Newsletter of the lnstitute of Social Science, University ...newslet.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ssj45/ssj45.pdfTwo years after the regime change in 2009, this issue of So ci al e nJp revisits

Newsletter of the lnstitute of Social Science, University of TokyoISSN 1340-7155

SocialScience

45September 2011

Parties in DisarrayThe Fall of the LDP

Page 2 Social Science Japan September 2011Page 2

Published by:Institute of Social ScienceUniversity of Tokyo

Editorial Committee:Hirashima KenjiIshiguro Kuniko

DistributionSocial Science Japan is available onthe World Wide Web at:http://newslet.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp

All inquiries to:Social Science JapanInstitute of Social ScienceUniversity of TokyoHongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-kuTokyo 113-0033 JAPANTel +81 3 5841 4931Fax +81 3 5841 4905Electronic mail:[email protected]

CoverCover photograph Conference, "A Perfect TectonicShift?: Structural Developments,Koizumi Reforms, and the Collapseof LDP Rule," hosted by the Instituteof the Social Science, the Universityof Tokyo, August 19 and 20, 2010.

Editorial NotesPersonal Names

All personal names are given inthe customary order in thenative language of the personunless otherwise requested.Hence in Japanese names, thefamily name is given first, e.g.Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and inWestern names the familyname is given second, e.g.George Bush.

Copyright © 2007 by the Institute ofSocial Science, University ofTokyo, except where noted. Allrights reserved.

Japan was devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11 this year,and the earthquake has sustained a massive number of casualties. In addition, thenuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has posed unprecedent-ed risks to the country. Under these challenging circumstances, Japan’s politicsseems dysfunctional, leaving the people’s lives difficult, and it has hindered therecovery of Japan’s economy which had already been faltering even before thedisaster. Needless to say, one of the key actors which could revitalise Japan—andwhich the country desperately seeks—is a strong, stable and efficient government.

Two years after the regime change in 2009, this issue of Social Science Japanrevisits the issue of the change of government. Six scholars who participated inthe conference, "A Perfect Tectonic Shift?: Structural Developments, KoizumiReforms, and the Collapse of LDP Rule" (August 19 and 20, 2010), sponsored bythe Hobriba International Conference Fund and the Todai-Yale initiative, dis-cuss the factors contributing to the change of power in 2009, and add updatedinformation in relation to the recent catastrophe brought about by the earth-quake and subsequent nuclear plant problems, as well as by political disarray.

First, Hiwatari Nobuhiro discusses the challenges facing Japanese parties in thepost-LDP era. Jun Saito then presents a report on a current research project on theleadership and policy changes. Kyohei Yamada examines the relationships betweenurban-rural inequality and the distribution of partisan support. In the fourth essay,Kay Shimizu analyses the political consequences of structural change by focusing oneconomic and demographic transformations over the last two decades. KennethMori McElwain discusses the causes and effects of “party discipline” in Japanesepolitics. Finally, Patricia L. Maclachlan addresses postal reform in Japan and dis-cusses financial and social roles for the postal office in post-quake Japan.

In the “Research Report Section,” Michio Nitta, a Professor at Kokushikan Uni-versity and a former Professor of Industrial Relations at ISS, presents a retro-spective essay on his twenty-three years’ academic life at Shaken. In the “Ques-tions and Answers with the Visiting Professors” section, we present individualaccounts from four scholars who recently conducted research at Shaken.

Finally, in addition to presenting abstracts of the ISS Contemporary Japan Group(CJG) and recently published books written by members of our research staff at theISS, we feature the Contemporary China Research Base in the section, “Focus on ISS.”

Contents

Parties in Disarray: The Fall of the LDPHiwatari Nobuhiro Parties Running Amok? Or, just another episode in the new era of responsible party government ......................................................................................................p.3

Jun Saito Policy Reform and Leadership Change in Japan ..........................................................p.7

Kyohei Yamada Urban-Rural Income Inequality and the LDP ....................................................p.10

Kay Shimizu The Political Consequences of Structural Change .................................................p.16

Kenneth Mori McElwain Why Are Japanese Parties Undisciplined? ...........................................p.19

Patricia L. Maclachlan Postal Reform in a Changing Japan........................................................p.24

"A Perfect Tectonic Shift? Structural developments, Koizumi reforms, and the collapse of LDP rule" ......................................................................................................p.28

ISS Research Report

Nitta Michio My Research at the Institute of Social Science: A Retrospective............................p.29

Questions and Answers with Visiting Professors

Chongwoo Choe..........................................................................................................................p.32

Changhee Lee .............................................................................................................................p.34

Jianguo Sun................................................................................................................................p.36

Bill W.K. Taylor ...........................................................................................................................p.38

HIWATARI Nobuhiro

Page 3Social Science Japan September 2011

Hiwatari Nobuhiro is a Professor of PoliticalEconomy/International Political Economy at theInstitute of Social Science, the University of Tokyo

Institute of Social ScienceThe University of TokyoHongo 7-3-1Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo [email protected]

Now is the winter of our discontent made excru-ciating summer by this partisan bickering. Forover two months, we have been forced to watchthe DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) stagehandsdesperately try to push the never retiring KanNaoto offstage as the country’s problems mount.Cries of inept governance reach a crescendo, asharp contrast with fall 2009 when for a shiningmoment Tokyo witnessed the emergence of “aresponsible two-party system.” Now that flickerseems lost in what turns out to be a dark tunnel offive short-lived governments, four successivemajority-routing national elections, and an inter-mittently paralyzed legislature. But what are thealternatives that would boost confidence in repre-sentative party government? Should unpopularleaders be deposed through Shakespeareanintrigue like Margaret Thatcher? Or should we sitthrough a Belgian-style noh act that takes morethan a year (and still counting) to form a govern-ment? Are leaders in Washington fiddling whileUS treasury bonds burn? The summer of 2011

may not be exceptional, but it certainly hasn’tbeen kind to the reputation of political parties.

Why do parties seem so incompetent these days?Can partisan wrangling be a productive part ofrepresentative democratic governance? After asomewhat trying intellectual journey, I arrived atthese questions. My journey started with a com-pletely different question: why did the Japan’sLiberal Democratic Party (LDP) fall into bewilder-ing disarray? On the way, new questions unex-pectedly popped up. Why, for example, does theDPJ seem determined to be a worse failure thanits predecessor? Is the Japanese political scene aburlesque of developments in other advanceddemocracies, or is it in a league of its own?

The chronicles of our group journey in the throesof party politics, Seitō-Seiji no Konmei to Seiken

Kōtai (Partisan Disarray and the Fall of LDP Gov-ernment), published by Tokyo University Press,will be in bookstores soon. The voyage took usfrom the neo-Gothic buildings of New Haven tothe contemporary halls of Hongo, thanks to sup-port from the Todai-Yale Initiative, the YaleMacMillan Center, and the Todai Horiba Interna-tional Conference Fund. My participation in thisexpedition could not have proceeded without theinvaluable inspiration and encouragement of myco-authors and many others. However, instead ofplugging the volume with a dry overview, allowme to present my personal snapshots of ourexplorations.

Whenever one looks at the inter- and intra-partywrangling in Tokyo over Kan’s tenure or the fightin Washington over the debt ceiling, one cannothelp thinking, “Enough, get on with it!” Thepolarization of American politics is amplydemonstrated by rancorous debates on CapitolHill and contentious statements from both ends ofPennsylvania Avenue. Polarized politics is fre-quently deplored on cable news and Sunday talkshows for promoting extremism. In this hyper-charged atmosphere, is there anything good

Parties Running Amok?Or, just another episode in the new era of responsible party government

about ideological polarization?

Well, yes—ideological polarization implies thatvoters are informed and care about issues, albeittoo intensely for some.

Voters judge candidates based on how close theyare to the voters’ preferences. If the voters havebecome sophisticated enough to understandwhere candidates and parties stand on a varietyof issues, surely that is better than people voting,or not voting, in the dark or out of habit (cf.,Abramovitz 2010). There was a time when thesages of the American Political Science Associa-tion (1950) openly lamented that the two majorparties in the US were unresponsive to the elec-torate and incapable of presenting alternativeplatforms and called for “a responsible two-partysystem.” An important part of contemporarystudies of American government is devoted toexamining how well American parties have livedup to such expectations, with some proclaimingthe advent of “conditional” party government inthe mid-1970s (Aldrich 1995; Cox and McCubbins1993, 2005).

Still, we see before us partisan bickering render-ing the government incapable of meeting the seri-ous and impending challenges of the day. Is“responsible” partisanship the cause of policystalemate? The empirical evidence is mixed onthe matter but tilts towards the reassuring viewthat American institutions are capable of produc-ing results that reflect the preferences of the aver-age voters (Nivola and Brady 2008; Mayhew 2005,2011). As of this writing, President Obama hasmoved to the center by offering a “grand bargain”of welfare cuts and tax increases and has gainedan odd bedfellow in Speaker of the House JohnBoehner. Maybe, as the quote (misattributed toOtto von Bismarck) goes, laws are like sausages,better not seen being made. The product, howev-er, is not as revolting as the process.

Indeed, the process is messy. Efforts to bridge thedeep divide between the president and tea partyRepublicans in the House have been made bySenate leaders as well as Speaker Boehner him-self, although their efforts were at odds with eachother, and the endgame remained uncertain tillthe last second. The final deal, reached just hours

before the deadline, does not include a taxincrease and seems to be more towards the GOPthan the President’s initial position. At stake isnot only the distribution of debt reduction costsbut also the political blame for deviating from thepreferences of the parties’ bases. However, whatis significant about the efforts by the presidentand congressional leaders is that they defy thecommon view that a divided government and adivided legislature are prone to gridlock. TheSenate has acted as the moderating counter-weight to the polarized House, instead of beinganother source of stalemate. It suggests thatdivided governments and legislatures are capableof producing a centrist outcome but not withoutpersistent bickering until the clock runs out. Ifall’s well that ends well, maybe the legislativesausage-making here ain’t that bad.

What makes the president and congressionalleaders receptive to taking centrist positions in apolarized polity? The answer can be summarizedin one word: Re-election! None of the leaderswants to commit electoral suicide by bringingdown the economy through inaction. PresidentObama reportedly said to Republican HouseMajority Leader Eric Cantor, “Don’t call my bluff,Eric. You know I am going to take it to the Ameri-can people.” Oddly enough, electoral strategiesare absent from the literature on responsible, orconditional, party government although re-elec-tion is the central concern of most if not all electedofficials (Mayhew 1974; Jacobson and Kernell1983).

To win or retain control of the White House orCongress, party leaders must occupy the centerwhen something has to be done to avoid a cata-strophe. Yet, unsure of where the center is locatedand wanting to minimize concessions that willalienate their base, both sides have to fight to con-trol the ball (or the bill, or the agenda) and try tomove it to their optimal location, keenly monitor-ing the reactions of the public and their party’sbase to each and every move. What we see now isnot so much a war of ideologies but a series ofcredit claiming and blame avoidance maneuvers,with everyone’s eyes on the ultimate prize in 2012.

Anthony Downs’ (1957) insight, now over half acentury old, is very much alive, and it is showing

Page 4 Social Science Japan September 2011

no signs of middle age fatigue. Empirically,Downs was wrong in predicting that parties con-verge at the center at election time but correct inpostulating that the median voter is pivotal in rep-resentative democracies. The more parties becomeideologically distinct, competitive, and polarized,the more they have to work together to claim cred-it for catering to the median voter. Parties have togo beyond representing their ideological base towin majorities and power. If they abandon thecenter and become preoccupied with certain caus-es, parties will become small, niche players.Hence, the pursuit of conflicting electoral and pol-icy goals compel political parties to turn ideologi-cal polarization into legislative politics as the artof the possible (correctly attributed to Bismarck).

Presumably, in the American context, the impulseto reach a compromise is weaker in the House,where members can be re-elected by ideologicallyhomogeneous districts, compared to the Senate orthe presidency. Unless US voters become ideolog-ically bimodal and polarized with no center,which would make it almost impossible to governshort of some kind of consociational arrangementlike that of Belgium (Lijphart 1977), electoralpolarization and legislative compromise mightvery well be the modus operandi for political par-ties. That implies the parties will continue to fighttooth and nail in front of a national audience—their supporters, the media, and the general vot-ers—before reaching a compromise. Without therancorous bickering, credit claiming and blameavoidance is impossible.

What does this all mean for Japanese politics?Japanese parties, the DPJ in particular, are facingthe birth pains of a two-party system. It is clearthat the DPJ government has been torn betweenstaking a position distinct from that of the LDPand responding to the impending policy mattersof the day. Of course, their agonizing is no sur-prise because under LDP rule, all the oppositioncould do was to win more seats to show that theLDP had deviated from the center; the oppositionwas never prepared to take hold of the reins ofgovernment.

The Japanese scene is complicated. The DPJ lead-ers are not sure where they are located ideologi-cally or whether to pursue centrist policies, while

the rank-and-file lawmakers are divided betweenthe moderates, ideologically closer to the LDP,and the freshmen who are revolting against theparty leaders, determined to prevent a return toLDP politics; the latter not unlike the tea partyRepublicans in the House.

After Hatoyama tried to reshape the US-Japanalliance by proposing an abrupt change of thebilateral status quo, which made little sense to theJapanese voters and the US government, Kantried to appeal to centrist voters by promising tosolve the fiscal crisis. His decision to championtax increases before persuasively explaining thedire fiscal situation to the public was as inexplica-ble as it was damaging. Kan’s pattern of impetu-ous behavior and strategic miscalculation is typi-cal of his leadership. His inability to build policycoalitions and attract allies is the source of his lowapproval rates and has led to intra-party revoltsby groups ranging from those hoping to strike adeal with the LDP to those determined to changeinside the Nagatacho politics as they know it. Theprime minister’s credibility has fallen far moredrastically than that of any of the US leaders sincehe failed to consult his own party, allowing theopposition to dismiss him as an untrustworthynegotiator.

