The Logic of Japanese Politics | Gerald L. Curtis | invaluable study of modern Japanese politics

The Logic of Japanese Politics | Gerald L. Curtis | excellent

books:

The Logic of Japan...

	The Logic of Japanese Politics Gerald L. Curtis Columbia University Press, 2000 - 306 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Widely recognized both in America and Japan for his insider knowledge and penetrating analyses of Japanese politics, Gerald Curtis is the political analyst best positioned to explore the complexities of the Japanese political scene today. Curtis has personally known most of the key players in Japanese politics for more than thirty years, and he draws on their candid comments to provide invaluable and graphic insights into the world of Japanese politics. By relating the behavior of Japanese political leaders to the institutions within which they must operate, Curtis makes sense out of what others have regarded as enigmatic or illogical. He utilizes his skills as a scholar and his knowledge of the inner workings of the Japanese political system to highlight the commonalities of Japanese and Western political practices while at the same time explaining what sets Japan apart.

Curtis rejects the notion that cultural distinctiveness and consensus are the defining elements of Japan's political decision making, emphasizing instead the competition among and the profound influence of individuals operating within particular institutional contexts on the development of Japan's politics. The discussions featured here -- as they survey both the detailed events and the broad structures shaping the mercurial Japanese political scene of the 1990s -- draw on extensive conversations with virtually all of the decade's political leaders and focus on the interactions among specific politicians as they struggle for political power.

The Logic of Japanese Politics covers such important political developments as

? the Liberal Democratic Party's egress from power in 1993, after reigning for nearly four decades, and their crushing defeat in the "voters' revolt" of the 1998 upper-house election;

? the formation of the 1993 seven party coalition government led by prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa and its collapse eight months later;

? the historic electoral reform of 1994 which replaced the electoral system operative since the adoption of universal manhood suffrage in 1925; and

? the decline of machine politics and the rise of the mutohaso -- the floating, nonparty voter.

Scrutinizing and interpreting a complex and changing political system, this multi-layered chronicle reveals the dynamics of democracy at work -- Japanese-style. In the process, The Logic of Japanese Politics not only offers a fascinating picture of Japanese politics and politicians but also provides a framework for understanding Japan's attempts to surmount its present problems, and helps readers gain insight into Japan's future.

for more information click here

invaluable study of modern Japanese politics

As the title of the book suggests, there is a logic to Japanese politics, just as there is a logic, a coherence, to other social phenomena and behavior. This will no doubt disturb those students of the Asian "mind" who are prone to boil down Japanese "national character" to some sort of ahistorical essence. As Professor Curtis says, he hopes he "will leave the reader with a sense of the culture of Japanese politics. It is not a book that argues that culture explains Japanese politics." This is revisionism operating in a healthy sense. There are a couple of specific points I would like to make. In dissecting electoral reform, he does not mention recent play given to direct election of the prime minister, an idea first raised by Nakasone in the 1960s. Of course, the conservatives are betting this would benefit the election of a strong right-wing leader in the mold of Shintaro Ishihara, the present governor of Tokyo. Secondly, in speculating on the direction Japanese politics may take, he mentions only briefly what he terms the New Right and the implications for U.S.-Japan relations. The drift to the right in Japanese politics is unmistakable, which in its worst form would lead to remilitarization and indeed pose a problem for Far East security. Already, the national anthem and national flag, replete with their war-time associations, have been officially recognized. This past February both the upper and lower houses of the Diet formed committees to study revising the Constitution. The New Right, or neo-nationalists, if you will, see this as an opening for revising Article 9, the anti-war article. Just one small error to point out in a name: read Taku Yamasaki vice Yamazaki. All in all, this is a tremdously valuable study.

for more information click here

excellent

I have lived in Japan for a few years in the 1990s and have always assumed that (at least for now) the politicians there don't really matter. And compared to American politics, Japanese politics seemed dry with one party rule until 1993. But Curtis shows how exciting it all is under the surface. I read this book very slowly, wanting to absorb every detail; however, Curtis writes well and will keep you moving through the events of the 1990s.

