David Leheny
Biographic Data
| ID | 233466 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Leheny |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Leheny |
| SIGNATURE | LEHENY D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Waseda University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6420-1221 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Gardens of Feeling
Status, gimmicks, and thwarted celebrations
Japan famously muddled through the 2020 Summer Olympics – triumphant as a host in that the Games were held, after a year-long delay, despite the global COVID-19 pandemic that had threatened to shutter the event entirely. The successes were qualified, with spectator-less matches and races leading to eerily quiet medals ceremonies, at least compared with normal years of cheering fans, enthusiasts, and tourists. Nowhere was the strangeness of the ev…
Introduction
Just as they are to the events themselves, the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics have become central to academic research on the Games and their political, social, and cultural roles. And so the recent string of Olympic Games held in East Asia – two of them under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic – offer the opportunity to think both about region-specific meanings associated with these highly scripted affairs and about the ways they might dest…
Meiji at 150
After suggesting numerous times that it intended to make the Meiji Restoration's 150th anniversary a central concern in 2018, the government of the late Abe Shinzō held only a brief, restrained ceremony one afternoon in Tokyo, leaving much of the more celebratory work to local governments at sites associated with Meiji leaders. In contrast, Japan studies centers and scholars around the world held events marking the Restoration and reflecting on i…
The loss of nostalgia, not the nostalgia of loss
As myriad Japanese observers have noted, much of the Heisei Era was steeped in nostalgia, in particular for the last decades of the Shôwa Era. Given the frequent characterization of Heisei, as Japan's ‘lost decades’ following nearly thirty years of robust economic growth, this sense of longing for a better past might seem natural. But it entailed as well narratives about the collective effort and will of the Japanese people, not just ruefulness a…
Precarity's Pirate
When the famously nationalistic Japanese author Hyakuta Naoki published his best-selling novelA Man Called Pirate(Kaizoku to yobareta otoko) in 2012, which subsequently became both a manga and a major film, he renewed interest in the midcentury oil baron Idemitsu Sazō, using him as the model for the novel's lead character. Hyakuta claims to have aimed to inspire the country, reeling from decades of slow growth as well as the 2011 tsunami and nucl…
Opening a Storyline in the 2020 Olympics
The Opening Ceremony under the guidance of popular film director Yamazaki Takashi will almost certainly earn it applause overseas, particularly by viewers and writers eager to take stock of a country's creative talents in this once-every-four-years fantasia. As the stuff of international politics goes, it will be mostly inconsequential and harmless, and it will likely be good fun. But it also offers the chance to explore how a ceremony can reprod…
A Narrow Place to Cross Swords
Japan’s International Democracy Assistance as Soft Power
This concise monograph is fascinating: a serious examination of a policy that frequently seems partial and even half-hearted. As Maiko Ichihara notes, while Japanese overseas development assistance officials have for decades emphasized their contributions to democracy, these programs typically avoid the deliberate pro-democracy interventions often seen in American and European aid packages. Ichihara, an international relations professor at Hitots…
Internationalization in Ronald Dore's Changing Approach to Japan
Ronald Dore's 1979 essay about Japan's "internationalization" tackled one of the defining themes of Japanese politics, society, and culture over the past decades. In his characteristically witty voice, Dore assessed the myriad ways in which a Japan that was well attuned to global cultures was also capable of reaffirming supposed chasms between Japanese society and the world outside, particularly in political and economic matters. In this article,…
Empire of Hope
How do emotions become meaningful in public life? Closely examining key episodes in Japanese politics, Empire of Hope examines the varied roles that feelings play in contemporary politics. They construct the boundaries of the national body, they inform and discipline appropriate expression, and they depoliticize messy problems that could quickly produce divisive questions about winners and losers. And most important, they work because they appear…
Empire of Hope
Japan
Reviewed by: Japan: The Precarious Future ed. by Frank Baldwin, Anne Allison David Leheny (bio) Japan: The Precarious Future. Edited by Frank Baldwin and Anne Allison. NYU Press, New York, 2015. viii, 352 pages. $89.00, cloth; $35.00, paper. In The Handmaid's Tale, her classic dystopian novel of speculative fiction about a United States dominated by religious fundamentalists who have stripped women of virtually all rights, Margaret Atwood writes …
