Rethinking Japan

This latest book by a veteran observer of Japanese politics and a diplomatic historian is a warning. The authors argue that ‘the Abe government signals a fundamental change in the politics, economy, and conduct of foreign policy’, that democracy is ‘being twisted into new shapes, very different from the old’ (p. 2), that these ‘changes taking place in the second decade of the 21st century are of seminal importance, and that the scope and impact is often underestimated’ (p. 4). The book is divided into 12 chapters. The first three provide a concise overview of Japan’s postwar political and economic development before the election of the Abe government in 2012; the next nine analyse core policy changes introduced by the Abe administration. The first two chapters provide a seminal overview of the political and economic development of the early postwar and Cold War decades, as well as the two so-called lost decades. While their contents are well-known to the seasoned observer, they could be assigned in courses on Japanese political history, as they introduce the core problems and offer a critical assessment of the analytical frameworks widely used to explain these developments. Chapter 3 is an in-depth analysis of the DPJ government (2009 and 2012), its institutional and political weaknesses that led to a rapid succession of three prime ministers, and its eventual election loss in 2012. These developments have left a legacy that the DPJ and its successor parties have yet to recover from in 2018.

Democracy · Government (linguistics) · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Successor cardinal · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Public Administration

• Japan's Security Renaissance

  Andrew L Oros•Japan's Security Renaissance•2017

  Add to list