So if you are a student of Japan and are trying to piece together some of the highlights you already know, read this book. Curtis has done us a great service.

for more information click here

Making Sense of Japanese Politics

Books on Japan that are worth reading must fulfill three criteria. They must be based on a direct access to primary sources, which presupposes a high degree of familiarity with the Japanese language and social history. They have to build upon the scholarly literature, including analysis and commentary presented by Japanese scholars. And they have to offer a theoretical perspective that is relevant to the subject under consideration.

The Logic of Japanese Politics meets these three criteria with a wide margin. Professor Curtis seems to know every major political figure firsthand and has developed with many of them a personal relationship since their rookie years as junior Diet members. As a distinguished political scientist, he brings intellectual breadth as well as historical depth to his topic, and has himself published extensively in Japanese. He is careful not to placate preconceived notions on the Japanese political system, and develops useful comparisons with politics in Europe (whereas most observers, including Japanese political actors, tend to overuse the comparison with US politics).

The 1990s was an important turning point for Japanese politics. From 1989 to 1998, Japan had nine prime ministers; there had been only eleven over the previous thirty-four years. From 1955 to 1993, only one party, the LDP, was in power at the national level. Then during one year beginning in August 1993, every party in the Diet except for the Communists participated in one coalition government or another. Among parties opposed to the LDP, affiliations were in such a flux that a number of Diet members stopped indicating their party membership on their name cards. Although the PLD's absence from power lasted for less than a year, before they returned to government in an alliance with their former arch-rival the Japan Socialist Party, the period marked a dramatic rupture in Japanese politics, with the end of the so-called '55 system and the quest for a new political landscape that took some time consolidating.

Each chapter focuses on a particular phase of this transition: the ouster of the LDP from government and its replacement by a seven-party coalition led by the charismatic prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa; the unraveling of this coalition that nonetheless achieved to pass an important electoral reform; the LDP's return to power in a coalition led first by the Socialist Party's chairman Tomiichi Murayama, then by former MITI minister Ryutaro Hashimoto; the disappointing results of the 1998 upper-house election and the appointment of Keizo Obuchi over Junichiro Koizumi as party chairman and head of government.

The result of these changes and reorganization was immobilism and confusion precisely at a time when Japan needed policy change and strategic direction in order to deal with an ailing economy. Despite the rhetoric on the need for political reform, administrative restructuring and deregulation, Curtis shows that the Japanese public felt ambivalent toward undoing the system that brought Japan its postwar success, and that the authorities delivered relatively little in terms of real departures from the past. He also castigates the Japanese's infatuation with the idea that the two-party system of Westminster democracy would magically cure Japanese politics from all its ills, arguing instead that the "rice-roots" quality of Japanese democracy is its strength rather than its weakness.

Distinctly Japanese political institutions are introduced throughout the text. The zokugiin is a Diet member who concentrates on a single issue, developing expertise and influence through his contacts with the bureaucracy and special interest representatives. The habatsu is a faction within the LDP bound together by ties of personal allegiance more than doctrinal content. The most powerful faction usually leaves the position of party president (and thus prime minister) to someone from another faction, while exercising power from the shadow through control of the post of party secretary-general and through controlling the composition of the prime minister's cabinet. The all-important secretary-general has final say on candidate nominations and is in charge of the party's funds, two sources of power that enable him both to do favors and to punish party members.

The kokutai or kokkai taisaku iinkai is a party's Diet-strategy committee that doubles the formal House Management Committee (giin unei iinkai, or giun) and that offers the channel for backroom deals between parties or for informal contacts with the bureaucracy. The innai kaiha is a parliamentary caucus that can be distinct from the political party (or parties) it supports. It came to play a critical role after the collapse of LDP one-party dominance in 1993 as politicians seeked to restructure the party system.

Detailed knowledge of the functioning of these institutions and others is important in order to understand how politicians operate within particular institutional constraints. Politics in Japan makes sense in Japanese terms, and clear reasoning can make sense of Japanese politics.

for more information click here

products you might be interested in

recommendations

Can Japan change? Sore wa chotto muzukashii.
Japanese econ/politics