Four cultures of Japanese politics
The other Rashomon story
Sibling Rivalry? Domestic Politics and the US-Japan Alliance
Though frequently reported in the United States in summer 2011, it left little impression that the name of the Japanese women's national soccer team, Nadeshiko, refers to an ideal of female beauty symbolized by a pink carnation. Particularly in the run-up to the final match of the 2011 Women's World Cup, the more frequent metaphor in the US media was of family—or specifically a "big-sister, little-sister" relationship between, respectively, the A…
Dialogue about Elections in Japan and South Korea
The year 2012 was fascinating for domestic politics and international relations in Northeast Asia. Perhaps most notably, every country in the region experienced a change of leadership. China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, and Japan all saw new leaders begin their tenure. In addition, regional relations took a turn for the worse, with numerous countries engaging in territorial and maritime disputes, disagreeing over interpretations of their sh…
The Politics of Crime, Punishment, and Social Order in East Asia
Recent scholarship on crime, law, and society in China and Japan has addressed the politics of globalization and legal reform in both countries, but political context is not self-revealing. The literature on China has focused too often on the role of the police in an authoritarian state without sufficiently taking into account the changing balance of power among judicial actors, which may be more important for understanding the shape and directio…
Terrorism risks and counterterrorism costs in post-9/11 Japan
This article analyzes the distribution of costs in Japan's counterterrorism since the September 11 attacks on the United States. Working closely with its alliance partner, the United States, the administration of Koizumi Junichirō dispatched troops both to the Indian Ocean and to Iraq, simultaneously depicting the risk of Islamist terrorism as a kind of depoliticized global threat, one unconnected to actual political decisions. In so doing, the g…
Think Global, Fear Local
Japan after Japan
Reviewed by: Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present David Leheny (bio) Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present. Edited by Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian. Duke University Press, Durham, N.C, 2006. 446 pages. $94.95, cloth; $25.95, paper. It seems unlikely that Japan’s 1990s will ever come in for the kind of sentimental, nostalgic treatment that direct…
Home Away from Home
Think Global, Fear Local
In 1999, responding to international concerns about the sexual exploitation of children, the Japanese Diet voted unanimously to ban child prostitution and child pornography. Two years later, in the wake of 9/11, Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet radically shifted government counterterrorism policy toward new military solutions, and away from an earlier emphasis on law enforcement. Although they seem unrelated, these two policies reveal the unintended c…
Terrorism, Social Movements, and International Security
This paper argues that international security studies can most profitably engage the issue of international terrorism by considering terrorist groups as transnational social movement organizations. It takes as its case Al Qaeda's role in Southeast Asia, focusing especially on the efforts of Al Qaeda leaders to align the demands and grievances of local Islamist movements and to spread a set of tactics and methods of political violence. In so doing…
The Rules of Play
A political economy of Asian sex tourism
Sex represents an important tourism attraction for many developing countries. Like all markets, however, sex tourism is both an economic and political phenomenon. It cannot exist without sources of demand, where these types of transactions are considered to be socially and politically legitimate. In the case of Japanese sex tourism to Thailand, the market has been rocked by the development of greater women's rights in Japan. This has shifted the …
The Politics of Crime, Punishment, and Social Order in East Asia
Recent scholarship on crime, law, and society in China and Japan has addressed the politics of globalization and legal reform in both countries, but political context is not self-revealing. The literature on China has focused too often on the role of the police in an authoritarian state without sufficiently taking into account the changing balance of power among judicial actors, which may be more important for understanding the shape and directio…
Terrorism, Social Movements, and International Security
This paper argues that international security studies can most profitably engage the issue of international terrorism by considering terrorist groups as transnational social movement organizations. It takes as its case Al Qaeda's role in Southeast Asia, focusing especially on the efforts of Al Qaeda leaders to align the demands and grievances of local Islamist movements and to spread a set of tactics and methods of political violence. In so doing…