The challenge facing Japanese parties in the post-LDP era is whether they can compete over poli-cies based on the distribution of voter prefer-ences, instead of the anti-LDP vs. LDP divide, andwhether they can foster compromises betweenparty leaders so that legislative outcomes willreflect the median voter. The DPJ governmentcannot strike a deal with the LDP if its platform issimply “anti-LDP.” Such diagnoses are not new.However, the media and even the politiciansseem bewildered as to whether Japan’s emergingtwo-party system should be based on ideologicaldifferences or a centrist compromise. “Both!” iswhat I learned from my recent academic journey.I believe that the conflicting goals of parties com-pel them to pursue a mixed strategy. In a viablerepresentative democracy, parties should be ideo-logically coherent enough to compete in electionsand organizationally structured enough to negoti-ate legislative compromises.

Obviously, my remarks represent just another


step in my unfinished research journey. So, wheream I heading? If a large public debt and an inabil-ity to address budget deficits are signs of substan-dard democratic governance, Japan’s problemsare serious. American voters currently accept thatlarge budget deficits are undesirable, a sentimentapparently shared by (of all people!) the Italians,judging from the three-year austerity programjust passed by the Berlusconi government. Myresearch continues to ask what makes hard choic-es on budgets and taxes palatable to the medianvoters, and why hasn’t an acceptance of hardchoices been seen in Japan? More importantly,how does partisan competition contribute to theeducation of the average voter? It is clear that inthe United States the partisan battle over the debtceiling is really about credit claiming and blameavoidance, but the squabbling serves to informthe voters about “what all this means to you” (themost worn out cliché in cable news). What aboutJapan? If some degree of partisan bickering andcompromise is the price elected officials must payto convince the voters to accept a reform package,then the current divided governments in Japanand the US—contrary to the view of most com-mentators—may be a blessing in disguise (“cer-tainly very well disguised,” as Winston Churchillmight say).

References

Abramowitz, Alan L. 2010. The Disappearing Cen-

ter: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and Ameri-

can Democracy. New Haven: Yale UniversityPress.

Aldrich, John H. 1995. Why Parties? The Origin and

Transformation of Political Parties in America.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.American Political Science Association. 1950.

Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System:

A Report of the Committee on Political Parties,

American Political Science Association. NewYork: Rinehart and Company, Inc.

Cox, Gary W., and Mathew D. McCubbins. 1993.Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the

House. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The Uni-versity of California Press.

--------. 2005. Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party

Government in the U.S. House of Representa-

tives. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of

Democracy. Boston: Addison Wesley.Jacobson, Gary C. and Samuel Kernell. 1983.

Strategy and Choice in Congressional Elections,

Second Edition. New Haven: Yale UniversityPress.

Lijphart, Arend. 1977. Democracy in Plural Soci-

eties: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven:Yale University Press.

Mayhew, David R. 1974. Congress: The Electoral

Connection. New Haven: Yale UniversityPress.

----------. 2005. Divided We Govern: Party Control.

Lawmaking, and Investigations, 1946-2002, 2nd

ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.----------. 2011. Partisan Balance: Why Political Par-

ties Don’t Kill the U.S. Constitutional System.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.Nivola, Pietro S. and David W. Brady, eds. 2008.

Red and Blue Nation? Volume Two: Conse-

quences and Correction of America’s Polarized

Politics. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institu-tion Press.



Jun Saito is an Assistant Professor at theDepartment of Political Science, Yale University

Department of Political Science Yale UniversityPO Box 208301New Haven, CT 06520-8301, [email protected]

1. Japanese Politics and the Implications of March 11

The aftermath of the March 11 Tōhoku earth-quake and tsunami and the subsequent nuclearaccidents in Fukushima lead us to rethink thestructural stability of Japanese society. On the onehand are the images of the large number of peo-ple affected by this disaster, who perseveredthrough seemingly insurmountable difficulties byvoluntarily and mutually cooperating with eachother in an orderly way. On the other hand, whathas become apparent is stability of a bad kind—the lack of responsiveness and inflexibility of theJapanese political system in the face of theunprecedented crises triggered by the magnitude9.0 earthquake. While the resilience of ordinaryJapanese citizens has been duly admired,1 theway Japanese policymakers handled the mount-ing crises has attracted a slew of criticism, often

accompanied by skepticism towards governmentleaders’ competence,2 institutional gridlock hin-dering swift policy decisions and implementa-tion,3 and lack of transparency, especially con-cerning the severe accidents in the FukushimaDaiichi nuclear reactors.

The series of crises since the massive March 11earthquake was preceded by an important transi-tion in the history of postwar Japanese politics:the first significant change in the partisan controlof the executive branch of government. In August2009 the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) tri-umphed over the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP),raising the hopes of the Japanese public that thenew government could resolve the chronic eco-nomic stagnation that persisted under the oldregime. These hopes, however, were ephemeral.

Public support for the DPJ-led coalition govern-ment diminished largely due to prime ministerHatoyama Yukio’s mishandling of the Futenma airstation relocation issue, which resulted in the fallof his cabinet. After the Kan Naoto governmentwas subsequently installed, problems in theJapanese political system were exacerbated by theDPJ-led coalition’s loss of its upper house majorityin the July 2010 election. Legislative gridlock wasthen added to problems caused by the DPJ’s inter-nal strife and administrative paralysis in the cen-tral government bureaucracy. The March 11 earth-quake, the fifth largest ever measured, and theunprecedented simultaneous meltdowns of multi-ple reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi plantoccurred in these extraordinary political circum-stances. While natural disasters themselves areexogenous shocks, the lack of political and admin-istrative responsiveness to the crises is a conse-quence of the mismatch between the constitution-al architecture of the state and the landscape ofJapan’s party system and voter preferences.

Policy Reform and Leadership Change in Japan

Jun SAITO

1 “Who Needs Leaders?” Economist, June 9, 2011.2 “The Indecision of Naoto Kan.” Financial Times, June 2, 2011.3 “A Grand Stitch-up or an Election?” Economist, June 9, 2011.

To understand the post-disaster response andreconstruction efforts, it is imperative to have aclear analytical picture of the political tectonicsshift that led to this political and policy immobili-ty. The chief questions confronting social scien-tists with an interest in Japan are: what are thestructural forces that generated the leadershipchange of 2009 and what are the implications ofthe leadership change for policy making and thetrajectory of Japanese political development?With a view to answering these questions,Nobuhiro Hiwatari (Institute of Social Sciences,the University of Tokyo) and I have organized acollaborative research project on the domestic andinternational aspects of leadership and policychange. The project consists of conferences at Yaleand at the University of Tokyo, public lectures,and publications of research outcomes in Englishand Japanese. This project is also facilitated by theTodai-Yale Initiative.

2. Domestic Context of Policy Reform and Lead-

ership Change

The first year of the project focused on the inter-actions of policy reform, policy outputs, and theirelectoral consequences, primarily from the per-spective of domestic political economy. The gov-ernment change in the summer of 2009 was awatershed event in the history of postwar Japan-ese politics in the sense that for the first time analternation in the partisan control of the cabinetwas made possible as a result of a competitiveelectoral process between two major parties. Thelower house election toppled the ruling LiberalDemocratic Party from its longtime position ofpower. Just four years prior, the ruling coalition ofthe LDP and the New Komeito won a landslidevictory in an election that was mostly aboutKoizumi Jun’ichiro’s proposed reform of thepostal service. Given the formation of a strongmajority government, the postal reforms wereseen as guaranteed to pass. However, after Koizu-mi’s resignation as prime minister, the reformsmet criticism from both the ruling and oppositionparties. This criticism culminated in the LDP’scrushing defeat in the 2007 upper house election,losses in many local elections, and political insta-

bility that resulted in three prime ministers withina short span of time. Consequently, the DPJ’sinfluence and popularity increased dramatically.To what variables can these four years of politicalturmoil and unrest be attributed? How does itrelate to our knowledge about the role of democ-ratic institutions in the market economy?

The influence of structural reforms on govern-ment survival has garnered widespread interestamong scholars of comparative political economy.Behind this interest among scholars of advancedindustrial democracies is the European Union’s“Lisbon agenda,” a development plan that wasset out in the European Council in March 2010.4

This action plan was intended to promote struc-tural reforms and regional economic growth. Inorder to salvage European economies from chron-ic economic stagnation and low productivitygrowth, the European Union expected to have itsmember states take various structural reform ini-tiatives. However, studies have found that incum-bent politicians and voters are similarly inclinedto vote down reform initiatives,5 and develop-ments in Japan leading to the summer of 2009 atleast in part mirrored this pattern.

In Japan, the analysis of the effect of reforms ongovernment survival is confounded by electoralreforms in the 1990s, which redefined the incen-tive structures that politicians and voters face,reshaped the political balance between urban andrural areas, revised the effectiveness of redistribu-tive tactics in garnering electoral success, andchanged the formation of political coalitions forachieving majority control in both Diet chambers.These features make Japan an interesting caseamong industrial democracies.

With the above questions in mind, we examine indetail how setbacks in financial reconstructionand structural reform in the 1990s were related tothe Japanese political system. We focus on howKoizumi’s introduction of reforms and the subse-quent economic recovery coincided with theinternational financial crisis of 2008, and how thisresulted in turmoil in the ruling party, shiftingallegiances among politicians, defiance by local


4 Maria João Rodrigues, Europe, Globalization and the Lisbon Agenda. (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2009).5 Michele Ruta, "Political Constraints to Growth in an Economic Union." Journal of Public Economics 93, no.7-8 (2009):989-97.

governments, and the rise of the DPJ. TakingKoizumi’s administration as our starting point,we examine how government policies and organi-zational shifts affected the leadership structurewithin the ruling party and its likelihood of losinga lower house majority. The April 2010 meetingheld at Yale featured twenty presentations byscholars and practitioners. Revised versions ofthese presentations were discussed further at theUniversity of Tokyo in August 2010 under theauspices of the Horiba Foundation.

3. International and Comparative Perspectives

on the Leadership Change

The second year of our project focuses on theinternational context of Japan’s leadership changeusing comparative cases drawn from East Asia.Supported by the Japan Foundation’s Center forGlobal Partnership, this round of the projectsheds light on the possible tensions between lead-ership change, especially as a result of elections,and long-standing foreign policy commitments.This tension is epitomized by Hatoyama’s 2009campaign promise to relocate the Futenma air sta-tion–a significant deviation from Japan’s 2006agreement with the United States on militarymatters. While the DPJ tried to attract electoralsupport in Okinawa and cement non-LDP parties’electoral pacts, Hatoyama was boxed in by thebilateral agreement and unable to deliver on hispromise, eventually leading to an erosion of hissupport among voters. This consequence is attrib-utable to the Japanese government leader’s lackof experience, competence, and support withinthe ministries.

Seen from a comparative perspective, the recent

Japanese experience is not at all unique. Democ-racies in East Asia, namely Japan, South Korea,and Taiwan, all underwent or at least attemptedforeign policy shifts as former opposition partiestook control of government. Depending upon theinstitutional constraints and the configurations ofdomestic politics, these new governments metwith mixed success in revising their internationalcommitments.

Following the April 2011 meeting at Yale, the Sep-tember 2011 conference at the University of Tokyowill explore these aspects of leadership change,democratic accountability, and diplomacy in Asia.The papers presented in these two meetingsinvestigate electoral and legislative dynamics thatstructure foreign policy choices in these three EastAsian democracies as well as the United Statesand China, which both structure available choiceswithin the regional international system. Giventhis context, close attention will be paid to howelectoral and legislative politics interact withsecurity and foreign economic policy in East Asia.By bringing the empirical cases, especially Japan’sleadership change of 2009, into broader compara-tive perspective, we will examine how institution-al configurations of domestic political players andthe structure of international bargaining affectpolicy choices. In addition, foreign policy isremarkably different from domestic electoral andlegislative politics in the sense that internationalsystemic properties are directly factored into thestrategic interactions among the players of thegame. The comparative analysis of the lessonsdrawn from these political systems will con-tribute to both academic inquiries on the domes-tic foundations of foreign policy as well as policydeliberations concerning the future of East Asia.


Kyohei Yamada is a PhD candidate at theDepartment of Political Science, Yale University.

Department of Political ScienceYale University115 Prospect StreetNew Haven, CT 06520-8301, [email protected]

In the 2009 lower house election, the DemocraticParty of Japan won a landslide victory and cap-tured more than 300 seats. The Liberal Democrat-ic Party, which had been in power for more thanhalf a century with the exception of the brief peri-od from 1993 to 1994, suffered a historic defeat.Various factors presumably brought about theLDP’s loss such as the erosion of its organization-al support base (e.g., Reed, Scheiner, and Thies2009), the swift reduction in the number of localpoliticians due to municipal mergers (Horiuchiand Saito 2009; Saito 2010), and the LDP’s failureto appeal to the growing number of floating vot-ers (e.g., Krauss and Pekkanen 2010), to nameonly a few. In this essay, I look at another factorthat may have contributed to the LDP’s defeatand the subsequent alternation in power – grow-ing income inequality between urban and ruralareas – and provide descriptive information link-ing inequality, distribution of partisan support

across space, and their changes over time. In whatfollows, I show trends in income inequality acrossmunicipalities, focusing on the urban-rural dis-parity, examine political consequences of thegrowing inequality in recent years, and discussthe implications of my findings.

1. Income Inequality between Urban and Rural

Areas

How has urban-rural income inequality changedover the last several decades? Figure 1 showstrends in income inequality across municipalitiesusing the median taxable income and the meantaxable income from 1973 to 2008.1 Municipalitiesare the smallest aggregate units for which percapita income data are available. Municipal popu-lation size is used as a proxy for urbanness, withlarger ones being more urban. The coefficient ofvariation is used to express the inequality of percapita income among municipalities. A highervalue of the coefficient of variation indicates ahigher degree of inequality across observations.

Income inequality was relatively high in the early1970s, decreased throughout the decade andremained relatively low until the late 1980s. Itthen expanded around the time of the asset pricebubble in the late 1980s. As the country wentthrough the decade of economic doldrums,inequality across regions actually shrank andremained low in the 1990s, before the trendreversed again in the 2000s. Thus, both our pre-sent level of inequality, which is approximately0.32 in coefficient of variation, and its current rateof increase were reached during the 1970s and1980s. However, national per capita and medianmunicipal incomes rose during that period, whilethey stagnated in the 2000s. This difference is sig-nificant because the political consequences of thegrowing inequality across space are likely to dif-fer considerably, depending on whether the well-


Urban-Rural Income Inequality and the LDP

Kyohei YAMADA

1 The median income refers to the median in the distribution of municipal per capita incomes for each year. The mean income refers to the

national mean of taxable income, which is obtained by dividing the total taxable income in a given year by the total population in the country.

being of those in the lower part ofthe income distribution is improv-ing or not.

