature films from the era and in the activities of groups involved in film promotion and criticism. Film and Political Culture in Postwar Japan asks us to take Japanese pacifism seriously and not assume that it is merely a passing phenomenon. This study of the political left questions previous assumptions about such marginalization after the Red Purges of 1950 and the sectarian infighting of the 1960s. Michael H. Gibbs provokes the reader to look beyond the standard «national» parameters of Japanese culture, to examine the role of other states in fomenting war during the 1940s-1970s and in keeping the subsequent peace. In addition, he challenges the neglect of mainstream Japanese film criticism in English-language scholarship, focusing on many filmmakers seen as important in Japanese film culture but relatively little discussed in the west. Gibbs sets the canon of Great Japanese Directors to one side and focuses on the work of Kinoshita, Yamamoto, Masumura, Kuroki, Yamada, Higashi, Negishi, Sakamoto, and Nishikawa. Scholars and students of Japanese and East Asian history, film, war and peace studies, and comparative and world history should find this volume of great interest.

Many who critique democracy as practiced in East Asia suggest that the Confucian political culture of these nations prevents democracy from being the robust participatory type, and limits it to a spectacle designed to create obedience from the public. Certainly some East Asian nations have had elections for decades, but for democracy to be meaningful, a country needs an active public sphere, political tolerance, egalitarian beliefs, and vigorous political participation. The Asian-values debate focuses on whether the creation of this optimal version of democracy in East Asian nations will be hindered by their shared Confucian cultural heritage and at the centre of this debate is whether there is an active political culture in East Asia that allows citizens to freely discuss, debate, and disagree about politics. With Japan as its focus, this book examines the role of social networks and political discussion in Japanese political culture and asks whether discursive participatory democracy is indeed possible in East Asia. In order to answer this question the authors undertook the largest academic political survey ever conducted in Japan to give the book exceptional empirical credence. This data reveals how the Japanese people interact politically, concluding that through the powerful influence of social networks on Japanese political behaviour, Japan has a more globalized and less hierarchical society where Confucian culture is not dominant and where creation of a vibrant civil society is possible. This book will be invaluable for students and scholars of Japanese politics, democracy, civil society, and globalization.

In late 1945 local Japanese turned their energies toward creating new behaviors and institutions that would give young people better skills to combat repression at home and coercion abroad. They rapidly transformed their political culture-policies, institutions, and public opinion-to create a more equitable, democratic and peaceful society. Post-Fascist Japan explores this phenomenon, focusing on a group of highly educated Japanese based in the city of Kamakura, where the new political culture was particularly visible. The book argues that these leftist elites, many of whom had been seen as 'the enemy' during the war, saw the problem as one of fascism, an ideology that had succeeded because it had addressed real problems. They turned their efforts to overtly political-legal systems but also to ostensibly non-political and community institutions such as universities, art museums, local tourism, and environmental policies, aiming not only for reconciliation over the past but also to reduce the anxieties that had drawn so many towards fascism. By focusing on people who had an outsized influence on Japan's political culture, Hein's study is local, national, and transnational. She grounds her discussion using specific personalities, showing their ideas about 'post-fascism', how they implemented them and how they interacted with the American occupiers.