Dialogue about Elections in Japan and South Korea
The year 2012 was fascinating for domestic politics and international relations in Northeast Asia. Perhaps most notably, every country in the region experienced a change of leadership. China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, and Japan all saw new leaders begin their tenure. In addition, regional relations took a turn for the worse, with numerous countries engaging in territorial and maritime disputes, disagreeing over interpretations of their sh…
Status, gimmicks, and thwarted celebrations
Japan famously muddled through the 2020 Summer Olympics – triumphant as a host in that the Games were held, after a year-long delay, despite the global COVID-19 pandemic that had threatened to shutter the event entirely. The successes were qualified, with spectator-less matches and races leading to eerily quiet medals ceremonies, at least compared with normal years of cheering fans, enthusiasts, and tourists. Nowhere was the strangeness of the ev…
Terrorism risks and counterterrorism costs in post-9/11 Japan
This article analyzes the distribution of costs in Japan's counterterrorism since the September 11 attacks on the United States. Working closely with its alliance partner, the United States, the administration of Koizumi Junichirō dispatched troops both to the Indian Ocean and to Iraq, simultaneously depicting the risk of Islamist terrorism as a kind of depoliticized global threat, one unconnected to actual political decisions. In so doing, the g…
The Rules of Play
A political economy of Asian sex tourism
Sex represents an important tourism attraction for many developing countries. Like all markets, however, sex tourism is both an economic and political phenomenon. It cannot exist without sources of demand, where these types of transactions are considered to be socially and politically legitimate. In the case of Japanese sex tourism to Thailand, the market has been rocked by the development of greater women's rights in Japan. This has shifted the …
By other means
Although leisure and tourism may seem at first blush to be anything but political, states generally create and maintain policies that deal with the recreation of citizens. The Japanese government's active post-war approach to leisure is unusual and distinctive, owing its shape to pre-war policy decisions privileging for strategic purposes American and European conceptions of proper recreation, leisure and travel. Tracing the evolution of Japan's …
Importing Diversity
In 1987, the Japanese government inaugurated the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program in response to global pressure to 'internationalize' its society. This ambitious program has grown to be a major government operation, with an annual budget of $400 million (greater than the United States NEA and NEH combined) and more than six thousand foreign nationals employed each year in public schools all over Japan. How does a relatively homogeneous …
Broadcasting Politics in Japan
Minamata
Nearly forty years after the outbreak of the Minamata Disease, it remains one of the most horrific examples of environmental poisoning. Based on primary documents and interviews, this book describes three rounds of responses to this incidence of mercury poisoning, focusing on the efforts of its victims and their supporters, particularly the activities of grassroots movements and popular campaigns, to secure redress. George argues that Japan's pos…
The Rules of Play
Terrorism, Social Movements, and International Security
This paper argues that international security studies can most profitably engage the issue of international terrorism by considering terrorist groups as transnational social movement organizations. It takes as its case Al Qaeda's role in Southeast Asia, focusing especially on the efforts of Al Qaeda leaders to align the demands and grievances of local Islamist movements and to spread a set of tactics and methods of political violence. In so doing…
Think Global, Fear Local
In 1999, responding to international concerns about the sexual exploitation of children, the Japanese Diet voted unanimously to ban child prostitution and child pornography. Two years later, in the wake of 9/11, Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet radically shifted government counterterrorism policy toward new military solutions, and away from an earlier emphasis on law enforcement. Although they seem unrelated, these two policies reveal the unintended c…
Home Away from Home
Japan after Japan
Reviewed by: Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present David Leheny (bio) Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present. Edited by Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian. Duke University Press, Durham, N.C, 2006. 446 pages. $94.95, cloth; $25.95, paper. It seems unlikely that Japan’s 1990s will ever come in for the kind of sentimental, nostalgic treatment that direct…
Think Global, Fear Local
The Politics of Crime, Punishment, and Social Order in East Asia