Having looked at these trends ininequality over time, the next nat-ural step is to ask where exactlyincome grew and where itdropped. Figure 2 shows the rela-tionship between municipal popu-lation and the growth rate of percapita income for the entire peri-od, 1973-2008, and the followingsub-periods: 1973-1980, 1980-1990,1990-2000, and 2000-2008. Smallmunicipalities enjoyed higher pos-itive growth in the 1973-1980 andthe 1990-2000 periods. Growthslowed across the nation in the1990s, with some municipalitiesexperiencing negative growth, butsmaller towns continued to havehigher growth rates than theirlarger counterparts. However, thesmallest towns suffered the steep-est rate declines from 2000 to 2008when the majority of municipali-ties had slower growth. Thus,income inequality across munici-palities indeed increased over thepast decade, and, while mostmunicipalities had negativeincome growth between 2000 and2008, the magnitude of thedecrease was larger in rural areas.

Note also that the income growthwas higher for smaller municipali-ties, which were initially lesswealthy, during the period from1973 to 2008. This is in line withthe hypothesis and empirical find-ings that, in the long run, averageincomes of geographic units suchas states tend to converge (e.g.,Barro and Sala-i-Martin 1992).Smaller municipalities had muchlower incomes in the beginning ofthe sample period. However, overthe 36-year span, they grew fasterthan the richer and larger ones.


Figure 1. Extent of Income Inequality between Urban and Rural Areas

Notes: Constructed from municipal-level income data. Mean income is the nation-al mean taxable income, obtained by dividing all taxable income by the total pop-ulation in the country. The median income refers to the median in the distributionof the municipal per capita incomes for each year. Constant 2005 yen is used toaccount for inflation.

Sources: JSP (various issues), Nippon Marketing Kyōiku Center (various issues),Shichōson Zeimu Kenkyūkai (various issues).

Figure 2. Taxable Income Growth Rates by Municipality Size

Notes: The unit of observations is municipalities. The number of observations is1798 for all panels in the figure. August 2009 boundaries are used. Constant 2005yen is used to calculate the growth rate of per capita income. The x-axis is themunicipal population (log). The x-axis label shows the actual population (in thou-sands), instead of the values in log. The y-axis is the growth rates of the taxableper capita income (%), calculated by dividing taxable per capita income in thefinal year in the period by taxable per capita income in the first year, then multi-plying it by 100. Thus, it is cumulative. The dashed line shows y = 0. Observa-tions below this line indicate municipalities whose per capita incomes decreasedduring the period. The solid line is OLS fit.

Sources: JSP (various issues), Nippon Marketing Kyōiku Center (various issues),Shichōson Zeimu Kenkyūkai (various issues).

2. Political Consequences

One potential factor that may have driven theincrease in inequality across municipalities andthe stagnation of rural areas is the pace of aging.Income tends to be lower for the elderly and therate at which the fraction of the elderly in thepopulation changes over time is not uniformacross municipalities. The pace of aging is fasterfor some municipalities than others, leading tolower income growth in such areas and possiblywidening the overall regional inequality. Figure 3shows that increases in the percentage of theelderly (those who are 65 years old or older) arenegatively associated with the growth rate ofmunicipal per capita income from 2000 to 2005.However, the relationship is positive in the 1990s,which is contrary to my expectation.

Another potential source is the decrease in inter-governmental transfers, which is likely to havedetrimental economic effects on rural areas. Smallmunicipalities, which are generally rural, tend tohave weak tax bases and local governments rely

heavily on transfers from the central government.Previously, the central government providedmunicipalities with generous transfer paymentswith allocations biased in favor of small townsand villages. Japan’s fiscal problems curtailed thisgenerosity. The reduction of transfer paymentswas one of the reasons why so many smallmunicipalities merged in the early 2000s. In otherwords, there were few cases of municipal mergersfor several decades until the early 2000s preciselybecause of the lucrative transfers to local govern-ments (Saito and Yamada 2011). Intergovernmen-tal transfers are also nontrivial sources of publicworks spending, which provides jobs in ruralareas (Hayashi 2004). Thus, the cuts in intergov-ernmental transfers should have had negativeeffects on the economic well-being of rural areasin particular.

Figure 4 shows the rise and fall of the local alloca-tion tax grant (LAT grant), the national treasurydisbursement, and the two combined. As the fig-ure shows, these subsidies have continued todecline after peaking in the late 1990s. As shownin Figure 1, inequality across municipalities hasbeen rising since around 2000, coinciding with thedecrease in LAT grants and the national treasurydisbursements. Another point to notice is thatincome inequality decreased in the 1990s, whenthe transfers were on the rise.

Regardless of whether or not the cutback of inter-governmental transfers affected income inequali-ty, in the 2000s income distribution became moreunequal between urban and rural areas and thelatter struggled economically. Given these obser-vations, it seems plausible that the LDP lost votesin rural areas due to retrospective voting (e.g.,Kramer 1971) as voters punished the LDP for itsdisappointing performance. Or, it might be thecase that the economic stagnation caused theLDP’s core supporters to defect, which in turnresulted in less mass mobilization.

Figure 5 presents the relationship between munic-ipal population size and the LDP’s vote share inlower house elections from 1980 to 2009. Ruralareas strongly supported the LDP until recently(Figure 5) despite their negative income growth inthe 2000s (Figure 2). After the current electoralrules were instituted prior to the 1996 election,


Figure 3. Increases in Elderly Population and Income Growth

Notes: The unit of analysis is municipalities. The x-axis showsthe change in the fraction of the elderly in municipal popula-tions (percentage points), calculated by subtracting the per-centage of the elderly population in a municipality in thefinal year in the period from that in the first year. The y-axisis the growth rates of per capita income (%), calculated bydividing taxable per capita income in the final year in theperiod by taxable per capita income in the first year, thenmultiplying it by 100. August 2009 boundaries are used. Thedashed line shows y = 0. The solid line indicates OLS fit.

Sources: JSP (various issues), Nippon Marketing Kyōiku Cen-ter (various issues), Shichōson Zeimu Kenkyūkai (variousissues). Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication(various issues).

the LDP should have had greater incentive toshift its campaign focus from its rural strongholdstowards gaining votes in urban areas(Rosenbluth, Saito and Yamada 2010;Saito 2010), but voting patterns basi-cally remained the same for a while.However, the trend changed in the2005 election. In contrast to the pre-vious elections, the associationbetween the size of municipalitiesand the LDP-led coalition’s voteshares was quite weak in 2005. LDP-coalition vote shares in rural areasremained low in 2009. Figure 6shows the relationship betweenmunicipal population size and thechange in the LDP-led coalition’svote shares after 2000 more explicit-ly. The ruling coalition’s vote shares

in rural areas in 2005 and 2009 were lower than in2000 or 2003.


Figure 4. Trends in Intergovernmental Transfers: Local Allocation Tax

Grants and National Treasury Disbursements

Sources: Chihō Zaisei Chōsa Kenkyu Kai (various issues)

Figure 5. Municipal Size and the LDP-led Coalition’s Vote Shares in Lower House Elections, 1980-2009

Notes: The unit of observations is municipalities. The x-axis is the municipal population (log). The x-axis labelshows the actual population in thousands. The y-axis is the LDP-led coalition’s vote share within each municipali-ty, calculated by subtracting the LDP's vote share (LDP coalition's vote share if the party is forging one with otherparties) in the final year in the period from that in the first year. The vote share data are those of the single mem-ber districts for the elections under the new electoral rule (1996〜). The solid line is OLS fit.

* I would like to thank Prof. Jun Saito for generously providing municipal-level election data.

3. Discussion

In sum, rural areas had been LDP’s strongholduntil recently. However, this party loyalty weak-ened as rural areas went through economic stag-nation in the 2000s. Although most municipalitieshad negative growth in the 2000s, the magnitudeof the drop was larger in rural areas. The LDPcoalition’s vote shares in rural areas were lower in2005 and 2009 than before. In fact, the relationshipbetween the change in the LDP coalition’s voteshare and the change in per capita income is posi-tive. The relationship holds even after controllingfor relevant variables such as the pace of agingand population size (Yamada 2011). I acknowl-edge that it is necessary to develop a precise esti-mate of the effect of negative income growth onvoting. Whether the vote share change broughtabout by the economic stagnation was largeenough to significantly affect electoral outcomesalso needs to be tested, although a small changein vote share tends to generate a much largerchange in seat share in the majoritarian system(Taagepera 1973; Tufte 1973).

Finally, if cutting the resourcesflowing into rural areas exacerbat-ed their economic decline andwidened geographic incomeinequality, one might wonderwhy the LDP took the risk ofalienating its key constituency byimplementing such policies. Oneinterpretation is that the recessionin the 1990s forced the govern-ment to provide fiscal stimulus,which allowed per capita incomesin rural areas to grow. However,the recession led to shrinking taxrevenues, which required the gov-ernment to fund the generousspending by running deficits. Assoon as the economy showedsome indications of recovery, thegovernment was forced to initiatefiscal reconstruction, of which thecutback of the intergovernmentaltransfers was an integral part.Generous transfers were not sus-tainable, and the LDP could not

afford to keep catering to its longtime supporterslike rural voters.

On the other hand, the changing geographicincome distribution is consistent with the grow-ing importance of urban districts in lower houseelections, brought about by the reapportionmentin 1994 that was part of the electoral reforms.Along with the introduction of the new mixedrule based on single-member districts and pro-portional representation, the number of urbanseats increased, while rural seats decreased.Fewer rural Diet members indeed result in adecrease in transfers, and vice versa (Horiuchiand Saito 2003). The LDP began to cater to urbanareas after the electoral reform (Rosenbluth, Saito,and Yamada 2011). Thus, it is perhaps not surpris-ing to find that rural areas lost ground economi-cally once their electoral importance decreased.We can see that changes in geographic incomedistribution are to some extent endogenous topolitical competition, electoral rules, and thedegree of malapportionment. Closer investigationof the interplay among institutions, political com-petition, and geographic distributions of econom-ic well-being and partisan support is needed.


Figure 6. Municipal Size and Change in the LDP-led Coalition’s Vote Shares

in Lower House Elections, 2000-2009

Notes: The unit of observations is municipality. X-axis is the municipal population(log). The X-axis label shows the actual population (thousand). Y-axis is thechange in the LDP-led coalition’s vote share in municipality (percentage points).The dashed line shows y = 0. The solid line is OLS fit.

* I would like to thank Prof. Jun Saito for generously providing municipal-levelelection data.

References

Barro, Robert J., and Xavier Sala-i-Martin. 1992.“Convergence.” Journal of Political Economy

100(2):223-251.Chihō Zaisei Chōsa Kenkyū Kai. Various issues.

Shichōson-betsu Kessan Jōkyō Shirabe (Reportson Municipalities’ Fiscal Status). Tokyo:Chihō Zaimu Kyōkai.

Hayashi, Yoshitsugu. 2004. “Kōkyōtoshi to Chi-ikikeizai: Dōro o Chūshin ni (Public Invest-ment and Regional Economies).” Financial

Review (Ministry of Finance, Policy ResearchInstitute) 74:52-64.

Horiuchi, Yusaku and Jun Saito. 2003. “Reappor-tionment and Redistribution: Consequencesof Electoral Reform in Japan.” American

Journal of Political Science 47(4):669-682.Horiuchi, Yusaku, and Jun Saito. 2009. “Remov-

ing Boundaries to Lose Connections: Elec-toral Consequences of Local GovernmentReform in Japan.” Paper presented at theAnnual Meeting of the Midwest PoliticalScience Association, April 2-5, Chicago.

JSP. Various issues. Kojin Shotoku Shihyō (PersonalIncome Indicators). Tokyo: JSP

Kramer, Gerald H. 1971. “Short-Term Fluctuationsin U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896-1964.” Ameri-

can Political Science Review 65(1):131-143.Krauss, Ellis S., and Robert J. Pekkanen. 2010.

“The Rise and Fall of Japan’s Liberal Demo-cratic Party.” Journal of East Asian Studies

(69):5-15.

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication.Various issues. Population Census.

Nippon Marketing Kyōiku Center. Various issues.Kojin Shotoku Shihyō. Tokyo: Nippon Mar-keting Kyōiku Center.

Reed, Steven R., Ethan Scheiner, and Michael F.Thies. 2009. “New Ballgame in Politics.” The

Oriental Economist (October):8–9.Rosenbluth, Frances, Jun Saito, and Kyohei Yama-

da. 2011. “Electoral Adaptation in Japan:Party Strategy after Electoral Rule Change.”Shakai Kagaku Kenkyu (Journal of Social Sci-ence) 62(1):5-23.

Saito, Jun. 2010. Jimintō Chōkiseiken no Seijikeizaigaku

[The Political Economy of the LDP Regime].Tokyo: Keiso Shobo.

Saito, Jun, and Kyohei Yamada. 2011. “Local Gov-ernment in Japan.” Pp. 103-14 in Handbook of

Japanese Politics, edited by A. Gaunder. Lon-don: Routledge.

Shichōson Zeimu Kenkyūkai. Various issues. Kojin

Shotoku Shihyō (Personal Income Indicators).Tokyo: Shichōson Zeimu Kenkyūkai.

Taagepera, Rein. 1973. “Seats and Votes: A Gener-alization of the Cube Law of Elections.”Social Science Research 2(3): 257-275.

Tufte, Edward R. 1973. “The Relationship BetweenSeats and Votes in Two-Party Systems.”American Political Science Review 67(2): 540-554.

Yamada, Kyohei, 2011. “Geographic Income Distri-bution and the LDP.” Shakai Kagaku Kenkyū

[Journal of Social Science] 62(1): 131-149.


Kay Shimizu is an Assistant Professor in theDepartment of Political Science and theWeatherhead East Asian Institute, ColumbiaUniversity

420 West 118th Street, IAB 926New York, NY 10027, [email protected]

By the time this article goes to press, two yearswill have passed since the historic election ofAugust 2009 when Japan’s Liberal DemocraticParty (LDP) lost power for the first time. TheHoriba International Conference held at TokyoUniversity in August 2010 gave participants anopportunity to reflect on the first year of theDemocratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) rule, and toexamine both the direct and indirect causes of thispower change. This essay reports on one suchcause: the political consequences of structuralchange, in particular the economic and demo-graphic changes sweeping all corners of Japanover the last two decades.

1. Economic decline and the weakening of the

LDP voting machine

The defeat of the LDP came nearly two decadesafter the collapse of Japan’s economic bubble.While scholars have long puzzled over the LDP’slongevity, Japan’s economic downshift during the1990s and 2000s would at least on the surface

seem like a logical source for the LDP’s decline.Over five decades of nearly continuous rule, theLDP gradually came to be known as the catch-allparty, adapting to changing voter interests bybuying off groups whenever new interest groupsformed. Their strategy for winning political pop-ularity required vast spending power, and spendthey did, most notably on infrastructure, pavinghighways, building bridges, and laying high-speed railways. Political success ensured contin-ued financial backing which in turn attracted suc-cessful political candidates, thus creating whatappeared to be a foolproof winning formula.

The great premise of the LDP formula, however,was continued economic growth which kept thecentral and thus local coffers full. Diet politiciansremained in power by honing their skills at bring-ing this pork from Tokyo to their home districts.As the post-bubble economic stagnation length-ened, however, tax revenues declined, eventuallygiving Japan the highest debt among all OECDcountries at 225% of GDP as of early 2011. Whenthere is little money to distribute, support fromkey players and industries in the LDP’s votingmachine such as construction and agricultureinevitably weakens. For the construction industry,the decline in funding for public works (short-lived revitalization efforts of the mid-2000snotwithstanding) has forced the industry todiversify their business both geographically andcontent-wise. Many construction companies haverenewed their efforts to expand into SoutheastAsia or to venture into related businesses such asoffice and retirement home management andlandscaping. Agriculture is another example of anindustry with now weaker allegiance to the LDP,especially as the DPJ began to defeat the LDP attheir own game in the rural areas by guaranteeingfarmers a direct cash subsidy rather than protect-ing the agricultural industry per se.

While fiscal decline has itself directly weakenedthe once formidable LDP voting machine, mea-sures taken to alleviate the pressure on central


The Political Consequences of Structural Change

Kay SHIMIZU

and local coffers have also indirectly weakenedthe LDP. Most notable among such measures isthe effort to merge municipalities to cut down onadministrative costs, especially in the moredepopulated areas. Between 1999 and 2010, thetotal number of sub-prefectural units declinedfrom 3229 to 1727, almost halving the number ofsub-prefectural units. Most consolidationsoccurred in the span of a few years, 2003-2006,when the total number of sub-prefectural unitsdeclined from 3190 to 1820, a decline of 43 percent(see Table 1).

The majority of these mergers have occurred inrural areas, once the stronghold of the LDP.Decreasing the number of local governmentsthrough mergers has not only cut down the num-ber of local politicians and bureaucrats, and thusthe number of foot soldiers supporting the LDPvoting machine (Horiuchi and Saito 2008), but themanner in which mergers were carried out hasstrengthened the voice of urban voters. Mergersoften take place between fiscally weak rural gov-ernments and stronger urban governments. Thepopulation balance between two or more merginglocal governments also skews towards urban resi-dents. Thus the new local government resultingfrom the mergers takes on an urban politicalvoice, burying the voice of rural voters and theirpreferences along the way.

2. The demands of a post-industrial economy

Perhaps just as importantly, Japan’s post-industri-al economy and society also contributed to theweakening of the LDP voting machine. By theearly 1990s and certainly by August 2008, eventhe most remote areas of Japan had smoothlypaved roads and bridges connecting the major

islands to the main island of Honshu. The bullettrain was scheduled to connect the southern cityof Kagoshima to Osaka in just four hours by 2011(completed in March 2011). Voters in Japan nolonger yearned for large infrastructure projectsthat benefitted both their locality as well as theconstruction companies hired to build the project,nor were they satisfied with government subsi-dies continuing to support zombie firms (Hoshiand Kashyap 2011). Rather, the public’s needs anddesires had shifted towards social security, stablejobs, and economic revitalization. Rural voters inparticular could no longer be simply bought offwith promises of new hakomono as such boxesfilled with facilities of every kind will not putfood on their table or guarantee the livelihoods offuture generations. In a telling interview, a localgovernment official in Kyushu lamented ratherthan anticipated the upcoming completion of thebullet train line because the new train wouldmake it easier for local talent to leave the area. Inthis post-industrial society, electoral tactics needto change from that based on pork to that basedon real, long-term economic improvement, achange not yet fully realized by any party.

3. Appealing to older voters

Japan’s rapidly aging population provides anadditional twist to the rebalancing demanded by apost-industrial economy and society. The nation’solder voters are the most active in Japanese poli-tics (as is the case in many developed countries).Recent voter demands to reform Japan’s socialwelfare policy in the midst of urgent post-3.11recovery efforts is but one example of the growingpolitical influence of the elderly.

The prefecture level analysis in Shimizu and Miya-


Table 1. Decline in the Number of Municipalities

gawa (2011) which agglomerates the data at theprefectural level consistently finds a positive corre-lation between older voter populations (over theage of 65) and LDP support throughout the 1990sand 2000s. This trend holds true at both the lowerhouse and prefectural assembly levels. Further-more, we consistently see greater electoral supportfor the LDP in more rural areas with smaller popu-lations. These relationships also hold at the elec-toral district level for the lower house (2005 and2009) and prefectural assembly elections (1999 and2003). These findings make the DPJ’s 2009 victoryin many of these former LDP stronghold districtsall the more intriguing. The extent to which thisolder and more rural support base for the LDP cancounteract the influences of a stagnant economyand the demands of a post-industrial economy andsociety remains to be seen.

4. A post-3.11 Japan

The political consequences of structural changebecame most evident in the aftermath of theMarch 11th earthquake and tsunami. The Tohokuregion hit hardest by the disaster typifies ruralJapan. Tohoku is home to many farming and fish-ing villages and its residents are disproportion-ately older than the national average. In the 2009lower house elections, however, Iwate, Miyagiand Fukushima--the three prefectures hit hardestby the disaster--fell almost completely into DPJhands (with one exception in Miyagi). While theongoing recovery efforts will include the rebuild-ing of the region’s basic infrastructure, the longerterm goals that residents and local leaders articu-lated only weeks after the disaster go far beyond

the roads and railways that rural areas once cov-eted. Numerous TV interviews reveal that whatresidents affected by the disaster want most arebetter opportunities for work, more outsideinvestment, and ultimately more independence topursue different models of development. To meetsuch demands, politicians along with the centralgovernment in Tokyo must drastically alter somelong-standing policies and decentralize fiscalpower more effectively. Only then will theTohoku region be able to take full advantage ofsome of Japan’s hidden gems including thenumerous, small, high-tech manufacturing firmslong cultivated in the local area. Post-3.11 Japanfaces many challenges, but also provides anopportunity to create from scratch a politicalenvironment more suitable for Japan’s presentday economic and social structure.

References

Horiuchi, Yusaku, and Jun Saito. 2008. "RemovingBoundaries to Lose Connections: ElectoralConsequences of Local Government Reformin Japan." (http://pantheon.yale.edu/~js454/merger.pdf).

Hoshi, Takeo, and Anil Kashyap. 2011. "Why DidJapan Stop Growing?" Commisioned by theNational Institute for Research Advance-ment (http://www.nira.or.jp/pdf/1002eng-lish_report.pdf).

Shimizu, Kay, and Kozo Miyagawa. 2011. "Politi-cal Consequcnes of Structural Change:Explaining the LDP's Decline." Journal of

Social Science 62(1).



Kenneth Mori McElwain is an Assistant Professorat the Department of Political Science, Universityof Michigan, Ann Arbor

Department of Political ScienceUniversity of Michigan5700 Haven Hall505 S. State St.Ann Arbor, MI 48109, [email protected]

On June 2, 2011, the administration of Kan Naotoalmost came to an end, not because of electoralloss or coalitional desertion, but because of inter-nal collapse. Intra-party opposition to Prime Min-ister Kan had intensified after the 2011 Tōhokuearthquake, and his two predecessors as presi-dent of the Democratic Party, Hatoyama Yukioand Ozawa Ichiro, were openly pushing for hisresignation. When the Liberal Democrats,Komeito, and the Sunrise Party announced a no-confidence motion against Kan, the prime minis-ter threatened to call for snap elections. Themedia was critical of both sides of the politicalwrangling, juxtaposing updates of Diet negotia-tions with man-on-the-street interviews of peoplewho questioned Nagatacho’s prioritization ofpolitical in-fighting over disaster relief. On theeve of the no-confidence motion, journalists sug-gested that up to 90 DPJ Diet members coulddefect—enough to oust the prime minister. TheDPJ’s collapse was averted through a last minute

détente after Kan promised to resign followingthe resolution of pending disaster reconstructionmeasures. Most DPJ dissidents accepted this com-promise, undoubtedly to avoid running forreelection in the face of mounting public disap-proval. Observing the DPJ walk to the brink,however, an unavoidable question was, “Whycan’t the party get its act together?”

Intra-party revolts are not new to Japan. TheLDP’s fall in 1993 was precipitated by factionaldefections over electoral reform. Recent ex-LDPdissidents form the core of the Sunrise, NewRenaissance, and Your Parties. The DPJ itselfbegan with defectors from the LDP and the SocialDemocrats in the early 1990s, and its surge overthe last decade has been aided by the strategicadvice and influence of Ozawa Ichiro, who joinedthe party after the DPJ-Liberal Party merger in2003. What was surprising about the most recentrevolt against Kan, however, was that the DPJ hadfinally come into power in a historic electoral vic-tory, winning 64% of the seats in the House ofRepresentatives in 2009. It was the first time since1955 that a non-LDP party held a majority in thelower house. After over a decade in the opposi-tion, it seemed exceedingly unlikely that the DPJwould sabotage itself by forcing out its leader andrisking an internal split.

This recent episode highlights a research questionI have been exploring over the last two years:what are the causes and effects of “party disci-pline,” which I define as the ability of politicalparties to act as cohesive actors that pursue col-lectively beneficial goals. Very few legislativeitems, whether they involve taxes, regulation, orfiscal transfers, are equally beneficial to all partypoliticians, whose priorities vary with the socioe-conomic and geographic makeup of their dis-tricts. Parties face internal dissention when tacticsthat could ensure aggregate success are at oddswith the policy preferences of individual legisla-tors. Discipline, then, is both the process and out-come of a party’s ability to solve collective action

Why Are Japanese Parties Undisciplined?

Kenneth Mori MCELWAIN

or coordination problems that threaten thegroup’s prosperity.

What makes the puzzle of DPJ in-fighting inter-esting in the Japanese context is that a number ofinstitutional and electoral changes over the lasttwo decades should have strengthened party disci-pline. Electoral reform in 1994 was designed tousher in a two-party system based on ideologicalcompetition. Under the old multi-member dis-trict, single non-transferable vote (MMD-SNTV)system, candidates from the same party routinelyfought over the same group of partisan voterswhich led to campaigning based on personalachievements, such as winning public works pro-jects and regulatory favors. The LDP held its leg-islative factions together by divvying up policy-making posts and ensuring access to pork-barrelresources so that no group felt unfairly disadvan-taged. Electoral reform was meant to curb thispersonalism. With only one seat per district in thesingle-member plurality tier, no party would runmultiple candidates, thus making it more likelythat candidates would focus on programmatic,ideological differences. A focus of policy pro-grams, in turn, would increase the electoralsalience of party labels and programs over candi-date-centered factors, producing more legislativediscipline. Instead, the DPJ’s near-collapse epito-mizes the continuing internal fragmentation ofpolitical parties. Given that two-party competi-tion— one of the central goals of electoralreform—has more or less materialized, is thereany hope for organizational and policy coherencewithin the major parties?

There are two related angles from which to exam-ine party discipline--voter behavior and partyorganization. One traditional explanation forparty fragmentation has been the relative weightvoters give to the qualities of candidates versusthose of parties. Reed, Scheiner, and Thies (2009)demonstrate, however, that since 2005 candidate

victory is better predicted by party affiliation thanby candidates’ individual characteristics. In arelated study, I examine whether an incumbent’sreelection is linked more to her own past perfor-mance or to national vote swings (McElwain2011).1 I find a major disjuncture before and afterreform. Since 1996, an incumbent’s past margin ofvictory has become a weaker predictor of reelec-tion, while vote swings among co-partisan candi-dates have become increasingly correlated acrosselectoral districts, suggesting national rather thanlocal trends in voter preferences.

A number of reasons underlie this shift towardsgreater partisanship. For one, parties are cam-paigning as national entities: they publish elec-toral manifestos that lay out their policy agendasand carefully craft TV commercials to maximizetheir collective appeal. For another, the relativepopularity of party leaders has become an electoralfocal point. They are the centerpieces in televisioncoverage of elections (Krauss and Nyblade 2005),and administrative reforms in the late 1990sstrengthened the policy-making capacity of theCabinet Office, making party leaders key legisla-tive players (Estevez-Abe 2006). In examining the2005 election, I found that the electoral perfor-mance of LDP candidates improved in districtswhere Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro cam-paigned, signifying the growing value of electoralcoattails (McElwain 2009). The more voters valueparties over candidates, the more parties shouldtry to act as coherent units to better demonstratetheir collective competence and viability to voters.

A second explanation for internal discipline (orlack thereof) is the institutional capacity of politi-cal parties. Under the more personalistic electoralsystem prior to 1994, parties had few carrots orsticks to keep backbenchers in check. For exam-ple, fund-raising and campaign support weremostly provided by intra-party factions, whichcompeted to maximize their legislative member-


1 I run a logistic regression model, where the dependent variable is a dichotomous indicator of whether an incumbent candidate was reelected.