Recent scholarship on crime, law, and society in China and Japan has addressed the politics of globalization and legal reform in both countries, but political context is not self-revealing. The literature on China has focused too often on the role of the police in an authoritarian state without sufficiently taking into account the changing balance of power among judicial actors, which may be more important for understanding the shape and directio…
Terrorism risks and counterterrorism costs in post-9/11 Japan
This article analyzes the distribution of costs in Japan's counterterrorism since the September 11 attacks on the United States. Working closely with its alliance partner, the United States, the administration of Koizumi Junichirō dispatched troops both to the Indian Ocean and to Iraq, simultaneously depicting the risk of Islamist terrorism as a kind of depoliticized global threat, one unconnected to actual political decisions. In so doing, the g…
Sibling Rivalry? Domestic Politics and the US-Japan Alliance
Though frequently reported in the United States in summer 2011, it left little impression that the name of the Japanese women's national soccer team, Nadeshiko, refers to an ideal of female beauty symbolized by a pink carnation. Particularly in the run-up to the final match of the 2011 Women's World Cup, the more frequent metaphor in the US media was of family—or specifically a "big-sister, little-sister" relationship between, respectively, the A…
Dialogue about Elections in Japan and South Korea
The year 2012 was fascinating for domestic politics and international relations in Northeast Asia. Perhaps most notably, every country in the region experienced a change of leadership. China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, and Japan all saw new leaders begin their tenure. In addition, regional relations took a turn for the worse, with numerous countries engaging in territorial and maritime disputes, disagreeing over interpretations of their sh…
Four cultures of Japanese politics
The other Rashomon story
Japan
Reviewed by: Japan: The Precarious Future ed. by Frank Baldwin, Anne Allison David Leheny (bio) Japan: The Precarious Future. Edited by Frank Baldwin and Anne Allison. NYU Press, New York, 2015. viii, 352 pages. $89.00, cloth; $35.00, paper. In The Handmaid's Tale, her classic dystopian novel of speculative fiction about a United States dominated by religious fundamentalists who have stripped women of virtually all rights, Margaret Atwood writes …
Empire of Hope
How do emotions become meaningful in public life? Closely examining key episodes in Japanese politics, Empire of Hope examines the varied roles that feelings play in contemporary politics. They construct the boundaries of the national body, they inform and discipline appropriate expression, and they depoliticize messy problems that could quickly produce divisive questions about winners and losers. And most important, they work because they appear…
Empire of Hope
A Narrow Place to Cross Swords
Japan’s International Democracy Assistance as Soft Power
This concise monograph is fascinating: a serious examination of a policy that frequently seems partial and even half-hearted. As Maiko Ichihara notes, while Japanese overseas development assistance officials have for decades emphasized their contributions to democracy, these programs typically avoid the deliberate pro-democracy interventions often seen in American and European aid packages. Ichihara, an international relations professor at Hitots…
Internationalization in Ronald Dore's Changing Approach to Japan
Ronald Dore's 1979 essay about Japan's "internationalization" tackled one of the defining themes of Japanese politics, society, and culture over the past decades. In his characteristically witty voice, Dore assessed the myriad ways in which a Japan that was well attuned to global cultures was also capable of reaffirming supposed chasms between Japanese society and the world outside, particularly in political and economic matters. In this article,…
Opening a Storyline in the 2020 Olympics
The Opening Ceremony under the guidance of popular film director Yamazaki Takashi will almost certainly earn it applause overseas, particularly by viewers and writers eager to take stock of a country's creative talents in this once-every-four-years fantasia. As the stuff of international politics goes, it will be mostly inconsequential and harmless, and it will likely be good fun. But it also offers the chance to explore how a ceremony can reprod…
The loss of nostalgia, not the nostalgia of loss
As myriad Japanese observers have noted, much of the Heisei Era was steeped in nostalgia, in particular for the last decades of the Shôwa Era. Given the frequent characterization of Heisei, as Japan's ‘lost decades’ following nearly thirty years of robust economic growth, this sense of longing for a better past might seem natural. But it entailed as well narratives about the collective effort and will of the Japanese people, not just ruefulness a…
Political science (25 works) · Law (23 works) · Politics (21 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Japanese History and Culture (19 works) · History (14 works) · Art (12 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Asian Culture and Media Studies (8 works)