Separate regressions were run for 1958-93 under MMD-SNTV and 2000-09 under the new mixed-member majoritarian system. Mirroring

studies of “partisan swing” originally conducted by Tufte (1973), explanatory factors were kept simple: 1) the incumbent’s margin of victory in

the last election; 2) the average vote swing to the incumbent’s party in all other districts; 3) the district’s level of urbanization. There were two

notable findings. First, the predictive power of the models jumps significantly: the pseudo-R2 for LDP candidates was 0.07 under MMD-SNTV,

but 0.46 after reform. Second, the substantive significance of partisan vote swings increases. Before 1994, the difference in victory probability

when an incumbent experiences no swing versus a median vote swing was 2% for LDP candidates and 3% for the JSP. After electoral reform,

however, the difference jumped to 8% for LDP incumbents and 15% for the DPJ. Specific results are available from the author upon request.

ship relative to one another. Reforms since theearly 1990s, however, should have strengthenedparty unity. Greater regulation of private cam-paign donations and the introduction of publicparty subsidies—government subventions todefray a party’s administrative and electoralcosts—have given party leaders new financialresources that can be used to keep backbenchersin line. Importantly, the DPJ and LDP have bothswitched their leader selection mechanisms toallow for voter primaries2, which gives leadersmore incentive to appeal to their national basecollectively, instead of focusing on each legisla-tor’s particularistic needs (McElwain and Umeda2011). Both of these changes have strengthenedthe autonomy and leverage of political party lead-ers, which in turn should produce more coherentparty behavior.

Despite these shifts in voter behavior and theorganizational capability of parties, the threats toPrime Minister Kan’s tenure captures the persis-tence of intra-party strife. My explanation for thislack of discipline is straightforward: while voterscertainly care about partisan cues, their prefer-ences are being driven by the popularity of partyleaders, not underlying ideological convictions.This distinction is crucial, because party leader

support tends to be fickle. The figure below dis-plays changes in party affinity and cabinetapproval between 1994 and 2011, as measured bythe Asahi Shimbun’s monthly surveys. The volatili-ty in cabinet ratings—a rough proxy for the popu-larity of the governing party’s leader—is 1.5 timesgreater than voter support for the prime minister’sparty.3 Given the greater electoral focus on partyleaders, candidates risk defeat should they hitchtheir wagons to an unpopular leader, making theirthreats to defect to another party credible. Anyelectoral costs from party switching will remainminimal as long as voters value leader image overideological inconsistency. In fact, many politicianscontinue to invest in their koenkai, or personalsupport networks, to insulate themselves fromcapricious swings in leader popularity (Kraussand Pekkanen 2011). While defecting from a partymay be a radical solution, legislators have lesscompunction about ousting their leaders. As ofJuly 2011, there have been six different prime min-isters and eleven different cabinets since the 2005general election. Indeed, the LDP and DPJ’s alter-nating electoral sweeps in 2005 and 2009 onlymake sense if candidate attachment is declining(thereby reducing personalistic advantages) butpartisan identification also remains weak (reflect-ed in more ballot-switching by voters).


2 When the outgoing party president completes his term, all dues-paying party members can vote in a primary to elect the next leader. When

leaders resign in the middle of their terms, however, both the LDP and DPJ can choose to expedite the succession process by reserving the

vote to Diet members. See McElwain and Umeda (2011) for the evolution of leader selection since the 1980s.3 The coefficient of variation (CV), a normalized measure of dispersion, is 0.234 for government party affinity and 0.346 for cabinet approval.

The CV is calculated by dividing the standard deviation of each variable by its mean.

Leaving aside whether Japan should have a disci-plined and programmatic party system—asespoused by many reformers, including OzawaIchiro—an interesting question is whether this iseven possible. There are reasons to answer nega-tively. One huge hurdle is the lack of grassrootsideological movements in Japan. American poli-tics scholars distinguish the conservative or liber-al leanings of candidates and voters from theiraffinities with the Republican or Democratic Par-ties. While “pragmatic” voters will always sup-port the party or candidate that is closest to themideologically (even if none are particularly close),“ideological” voters may withdraw campaigncontributions or back an insurgent candidate iftheir preferred party strays too far from core poli-cy beliefs. Deeply held ideological convictionsthus keep parties disciplined, since deviationfrom established policy platforms risks voterbacklash. It is unclear if similar frameworks applyto Japan. While most voters can be arrayed alonga conservative to progressive spectrum, electioncampaigns often focus on the political process,

such as curbing bureaucratic autonomy or elimi-nating government inefficiencies and corruption.A reasonable interpretation is that Japanese votersare pragmatic more than ideological; parties andleaders are assessed by their perceived compe-tence or proposed solutions to immediate prob-lems, not on ideological fidelity.

The transition to a disciplined party system willdepend on the broadening of a core, partisan votebase. Recent electoral volatility has been drivenby the growing number of floating or indepen-dent voters who are particularly sensitive toshort-term trends, such as party leader populari-ty. I believe that the salient counterbalance is theelectoral influence of interest groups. Sustainedideological movements are more than the sum ofindividual preferences and require the coordina-tion of geographically-dispersed but like-mindedvoters. While interest groups are often perceivedas self-interested single-issue organizations, theyserve broader electoral functions by mobilizingactivists (as in the case of labor unions) and fund-ing campaign expenditures (as in the case of busi-ness federations). Indeed, two of the largest inter-est groups in Japan—Rengo and Keidanren—domatch up neatly on a left-right ideological spec-trum. Their electoral relevance may increase due

to widening economic inequalities, which haveput free market and social insurance reforms inthe spotlight. However, smaller groups, such asmedical professionals and religious sects, appearto be more pragmatic, channeling their support toindividual candidates, especially in the House ofCouncillors. While occupational and faith-basedgroups may be less well known to the public,their collective size is substantial. Should theybegin to stake consistent programmatic positionsand mobilize their supporters at the polls, thenpolitical parties will also be induced to takenationwide partisanship seriously.

So far, we have an incomplete picture of thepower of interest groups—both national andlocal—to persuade and mobilize voters. Fortu-nately, a series of legal changes in the last decadehave made it easier to analyze the size andresources of organized interests. New regulationson non-political organizations require them toregularly submit data about their finances andmembership in order to maintain their tax-exempt status. Reforms in the Political FinanceControl Law mandate greater transparency inpolitical donations and expenditures, allowing usto examine where and from whom politiciansreceive support. The quantitative nature of thisnew information allows us to use statistical meth-ods to examine interest group resources. We can,for example, map interest group resources geo-graphically to assess the spatial distribution oforganized supporters and their activities. To theextent that political donations and campaign sup-port are the hallmarks of partisan commitment, Ibelieve that focusing on interest groups will allowus to better understand the shifting salience ofideology in Japanese politics. By extension, wecan begin to explore how political parties balancethe demands of floating versus core voters—inelections and in policy-making— which shouldhelp us assess the evolution of party discipline.

References

Estevez-Abe, Margarita. 2006. "Japan's Shift Towarda Westminster System: A Structural Analysisof the 2005 Lower House Election and ItsAftermath." Asian Survey 46(4):632-51.

Krauss, Ellis S., and Benjamin Nyblade. 2005."'Presidentialization' in Japan? The Prime


Minister, Media, and Elections in Japan."British Journal of Political Science 35:357-68.

Krauss, Ellis S., and Robert J. Pekkanen. 2011. The

Rise and Fall of Japan's LDP: Political Party

Organizations as Historical Institutions. Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press.

McElwain, Kenneth Mori. 2009. "How Long AreKoizumi's Coattails? Party Leader Visits inthe 2005 Election." In Political Change in

Japan: Electoral Behavior, Party Realignment,

and the Koizumi Reforms, ed. S. R. Reed, K.M. McElwain and K. Shimizu. Palo Alto,CA: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-PacificResearch Center.

———. 2011. "Are Japanese Elections Nationaliz-

ing? A Research Note on Partisan Swingsand Biases." In Political Change in Japan II:

One Step Forward, One Step Back. Palo Alto,CA: Stanford University.

McElwain, Kenneth Mori, and Michio Umeda.2011. "Party Democratization and theSalience of Party Leaders." Social Science

Japan Journal 62(1).Reed, Steven R., Ethan Scheiner, and Michael F.

Thies. 2009. " New Ballgame in Politics:Party-Centered, More Volatile." Oriental

Economist 77(10):8-9.Tufte, Edward R. 1973. "The Relationship Between

Seats and Votes in Two-Party Systems."American Political Science Review 67:540-7.


Patricia L. Maclachlan is Associate Professor ofGovernment and Asian Studies at the Universityof Texas at Austin.

Department of Government University of Texas at Austin1 University Station, A1800Austin, TX 78712, USA [email protected]

National calamities tend to bring out the best inthe Japanese postal services. In the wake of theGreat Kantō Earthquake of 1923, the commercialbanks remained closed for several days while thepostal system introduced an emergency with-drawal system that allowed even those residentswho had lost their passbooks to withdraw up toten yen per day from their postal savingsaccounts. Similar services were introduced afterthe 1945 Tokyo fire bombings and the atomicblasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In March 2011 the post office delivered once again.Less than 24 hours after the 9.0 magnitude earth-quake and tsunami struck the Tōhoku region, theJapan Post Group announced that residents instricken areas could make emergency withdrawalsof up to ¥200,000 from their postal savingsaccounts with or without account documentation.Within six weeks of the disaster, Japan Post Bankhad completed nearly 20,000 such transactionsunder the emergency system (Japan Post Group).

Although the postal system’s recent contributionsto the welfare of struggling local communitieshave attracted little media attention, they couldvery well strengthen political opposition toKoizumi Jun’ichirō’s 2005 postal privatization asthe country engages in broader debates about itspost-quake future. What follows is a snapshot ofthe postal system’s multi-faceted functions and ofthe objectives and likely outcomes of the contem-porary anti-privatization movement.

-------------

Since its establishment during the early Meijiperiod, the Japanese post office has been far morethan just a place to mail a letter. For instance, postoffices have offered important financial servicesranging from money orders and inter-institution-al money transfers to the well-known postal sav-ings and life insurance services. It was largelythanks to these financial services that ordinaryJapanese familiarized themselves with the trap-pings of modern finance (see Garon 2000). Mean-while, proceeds from the savings and insurancesystems supplied the modern state with a vastreservoir of funds—known as the Fiscal Invest-ment and Loan Program, or FILP—for investmentin everything from prewar military expansion topostwar industrial development, loans to smalland medium enterprises and local governments,environmental protection, public works projects,and more recently, the development of new orexpanded sources of energy.

Less well known have been the post offices’ infor-mal welfare services, which include programs forensuring the safety of young children on theirway to and from school and the so-calledHimawari programs in rural and semi-rural com-munities in which postal employees check up onhousebound elderly residents and network withlocal governments and businesses to supply themwith groceries, medicines, and other necessities.In sum, the postal system—which is the country’soldest and largest institutional network—serves


Postal Reform in a Changing Japan

Patricia L. MACLACHLAN

as a vehicle not only for the delivery of modernbureaucratic and financial services but also ofsocial services that one normally associates with amore traditional Japan.

Fans of the state-run postal system and the tradi-tional values it represents fear that former primeminister Koizumi’s postal privatization willdestroy the post offices' distinctive functions dueto the impersonal mechanisms of the competitivemarket. Although Koizumi took pains to protectthe size of the postal network and its social func-tions by pledging to maintain “one post office forevery village” and establishing a two trillion yengovernment-administered fund to prop up finan-cially vulnerable post offices, some of his oppo-nents’ worst fears have already been realized.Since the privatization process officially began onOctober 1, 2007, wait times at the post officemadoguchi have increased as postal employeesstruggle to comply with new banking and insur-ance regulations; several hundred small postoffices have closed; postal employees’ morale hasdeteriorated; and the strict division of the postalservices into separate corporate entities has pre-vented mail carriers from collecting savingsdeposits and performing Himawari services forthe elderly while on their rounds. More pressing-ly, the services in general and the mail service inparticular are in various stages of long-termfinancial decline—a situation that bodes poorlyfor the integrity of not only local postal servicesbut also of the FILP.

Opponents of postal privatization have bandedtogether to try to reverse these trends. In the past,Koizumi’s foes were concentrated in the LDP andgravitated around an exchange relationshipbetween members of the postal zoku and the com-missioned postmasters (tokutei yūbinkyokuchō). Asa result of Koizumi’s 2005 electoral strategy,which severed that exchange relationship andtemporarily rid the party of anti-privatizationcandidates, the center of oppositional gravityshifted to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)and the People’s New Party (PNP), which wasformed in the lead-up to that fateful election bythe postal “rebels.” From the start, the PNP hasbeen the party of choice for Japan’s nation-widenetwork of commissioned postmasters, the vastmajority of whom vehemently oppose postal pri-

vatization. Since the 2007 upper house electioncampaign, the DPJ’s Ozawa Ichirō carefully culti-vated the PNP as an electoral ally and potentialcoalition partner that would help his party com-pensate for its lack of a majority in the chamber.In return, Ozawa promised the PNP his party’ssupport for a new round of postal reform. Not allDPJ members are opposed to Koizumi’s handi-work; in fact, many at one time would have pre-ferred an even more radical privatization packagethan what Koizumi was able to deliver. But theDPJ leaders’ new anti-privatization stance res-onated strongly with party members who sup-ported the other major interest group connectedto the postal services: the now privatized postalworkers union. In the wake of the DPJ’s landslidevictory in the 2009 lower house election, duringwhich postmasters mobilized en masse behindthe PNP and the DPJ (in constituencies where noPNP candidates were running), the DPJ madegood on its anti-privatization pledge by includingthe PNP in its coalition government and appoint-ing its leader, Kamei Shizuka, as minister offinancial services and postal privatization.

A long-standing opponent of Koizumi and the“laws of the jungle” that allegedly informed hisstructural reforms, Kamei quickly set out toreverse postal privatization. At Kamei’s insistence,in December 2010 the government passed a law tofreeze the divesture of government shares in JapanPost Holdings (JPH) and JPH’s shares in the twopostal financial services. Kamei then oversaw thedrafting of a series of sweeping reform bills.Included in the bills are plans to: 1) merge the mailand network firms with JPH and link the bankand insurance firms to the new entity as sub-sidiaries; 2) legally obligate the government tohold more than one-third of the shares of this newfirm at all times and to maintain the number ofpost offices at current levels; 3) hire up to 100,000part-time postal workers as permanent employ-ees; 4) impose universal service requirements onpostal savings and insurance; and 5) increase theceiling on postal savings deposits from 10 to 20million yen and on postal life insurance payoutsfrom 13 to 25 million yen. Meanwhile, Kamei pres-sured Nishikawa Yoshifumi, Koizumi’s choice asJPH president, to resign, replacing him with SaitōJirō, a friend of Ozawa’s and former administra-tive vice-minister of finance.


While Koizumi’s mission had been to shrink thesize of the postal financial services and hence thegovernment’s role in financial intermediation bycreating a more level playing field between thepostal services and their private-sector competi-tors, Kamei sought just the opposite: to expandthe services and strengthen the government’scontrol over them. More to the point, Kamei wasintent on reinvigorating the local post office’sfunctions as a public service institution at precise-ly the time that fallout from the 2008 global finan-cial crisis was underscoring the growing dispari-ties between rich and poor, urban and rural inJapan—disparities that Kamei blamed (unjustly)on Koizumi’s structural reforms.

In May 2010, Kamei’s bills cleared the lowerhouse, but the Diet session ended before theupper house could review them. Kamei resignedhis cabinet post in protest shortly after primeminister Hatoyama Yukio vacated the DPJ presi-dency and Ozawa the secretary generalship.Kamei was replaced by Jimi Shōzaburō, a PNPcolleague who is equally committed to reversingmany of Koizumi’s reforms. It is highly unlikely,however, that Jimi will succeed in bringing thislatest round of postal reform to legislativefruition. For starters, prime minister Kan Naotoappears lukewarm on the issue. More problemati-cally, the coalition government’s poor perfor-mance in the July 2010 upper house electiondeprived it of the majority it needs to pass legisla-tion. The PNP’s dismal performance in that elec-tion, moreover, suggests that tampering withKoizumi’s structural reforms is not a priority forthe voters. Finally, the government is now fullypreoccupied with the aftermath of the March 11,2011 natural disasters and ongoing nuclear crisis.Although Kamei’s bills are still before the Diet,they are, understandably, receiving scant atten-tion from lawmakers.

While it is very doubtful that Kamei’s postalreform bills will be passed in their current formany time soon, debates about the post office’s rolein Japan’s future are likely to recur in ways thatcould lead to more moderate changes to Koizu-mi’s privatization blueprint. There are severalreasons for this. First, the postmasters and theiremployees remain fully mobilized in support ofchange and are prepared to back whichever polit-

ical party does the most to limit or reverse priva-tization. For as long as the postal services remainJapan’s largest employer and elections are unpre-dictable, these pressures from below will continueto matter to the parties. Second, although criticsof Koizumi’s reforms are wont to exaggerate theill effects of postal privatization on local commu-nities, the privatization process has undeniablyencountered problems that have directly affectedthe provision of services. These problems will inturn provide both advocates and opponents ofpostal privatization with incentives to make atleast moderate changes to that process.

Third, once the post-earthquake crisis abates, thepost office could figure in national discussionsabout the future of the political economy. ShouldJapan preserve a role for “financial socialism” andthe other trappings of more “traditional” institu-tions that played such a prominent role duringthe 19th and 20th centuries? Or should Japan followKoizumi’s path by according more power to themarket? It is very possible that the aging residentsand political representatives of Tōhoku’s ruraland semi-rural communities will press for a rein-vigorated financial and social role for the postoffice and the communitarian values it represents.So, too, will those who envision a revived role forthe FILP in the reconstruction of northern Japan,although such advocates appear to be declining innumber. However, if the government dithers dur-ing the recovery, government debt reaches intol-erably high levels, or the recovery is slowed byexcessive regulation, the political momentumcould shift toward a more market-orientedapproach to future postal reform that puts theanti-privatization movement more squarely onthe defensive. A third scenario is a hybrid solu-tion to the post office’s contested future that com-bines elements from both camps. This wouldinvolve a reevaluation of the corporate structureof Japan Post Group in order to reduce the gov-ernment’s role in the services while enhancinginstitutional protections of the system’s more tra-ditional social functions—functions that havebeen so widely valued for softening the negativeside effects of market forces. Given the impor-tance of compromise in the history of postalreform and the absence of a decisive, Koizumi-like figure in the prime minister’s office, this lat-ter scenario is the most likely of the three.


References

Garon, Sheldon. 2000. “‘Luxury is the Enemy’:Mobilizing Savings and Popularizing Thriftin Wartime.” Journal of Japanese Studies 26(1):41-78.

Japan Post Group. March 12, 2011 and April 11,2011 press releases (http://www.japanpost.jp/pressrelease/index2.html?company=&branch=00&sort=1&mn=press&detail=1).


A Perfect Tectonic Shift? Structural developments, Koizumi reforms, and the collapse of LDP rule

The conference "A Perfect Tectonic Shift? StructuralDevelopments, Koizumi Reforms, and the Collapse ofLDP Rule" was held on August 19 and 20, 2010 at Fuku-take Hall, Hongo Campus. Sponsored by the HobribaInternational Conference Fund and the Todai-Yale initia-tive, more than 15 leading scholars of Japanese politicsfrom Canada, the U.S. and Japan, including the contribu-tors of this volume, presented their papers or gave com-ments to an audience of over 200.The original papers havebeen published in English in the Journal of Social Science

vol.62(1), and will be published in Japanese by the Uni-versity of Tokyo Press titled Seitō-Seiji no Konmei to Seiken

Kōtai (Partisan Disarray and the Fall of LDP Government)this November. The meeting concluded a two year collab-oration project coordinated by members of Todai and YaleUniversity.

(Natsu Matsuda, Research Assistant to Professor Hiwatari/Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, Yale University)



ISS Research Report

Nitta Michio is Professor in the Department ofBusiness Administration at KokushikanUniversity and an Emeritus Professor of theUniversity of Tokyo. Formerly, he was Professorof Industrial Relations at the Institute of SocialScience, the University of Tokyo.

Department of Business AdministrationKokushikan University4-28-1, Setagaya, Setagaya-ku,Tokyo 154-8515email: [email protected]

Starting with my appointment as an associateprofessor in 1990, I worked at the Institute ofSocial Science for 23 years until my retirement inMarch 2011. In this article, I would like to reflecton the kind of research I undertook during mytenure, focusing on my personal research.Involvement in Institute-wide projects was alsoan important aspect of my career at the Institute,but I will omit that here as I think there will beanother opportunity to discuss that subject.

My 23 years at ISS can be divided into the fol-lowing three periods:First period: 1990-1995Second period: 1995-2005Third period: 2005-2011

In the first period, immediately after my appoint-ment, I spent a great deal of time and energy onresearch. During this period, I spent one year(summer 1991 ~ summer 1992) conductingresearch abroad at the Michigan State University,School of Labor and Industrial Relations. Thistied into the long-term research plan I had envi-sioned when I was appointed to ISS. Most of thelabor researchers of my generation were pro-foundly influenced by Professor Kazuo Koike.They all began by studying labor and employ-ment relations in Japan but hoped to conductcomparative studies based on field work in othercountries. I felt the same way, and I wanted to doresearch on labor and employment relations inthe US steel industry in light of the research onJapan's steel industry in which I was alreadyinvolved. I had begun research on US steel indus-try for a Japan Institute of Labor project (super-vised by Professor Kenji Okuda; 1987-1992) andhad some of the legwork done, having alreadyspent time at a National Steel plant (Nitta 1995).At that time, many Japanese companies wereattempting to invest directly in the United Statesamid a period of yen appreciation after the PlazaAccords. In the steel industry, as well, all of themajor players had formed partnerships with USsteel companies and were participating in millmanagement, so the intended plan for my person-al project was primarily to survey those steelmills with which Japanese companies wereinvolved. I had every intention of compiling thesurvey results into a book akin to ProfessorKoike's Shokuba no rōdō kumiai to sanka (Unionsand Participation at the Workplace) (1977). How-ever, due to various reasons, this plan did notcome to fruition.

While at Michigan State University, I did manageto travel throughout the United States and visitseveral steel mills. I visited nine mills with Japan-

My Research at the Institute of Social Science: A Retrospective

NITTA Michio

ese connections and two that were not directlyaffiliated with Japanese companies as well asUSWA headquarters in Pittsburgh and Nucor (aleading minimill company) headquarters inNorth Carolina. I recorded several interviews andcollected resources. The results of these efforts arestill stored in the cabinets in my office. Whileinaction on my part is the main reason I wasunable to compile these resources into the intend-ed end product, the fact is that there were severalfactors that made the task difficult.

First, my old friend Joel Cuther-Gershenfeld (whowas then an associate professor at Michigan StateUniversity and is now a professor and dean of theSchool of Labor and Employment Relations atUniversity of Illinois) and I held a special seminarin the spring semester of 1992 at Michigan StateUniversity in which we conducted case studies onJapanese-affiliated factories (so-called Japanesetransplants) in the United States. I ended upworking mainly with students in this seminar ona research project visiting Japanese-affiliated fac-tories in a range of industries (Michigan hasmany companies, most of which are automobile-related), and this consumed a good deal of myenergy. This project resulted in the publication ofthe co-authored book Knowledge-Driven Work(Cuther-Gershenfeld et al., 1998).

Second, I became involved in a large-scale projectfor the international comparison of labor andemployment relations in 1992 at the behest of Pro-fessor Thomas Kochan of MIT. While I was man-aging this project as its coordinator, the needarose for me to get involved in studies s of theJapanese steel and telecommunications industries(Japan Institute of Labor 1996; 1997).

Finally, I ended up spending a great deal of timeon the projects of my second period, which beganin 1995.

However, my aforementioned research on the USsteel industry did not remain totally unused. InKnowledge-Driven Work, we used my case studieson I/N Tek and I/N Kote, joint ventures betweenInland Steel and Nippon Steel, and I wrote mod-erately in-depth reports on National Steel's(which was acquired by NKK) Great Lakes Plant(Japan Institute of Labor, 1995) and LSE (Nitta

1995), a joint venture between LTV and SumitomoMetal Industries. But, I am forced to admit themost upsetting thing about my first period ofresearch is that this project was never finished asintended.

The ten year second period of my career at ISScould be called the "dark ages" of my research lifeat the Institute. During this time I was mostlyengaged in administrative work—for example,serving as the chair of the steering committee forthe ISS-affiliated Information Center for SocialScience Research on Japan, established in 1996—rather than on pure research. Before I realized it, Ifound myself immersed in administrative dutiesfull-time as the director of ISS, a position I heldfor four years from 2001 to 2005. This was a chal-lenging time. In the midst of national universityincorporation, I was forced to run a council ofnational institutes and research centers affiliatedwith national universities, an experience akin tonavigating a ship in zero visibility at night, and asa director, I had to participate in university-widestructural reforms including shifts of staff statusfrom public servant to private employment.These duties kept me extremely busy, and I wasalmost completely unproductive as a researcher.My major research publication during this periodwas Henka no naka no koyō shisutemu (Employmentsystems in a changing Japanese Society) (Nitta2003), which was basically a compilation of previ-ously written papers. However, my work duringthis time helped to firmly establish the Informa-tion Center for Social Science Research on Japan(now the Center for Social Research and DataArchives) and to get the data archives and Japan-ese General Social Surveys (JGSS) project up andrunning. I think this was highly significant in thatit created vital infrastructure for social scienceresearch in Japan.

Finally, the third period of my research, or at leastthe first half of it, could be considered a time ofrehabilitation. Four years without conductingresearch is a long time, and it was not easy revert-ing to the role of a "plain researcher." Against thisbackdrop, I was persuaded by Hiroatsu Nohara,senior researcher at the French National Centerfor Scientific Research's Economics and Sociologyof Labor Laboratory (CNRS-LEST), to beginresearch into call center employment and human


resources development. This was a big first steptoward reconfirming who I was--a social scientist,specializing in contemporary issues in labor andemployment relations. Visiting call centers andanalyzing data for this project gave me the chanceto ponder Japan's employment situation in thethroes of change. The results of this work are stilllimited to one survey report (Nitta 2010), but Iplan to continue my analysis and present myfindings to the world in due time.

References

Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Joel, Michio Nitta, Betty J.Barrett. Nejib Belhedi, Simon Sai-ChungChow, Takashi Inaba, Iwao Ishino, Wen-JengLin, Machel L. Moore, William M. Moth-ersell, Jennifer Palthe, Shobha Ramanand,Mark E. strolle and Arthur C. Wheaton.1998. Knowledge-Driven Work. New York:Oxford University Press.

Japan Institute of Labor. 1995. "Amerika tekkōsangyō no saikin no rōshi kankei no tenkai

ni kan suru kenkyū" (Study of recent devel-opments in labor relations in the Americansteel industry). Research Report 63.

--------1996. "Denkitsūshingyō no rōshi kankei"(Labor relations in the telecommunicationsindustry) Resource Series 65.

--------1997. "Tekkōgyō no rōshi kankei to jinzai kei-sei" (Labor relations and human resourcesdevelopment in the American steel industry).Resource Series 68.

Nitta, Michio. 1995. "LSE ni okeru jūgyōin sanka-gata keiei" (Employee participation in man-agement at LSE). Shakaikagaku Kenkyū 47(3).

--------2003. Henka no naka no koyō shisutemu (Employ-ment systems in a changing Japanese society).Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.

--------2010. Kōru sentā ni okeru koyō to jinzai ikusei ni

kan suru kokusai hikaku chōsa (Cross-nationalstudy on employment and human resourcesdevelopment in call centers). Institute of

Social Science Department of Research on the

Staffing Industry Research Series (Universityof Tokyo) 16.



ProfessorDepartment of EconomicsMonash University, Australia

[email protected](Visiting Shaken from November 29, 2010 to February 28, 2011)

Q. How did you come to know about Shaken?

I have been visiting Japan about once every yearsince 1999. During my previous visits I met manyJapanese economists, with some of whom I havedeveloped joint research projects. During my pre-vious visits, I also gave several seminars at Shaken

and the Graduate School of Economics at the Uni-versity of Tokyo. So I am reasonably familiar withthe environment and people at the University ofTokyo. At Shaken, I have formed friendships witheconomists including Professors Sasaki, Mat-sumura, and Nakabayashi among others. It isthrough these friends that I came to know moreabout Shaken. In 2010, Professor Sasaki asked meif I wanted to visit Shaken and I was more thanhappy to do so.

Q. What is the main purpose of your visit?

The purpose of my visit was two-fold. On theresearch front, I continued my work on corporategovernance and executive compensation. I alsohad very fruitful discussions with Professor Sasa-ki on product liability regulations governingtransactions of goods in which buyers and sellershave asymmetric information. Last but not least, I

met Professor Owan, who is well-known for hisresearch on economic organizations and humanresource policies. We had stimulating discussionson these issues.

On the personal side, I don’t think I have hadenough of Japan despite almost a dozen previousvisits. I have cravings for Japanese culture – culi-nary culture in particular! -- that are not easy toquench when you live in Melbourne. Despiteglobalization, free trade and so on, some of thebest Japanese food and sake can be had only inJapan. And winter is the best time to visit Japanwhen you are into seafood! I also have an interestin Japan’s pre-modern history, from the nation’sformative stages leading up to the emergence ofthe Tokugawa Shogunate. So another purpose ofmy visit was to broaden my understanding ofJapanese culture and to satisfy my cravings forJapanese food and sake until my next visit.

Q. What are your current research interests?

I have diverse research interests in the area ofapplied microeconomics. But one main area of myongoing research is how firms choose their orga-nizational structures, how they motivate variousplayers within their organizations and, more gen-erally, how they allocate resources. The key ele-ments here are the asymmetry of informationheld by various players and their potentially con-flicting interests. A firm’s organizational structureand human resource policies should make thebest use of information in decision making andalleviate the potentially damaging effects of con-flicting interests.

At Shaken I mainly worked on corporate gover-nance and executive compensation. Specifically,there has been a lot of debate on whether thecompensation contract for a corporation’s chiefexecutive officer (CEO) provides him or her withsufficient incentives to work in the interest ofshareholders, especially when the CEO is power-ful. An alternative view is that a powerful CEOcan use a compensation contract as a channel forrent extraction, which would be detrimental to

Chongwoo Choe


shareholders. I formally modelled and fleshed outa rent extraction view of CEO compensation asput forward by the managerial power theory andtested its main implications on the relationsamong CEO power, CEO pay and firm perfor-mance. My co-authors and I used the sample ofStandard & Poor’s 500 US firms for the period of1999-2008, and found that the implied relationbetween power and pay has some support. How-ever, the relation between power and firm perfor-mance has mixed support. So the main take-awaypoint from this research is that, while the manage-rial power theory may help to explain the relationbetween CEO power and pay, the scope of powerneeds to be broadened to better understand howCEO power affects firm performance.

I am currently working on a related issue of howresources are allocated within a multidivisionalcorporation. The focus here is the informationasymmetry between corporate headquarters anddivision managers. Division managers tend tohave better information about their divisions andwant to influence HQs’ resource allocation deci-sions in their favour. This may result in sub-opti-mal resource allocation for the organization as awhole. Once more, the organization of the multi-divisional structure and the incentives providedto division managers become key issues. My goalis to develop a theoretical model and apply itsmain implications to data from Australia (becauseI work there!) and the US.

One of the nice things in academic life is that youget to meet many smart people with variousresearch interests. When your interests converge,you can start collaborating almost instantly, mucheasier than meeting a partner or starting a busi-ness! I work with several colleagues on variousother topics. In one project, we have worked onhow microfinance can be detrimental to children’seducation (because parents tend to use their chil-

dren’s labour for the household enterprises set upwith microfinance loans), for which we havefound robust evidence from Bangladesh. Inanother project, we are working on how mediaand democracy are related to how governmentsallocate resources in tackling natural disasters,both before and after disasters strike. This projectwas started before the tragic events in the Tōhokuarea and we are using data from cholera epi-demics over the past century.

Q. What do you like about Shaken?

What did I like about Shaken? I guess it may bemore or less clear from what I said above. Meet-ing smart people who do stimulating and inter-esting research was one thing. The presence ofresearchers in other fields of social science was anadded bonus. At formal seminars or during infor-mal conversations, I could listen to alternativeviews from the angle of, for example, law orindustrial relations. At a time when researchersare becoming more and more entrenched in theirnarrow fields (presumably because it is ‘easier’ topublish that way), such an interdisciplinary dia-logue was very refreshing. I must say I also likedthe democratic, flexible and open research envi-ronment at Shaken. Some places I had visited inJapan previously were very bureaucratic and,quite often, form was more important than con-tent. I can say Shaken was at the opposite end. Oh,I should also mention that I enjoyed nomikai heldat Shaken. I didn’t time my visit strategically but ithappened to straddle 2010 and 2011, meaningthat there was a bōnenkai and shinnenkai. Duringthese nomikai, I was introduced to at least a dozennew types of sake thanks to a colleague who isvery knowledgeable about the Japanese sakeindustry. Finally I’d like to thank Shaken for hav-ing given me the opportunity to visit, and all atShaken for having been such wonderful friendsand colleagues.





Dr. Changhee Lee is Senior Specialist onIndustrial Relations, ILO Beijing Office

ILO Beijing Office1-10 Tayuan Diplomatic Office BuildingBeijing 100600, [email protected](Visiting Shaken from December 1, 2010 to January 31, 2011.*as Visiting Research Fellow: January 1 to 31, 2011)


I feel that Shaken is my second intellectual home-town. I was a visiting scholar at Shaken for oneand a half years in the mid-1990s (September 1993– February 1995). At that time, I was in deep intel-lectual turmoil after having a rough ride duringmy youth as a radical student movement leaderin Korea. Having left Marxist ideology behind, Iwas looking for a new perspective to understandvarieties of capitalism. My research at Shaken

greatly helped me to open my eyes to distinctiveinstitutional arrangements of labour market insti-tutions in modern society, as I gained insight intothe institutional evolution of postwar Japaneseindustrial relations systems. In particular, my aca-demic advisor, Professor Nitta Michio taught meabout the empirical research history of the indus-trial relations research community in Japan,which was established by such great Shaken schol-ars as Ōkochi Kazuo and Ujihara Shōjiro. Duringmy first stay at Shaken, I compiled a literaturereview and conducted field research on the evolu-tion of Japanese industrial relations in the 1950s

and 1960s for my Ph.D thesis. At the same time, itwas in Shaken and Tokyo that I began to seemyself as an Asian–not just Korean–and to devel-op an intense intellectual interest in social devel-opments in Asia. My research experiences inJapan, together with my newly found interest inAsian developments, propelled me later into acareer at the International Labour Office (ILO), aspecialized agency of the UN in Geneva.

Q. What are your research interests?

For the last ten years, I have been working exten-sively in the transition economies of EastAsia–such as China, Mongolia and Viet Nam–toassist policymakers there to establish andimprove labour laws, collective bargaining sys-tems, and labour dispute settlement mechanisms.While industrial relations is seen to be on thedecline in many developed countries, there havebeen impressive transformations and expansionsof industrial relations institutions, which intersecteconomy and politics, in China and to lesserextent in Mongolia and Viet Nam as well.

In particular, industrial relations developments inChina display a distinctively Chinese pattern,which may defy our conventional understandingof industrial relations systems. Before the eco-nomic opening and reforms in the late 1970s,there was no political and social space for anyautonomous associations. Trade unions existedonly in name and were just administrative andpolitical arms of the Party-State apparatus, whileemployers were not recognized in China’s legaland institutional frameworks. Unlike many otherformer socialist countries where the communist-controlled trade unions failed to survive marketeconomy reform, however, trade unions in Chinahave gradually adjusted their orientations, strate-gies and roles to adapt to the market-basedemployment regime, and have begun to carry outcollective industrial relations functions. Tradeunions seem to be slowly but steadily outgrowingtheir state origins to form a bridge between theworking class and the Party-State. This is a veryunique path of industrial relations development,

Changhee Lee

which has been unseen in the history of otherdeveloped economies.

Currently my research takes a two-prongedapproach. Firstly, I am conducting a series ofempirical studies on industrial relations develop-ment, including analysis of trade union evolution,collective bargaining practices at the workplaceand industry levels, and evolution of regularatoryframework on collective industrial relations. Sec-ondly, I am reviewing varieties of theoretical toolsthat might help to explain the unique evolution ofindustrial relations in China.

Q. What is the main purpose of your visit?

After I left Shaken in 1995, I did not have theopportunity to return to Shaken or carry out seri-ous academic research due to my heavy workloadin Asia. On the other hand, I accumulated pre-cious first-hand experience by working with poli-cymakers in China, Viet Nam and Mongolia intransforming industrial relations systems–laws,institutions and actors–at the time of those coun-tries’ move towards market economies. I reallywanted to write an article to provide a theoreticalexplanation and analysis of the unique pathstowards transforming and building industrialrelations institutions followed by post-socialistcountries in Asia. There cannot be a better placeto write this article than Shaken, as it is the birth-place of industrial relations study in Asia after thesecond World War, and because it is my secondintellectual hometown. At the same time, I want-ed to update my knowledge on labour marketdevelopments in Japan since the mid 1990s, asthere has been a sea change in the ways Japan’slabour markets are structured and governed.

Certainly two months was too short to achievethese multiple goals. But it was more than enoughto recharge my intellectual energy by havingextensive interactions with scholars at Shaken andbeyond, and by immersing myself in the trulyacademic atmosphere of the Shaken and Tōdai.With the help of Shaken and other institutions, Iorganized a number of seminars during my stay,which helped me to further elaborate my perspec-tive on industrial relations developments inChina and elsewhere in Asia, through very frankand genuinely academic discussions with fellowresearchers.


I love everything about Shaken–its atmosphere,tradition, multidisciplinary faculty, and greatlibrary. Shaken’s reputation was not built overnight.Ever since its postwar birth, generations of greatsocial scientists have collectively built Shaken’sintellectual traditions and approaches. WheneverI go deep into the Shaken library to find, for exam-ple, research questionnaires developed by Profes-sor Ujihara’s research team in the 1950s, I canalmost feel the ethos of the time which may haveguided Shaken scholars’ postwar research onsocial and labour issues. And I must also say thatShaken has a great balance of empirical researchand theoretical reflection in its approach, whichshows its strength at the seminars led by its trulymultidisciplinary researchers. And I have to addthat I really like the year-end party (bōnenkai) atthe Shaken’s meeting room where everybodybrought their favorite drinks, delicious sushi wasoffered and most importantly we had an opportu-nity to see our friends as human beings, not justas respected scholars!





Professor Economic SchoolHenan University

Economic School, Henan UniversityKaifeng, Henan 475004, [email protected](Visiting Shaken from December 20, 2010 to March 19, 2011)


I am a professor of social science, so I had alreadystudied Japan’s culture and society extensivelybefore I started to learn Japanese. I wanted tostrengthen academic cooperation with Japanesescholars by learning their language. I first came toknow about Shaken when I came to Japan to studyin 1998. At the time I heard of the Institute forAdvanced Studies on Asia (University of Tokyo)and Shaken from a Chinese student. However Idid not have any opportunity to learn more aboutthe institutes. In 2006, I got to know more aboutShaken when I came to the University of Tokyo tostudy at the Graduate School of Economics. Iwent from only knowing its name to joiningresearch activities at Shaken.

Q. What was the purpose of your visit to Shaken

this time?

The purpose of my visit to Shaken this time was topursue academic exchange activities. Right now Iam working on comparative studies of China andJapan. I wanted to raise the academic level of my

research by utilizing facilities at the University ofTokyo, especially the abundant books and data atShaken. My research topic during my visit was thedevelopment of credit guarantee systems inJapan. And in fact, I have improved my under-standing of the topic through research and activesupport from the university. I also had the oppor-tunity to give an academic presentation at Shaken.I met a lot of specialists from the same field andexchanged opinions with them. It was a goodchance for me to push my research forward to theinternational academic frontier.

Q. What is your current research interest?

I am currently most interested in comparativestudies between China and Japan, especially stud-ies on the improvement of Japan’s credit system.My interest is not limited to financial institutions;I think that Japan’s social credit system is alsoworth studying and learning from. Both Chinaand Japan’s approaches to credit are influencedby eastern culture. These two countries have dif-ferent customs and systems which are also unlikethose of western countries. Therefore, comparingChina and Japan leads to new insights which canbe applied to other nations as well. The industri-alization of modern Japan was closely related tothe improvement of its financial credit systemwhile the key to Japan’s success as a stable andsafe society is related to the soundness of itssocial credit system. Compared to Japan, China’sefforts at building and improving its social creditsystem have yet to produce desirable results;firms’ reputations and product quality are bothseen as suspect by consumers. Consequently,social credit has been lost and exclusionary socialbehaviors in various forms have seriously dam-aged social norms. China’s rapid economicgrowth has been achieved in spite of its underde-veloped social credit systems, and further exami-nation is needed on these topics. There is also apractical side to studying Japan. One of the pur-poses of my work certainly is to learn fromJapan’s successful experience in building andimproving a national credit system.

Jianguo Sun


Firstly, I like its good research environment. Theacademic environment is nice at Shaken. There arequiet offices, abundant books and data, and conve-nient network services. What makes Shaken morespecial is that it often holds academic workshopson various topics. It is a very good way to broadenour academic views. I also think that the researchenvironment at Shaken is comfortable. Researchersare allowed to enter the building any time, so weare able to conduct our research during quiet hoursat night. It is a quite humane system to me.

Secondly, I like the cordiality of the relationshipsamong staff. All my Japanese colleagues werevery polite and we got along well. In addition tocommunicating at colloquia and so forth, privatediscussions on academic topics were also easyand efficient. My visit at Shaken was comfortableand pleasant thanks to good relationships withmy colleagues. I really miss the happy time when

I worked at Shaken.

Thirdly, I like the highly internationalized systemof academic activities. Although most colleaguesat Shaken are Japanese, there are also Americans,Koreans and scholars from many other countries.Discussions with scholars from different culturesand academic environments make it is easy tokeep academic activities at the highest level andare of great importance in improving the academ-ic level at Shaken as well.

Fourthly, I like the scenery of Hongo Campus atthe University of Tokyo. The appearance of theold-styled building near Sanshiro Pond in whichShaken is located is quite nostalgic. I felt proudevery time when I passed by Akamon, the archi-tectural symbol of the university. And I miss thelook of Yasuda Auditorium behind those yellowleaves of the ginkgo trees. I like the University ofTokyo, I like Shaken. The time when I worked hereis an important part in my academic life.





Associate ProfessorDepartment of Public and Social AdministrationCity University of Hong Kong

Department of Public and Social AdministrationCity University of Hong KongTat Chee AvenueKowloon TongHong Kong [email protected](Visiting Shaken from January 4 to June 30, 2011. *as VisitingResearch Fellow: April 1 to June 30, 2011)

Q: How did you come to know about Shaken?

I first heard of the Shaken when I was a Monbushostudent at Hitotsubashi University from 1987 to1989. I was studying the development of the wagesystem in Japan but realized I needed to examineits history of industrial relations more generally.My informal supervisor, Tomizawa Kenji, suggest-ed I meet Totsuka Hideo and Yamamoto Kyojiwho were not only experts in the subject butinvolved in much of its postwar history. I made anappointment with Professor Totsuka, as I knew hehad visited my university in the UK, Warwick,and was friends with my teacher, Richard Hyman.Professor Totsuka was very gracious and gave mea lot of advice and asked searching questionswhich showed I had a lot to learn (and read). Afterour meeting, I wandered the cool dark corridors ofShaken until I found Professor Yamamoto’s office. Ipaced back and forth before picking up thecourage to knock. I was beckoned inside only to

be told he had a meeting in a few minutes, but Ileft with an invitation to return the followingweek and every subsequent week till I left Japanto attend his class on Japanese labour history. Eachweek I walked through Akamon to hear one of thegreatest scholars in labour history in the world. Ilearned the significance of Akamon as one of thesites where the postwar capitalist trajectory ofJapan was decided. As a young Marxist, thosewere truly the most interesting days of my life.

Q: What is the purpose of your visit?

I am at the Shaken as a visiting scholar for the firsthalf of 2011. Marukawa Tomoo has kindly agreedto sponsor and look after me here. In the firstweek of my visit, Chang Hee Lee and I gave aseminar, chaired by Professor Marukawa, con-cerning recent developments in industrial rela-tions in China which was attended by 80-90 peo-ple. Since then I have been free to engage in mytwin activities of writing and planning my nextresearch projects. I have been writing up researchon Japanese and Korean investments in China aswell as on domestic industrial relations issues inthe PRC. My research plans revolve around tworelated subjects--Chinese direct investment inJapan and ‘guest workers’ from China to in Japanunder ‘training’ visas. In other words, I am work-ing on the direct impact of Chinese economicinterests in Japan and their implications for work-ers. The Great Eastern Earthquake and tsunamihas become a central feature of my time here. Itaffected my research as many Chinese havereturned home, but much more significant hasbeen what I learned about Japanese people in thiscrisis. The stoicism of the people has not just ledto so much admiration the world over, but theircommitment to recovery and their striving fornormality has touched my whole family. Inci-dents like Sudo Shin cycling for hours to pick uphis daughter from school on 11th March and thequiet and somewhat somber loading of truckswith emergency provisions outside the adminis-tration building to take to the north will remainwith me forever.

Bill W.K. Taylor

Q: What are your research interests?

My research started with examining Japanesemultinationals abroad, mainly in the UK and thenChina. I was involved in the so called ‘Japanisa-tion debate’ and related but more interesting dis-cussions of Fordist and post-Fordist modes ofproduction within labour process theory. Abo Tet-suo of the Shaken did much empirical work indeveloping a ‘hybrid’ model to explain diversityand Kato Tetsuro (Hitotsubashi) was the leadingtheorist arguing against the culturists and man-agerialists. These topics still interest me, though Iam now looking at other countries and ownershippatterns with, as I’ve said, a growing interest inChinese investment overseas. In May 2011 I waslucky enough to receive a Japan Foundation Fel-lowship to study Chinese investment in Japanand so will be returning to Shaken soon and Pro-fessor Marukawa will continue to be my (long-suffering) mentor. I also have a strong interest inthe development of industrial relations in China,not only because I think it is an important publicpolicy issue within the country, but also becauseChina has the potential to impact the internation-al regulatory mechanisms that are meant to holdcapitalism in check. To this end, I have beendeveloping an interest in collective human rightswithin the context of collective labour and com-munity. I think my time here is helping me tothink more about modernity in terms of commu-

nity rather than the individual, and the shock ofthe Great Eastern Earthquake was a furtherreminder that the future of human dignity is acommunal experience.

Q: What do you like about Shaken?

The Shaken has over time been a significant placefor debates over many of the significant events inJapan and internationally. Its faculty have bothinformed the debates and provided foreignerslike me with access to those discussions, andShaken has been pluralist enough to allow differ-ent views within the institution. Moreover, as onegreat debate turned into another (e.g., debatesover a capitalist or non-aligned future for Japanevolved into discussions about social welfare andthe sharing of prosperity, which in turn led to cur-rent concerns over the development of Asia) Shak-

en has evolved to remain current and a leader. Ithas never wallowed in the history of its own sig-nificance, or become complacent toward currentsocial problems. Comparing Shaken in 1989 withnow, 2011, it seems nothing has changed in asense. Shaken has not--as so many universitieshave done in Asia and elsewhere--tried inappro-priately to mimic the US model. Shaken is a prod-uct of the Japanese and its own history, with acad-emics emphasising democratic management,combined with seminal publications and engage-ment in public service.




Gregory W. NobleProfessor of Politics and Public Administration at the Institute ofSocial Science, the University of Tokyo

Plugging in the Future: Multiple Policy Goals and the Rush toPromote Electric Cars

April 28, 2011

Abstract:

First the Toyota Prius, and now the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, Ford Focus,

Tesla Roadster and more—suddenly hybrid and electric vehicles are

everywhere. Central and local governments offer huge subsidies for

purchases of "eco-cars," and proclaim their commitment to turning local producers into global leaders of next

generation vehicles. What happened—didn't globalization, liberalization and the spread of neo-liberal

ideology relegate industrial policy to the dustbin of history? Have car companies captured governments?

Developmentalism and rent seeking provide only partial explanations for the recent rush to promote electric

vehicles. Rather, electric cars emerged as an enticing possible solution to multiple policy challenges, including

energy security, reduction of pollution and greenhouse gases, technology development, and economic

stabilization in the wake of the global financial crisis. Policy responses have not been totally uniform, however:

variations in energy dependence and political polarization have created significant differences between North

America and East Asia.

Saadia M. PekkanenThe Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professor at the Jackson School of

International Studies, University of Washington

Space Policy and National Security in Japan

May 26, 2011

While the commercial and scientific aspects of Japan's space policy have

drawn some attention over the postwar period, its military angle has

remained under the radar. Specifically, little notice has been paid to

Japan’s use of its space program to increase its defensive and even

offensive military capabilities. The incremental militarization of Japan’s

space assets has in fact taken place in plain sight of the public within its steadily advancing civilian space

program and has left little doubt that there has been a paradigmatic shift toward national security in Japan's

space policy which deserves attention as a military space race in the Asian region heats up.

ISS Contemporary Japan Group at the Instituteof Social Science, University of TokyoISS Contemporary Japan Group seminar series provides English-speaking residents of the Tokyo area with anopportunity to hear cutting-edge research in social science and related policy issues, as well as a venue forresearchers and professionals in or visiting Tokyo to present and receive knowledgeable feedback on their latestresearch projects. Seminars are open to everyone. Admission is free and advance registration is not required. Forinquiries, please contact the seminar organizer Professor Gregory W. Noble ([email protected]).Photo by Takahashi Satsuki (ISS)


Ming WanProfessor of Government and Politics at George Mason University

Party Politics, Big Media and Japan’s China Policy: The ChineseFishing Boat Collision Incident

June 16, 2011

In this talk I will discuss Sino-Japanese relations focusing on the Chinese

fishing boat collision in September 2010, which sparked the worst bilateral

dispute since 1952. In the context of growing tension over territorial issues,

the DPJ government’s actions were viewed by the Chinese government as

provocative and Beijing overreacted. I will also examine Japan's party

politics, big media and foreign policy, which played out differently in the pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis

stages.

Iwona MerklejnAssistant Professor of Japanese Studies at Nicolaus Copernicus

University

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics: a Symbolic Media Event of the High-Growth Era

July 13, 2011

The Tokyo Olympics became a major national myth rooted in the

collective memory of the entire generation of Japanese who lived the most

active part of their lives in the era of postwar recovery and high economic

growth. It became a symbol of success, a new stage of modernization and

"the reentry of a rehabilitated Japan into the international community" (Kenneth Ruoff 2010). On the other

hand, the ’64 Olympics inflamed nationalist feelings as the Ministry of Education put more effort into

"patriotic education" in preparation for the Games and elevated controversial national symbols such as the

Hinomaru and Kimigayo. The event also raised questions about the high costs of modernization as it

completely changed the city landscape of Tokyo. In this presentation, I am going to focus on the symbolic

meanings of the Tokyo Olympics and analyze them as a media event. The study of the Olympics provides us

with a number of insights into the national identity patterns and ideologies constructed by the Japanese mass

media in the high-growth era. As I discuss the Olympic champions who became new national heroes, a

gender perspective will also be needed, especially when talking about the "Oriental Witches" volleyball team

whose final victory over the Soviet Union won record audience ratings.


Recent Publications by ISS and ISS StaffRecent Publications by ISS and ISS Staff

田辺俊介（編著）『外国人へのまなざしと政治意識　社会調査で読み解く日本のナショナリズム』（勁草書房）2011年2月

佐藤博樹・武石恵美子（編著）『ワーク・ライフ・バランスと働き方改革』（勁草書房）2011年3月

水町勇一郎・緒方桂子（編）『事例演習労働法　第2版』（有斐閣）2011年3月

荒木尚志・奥田香子・島田陽一・土田道夫・中窪裕也・水町勇一郎・村中孝史・森戸英幸（著）『ケースブック労働法　第3版』（有斐閣）2011年3月

洪紹洋（著）『近代臺灣造船業的技術轉移與学習　臺灣史與海洋史09』（遠流出版公司）2011年3月


Recent Publications by ISS and ISS Staff*For more publications, please visit the ISS Homepage (http://jww.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/, http://www.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/).

Recent Publications by ISS and ISS Staff*For more publications, please visit the ISS Homepage (http://jww.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/, http://www.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/).

御厨貴（編著）〔中澤俊輔、米山忠寛〕『近現代日本を史料で読む「大久保利通日記」から「富田メモ」まで』（中公新書）2011年4月

大沢真理（編著）『社会的経済が拓く未来　危機の時代に「包摂する社会」を求めて』（ミネルヴァ書房）2011年6月

鶴光太郎・樋口美雄・水町勇一郎（編著）『非正規雇用改革　日本の働き方をいかに変えるか』（日本評論社）2011年6月

Junji Nakagawa（ed.）『Multilateralism and Regionalism in 　Global Economic Governance: 　Trade, Investment and Finance』(Routledge)　2011年6月

大瀧雅之（著）『貨幣・雇用理論の基礎』（勁草書房）2011年5月

Social Science Japan September 2011

In this issue, Dr Jun Kajima gives us an outline of one of projectsISS has been conducting, the Contemporary China Research Base.

The Contemporary China Research Base at the University ofTokyo's Institute of Social Science (ISS) is a five-year research pro-ject that began in FY2007. The Contemporary Chinese Area Stud-ies Program is the second act in the three-act play that is theNational Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU)'s Promotion ofArea Studies Initiative, which also includes the Islamic AreaStudies Program launched in FY2006 and the ContemporaryIndia Area Studies Program established this academic year.One unique feature of the Promotion of Area Studies Initiativelies in its operation: multiple research institutions establishresearch bases and each is assigned research topics. In the case ofContemporary China, joint research is undertaken at researchbases at the University of Tokyo and five other institutions—Waseda University, Keio University, Kyoto University, theResearch Institute for Humanity and Nature, and Toyo Bunko(Oriental Library). For instance, the research base at the Universi-ty of Tokyo is in charge of the Chinese economy and explores thetopic of economic growth and stability, while the research base atthe Research Institute for Humanity and Nature handles social development and environmental conservationin China. In addition, one or two researchers from the NIHU are dispatched to each research base, and I hap-pen to be the NIHU researcher assigned to the University of Tokyo base. This means that I am originally affili-ated to NIHU, not ISS, and that my colleagues are scattered across the other research bases. My colleaguesand I occasionally meet and discuss the situations at our respective bases, and I have come to find that—despite the fact that we are all conducting research on China—the research methods, organizations and waysof presenting research results differ greatly among the institutions and the disciplines. Personally, this hasbeen a tremendous learning experience for me.With this being the final year of the research project, efforts have begun throughout the Contemporary ChineseArea Studies Program and at the University of Tokyo research base to compile research outcomes. To date, sixresearch groups have been established at the University of Tokyo research base to study the Chinese economysince it is a broad topic with many facets. The research groups have undertaken a highly diverse array ofthemes, including structural adjustment and economic policy (exploring cases in the cement industry), eco-nomic law (i.e, Property Law, Antitrust Law etc.), agriculture and rural issues, trade (FTAs), industrial agglom-eration (in Wenzhou, Guangdong etc.) and foreign economic assistance (to Southeast Asia, Africa etc.). How to

compile this wide-ranging research is a perplexing prob-lem for the research base—not to mention for the entireContemporary Chinese Area Studies Program)—but ide-ally, I hope that everyone can contribute to creating a sin-gular vision of the Chinese economy while fully commu-nicating the fascinating elements of each group's research.

I would like to thank everyone involved for their contin-uing support of this project.(For more details on this project, please visit the Contem-porary China Research Base homepage: http://web.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/kyoten/eigo.html)

Focus on ISSFocus on ISS

Documents

Newsletter of the lnstitute of Social Science, University ...newslet.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ssj45/ssj45.pdfTwo years after the regime change in 2009, this issue of So ci al e nJp revisits