Over the past thirty years Japan has shown that it is a highly dynamic society, and its economic policy-making has often astonished the world. Japanese politics, however, though sometimes showing dynamism, are very stable and frequently strangely immobilist. In this book, six specialists on Japanese politics seek to find out why.

This is the first book to examine in-depth Japan's relations with Africa. Japan's dependence on raw materials from South Africa made it impossible for Tokyo in the 1970s and 1980s to support other African states in their fight against the minority government and its policy of apartheid. Kweku Ampiah's detailed analysis of Japan's political, economic and diplomatic relations with sub-Saharan Africa from 1974 to the early 1990s makes it clear that Japan was lukewarm in the struggle against apartheid. Case studies of Tanzania and Nigeria dissect Japan's trade, aid and investment policies in sub-Saharan Africa more widely.

Writings on post-war Japanese politics have tended to take for granted the dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as inevitable, without questioning how this came about. This book analyses the nature of Japanese party politics over the first four decades following the Second World War, assessing how the chief contenders – the conservative LDP and the socialists JSP (Japan Socialist Party) – competed in terms of their strengths and weaknesses relative to the other. Throughout, it addresses the questions: How effectively were the parties’ strengths harnessed? How did they alter over time? To what extent was the winning formula challenged? Did the loser have access to strengths with a major potential, and, if so, why did these remain underdeveloped? It extends widely to include discussion of the political system, the social and economic environment in which parties operated, internal party matters, especially factions, personal support groups, special interest groups, and the role of government bureaucracy. It shows why the Liberal Democratic Party was dominant, why the Japan Socialist Party remained out of power, and how successive prime ministers conducted policymaking in ways which often resulted in the bureaucracy taking the lead. Overall, the book shows how precedents for the political system and for policymaking were set in this important period, precedents which continue, and which have contributed significantly to the present conservative stance on many key issues.

Political scandals, governmental instability and the poison-gas attack in central Tokyo show that Japan is passing through a serious social crisis. It affects virtually every social unit: family, school, company, political parties, religions and the nation. And it worries every segment of the population, young and old, men and women, management and labour, the elite and the plebe. Among other things, workers are growing dissatisfied with company life, families are undermined by discord and divorce, even the ruling Liberal Democratic Party collapsed (as did many of its opponents). The Japanese are ever harder to lead and the politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen who once led them are increasingly ineffective. Thus, while many reforms are mooted, and some are initiated, very few are actually implemented. Under these conditions, the many negative trends cannot be halted - let alone reversed - and the crisis should worsen.

This innovative, interdisciplinary introduction to East Asian politics uses a thematic approach to describe the political development of China, Japan, and Koreas since the mid-nineteenth century and analyze the social, cultural, political, and economic features of each country. Unlike standard comparative politics texts which often lack a unifying theme and employ Western conventions of the 'state', "Political Systems of East Asia" avoids these limitations and identifies a common thread running through the histories of China, Korea, and Japan. This common thread is Confucianism, which has shaped East Asian perspectives of the universe and how it operates. The text describes and explains the ways in which each country has employed this shared tradition, and how it has affected the country's internal dynamics, responses to the outside world, and its own political development.

The politics of Japan are less widely reported than its economics. Most people are aware of the economic 'miracle' following the Second World War, whereby Japan became the second largest economy in the world after the United States, and the economic stagnation of the early 1990s is also well known. But it is difficult to make sense of these phenomena without a knowledge of the political system and the ways in which it works in practice. Containing an introductory essay, an essay on theories of Japanese politics and over 250 A-Z entries, the Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Japan remedies this imbalance, and answers the need for an accessible work of reference bringing together information and authoritative analysis on all aspects of the politics of Japan and the Japanese political system. Including a fully annotated bibliography to guide the user to further reading, the entries are thoroughly cross-referenced and indexed, and are supplemented with maps and tables, to ensure that the Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Japan is essential reading for all scholars and students of the politics and international relations of Japan.

Richardson refutes the widely accepted hypothesis that postwar Japan has been a semiauthoritarian and consensual state, arguing that Japanese political life has been extremely fragmented and discordant at all levels.

The volume opens with a detailed autobiographical sketch of the author's original 'meeting with Japan', which began in 1961after taking up a post at ANU, Canberra (the result of a successful response to an advert in the Manchester Guardian). After twenty-one years in Australia, Arthur Stockwin moved back to the UK to take the chair of the then recently-established Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies. He was to be in post there also for twenty one years, his retirement coinciding with publication of his Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Japan (Routledge, 2003).

Is Japan re-emerging as a normal, or even a great, military power in regional and global security affairs? This Adelphi Paper assesses the overall trajectory of Japan’s security policy over the last decade, and the impact of a changing Japanese military posture on the stability of East Asia. The paper examines Japan’s evolving security debate, set against the background of a shifting international environment and domestic policymaking system; the status of Japan’s national military capabilities and constitutional prohibitions; post-Cold War developments in the US Japan alliance; and Japan’s role in multilateral regional security dialogue, UN PKO, and US-led coalitions of the willing. It concludes that Japan is undoubtedly moving along the trajectory of becoming a more assertive military power, and that this trend has been accelerated post-9/11. Japan is unlikely, though, to channel its military power through greatly different frameworks than at present. Japan will opt for the enhanced, and probably inextricable, integration of its military capabilities into the US Japan alliance, rather than pursuing options for greater autonomy or multilateralism. Japan’s strengthened role as the defensive shield for the offensive sword of US power projection will only serve to bolster US military hegemony in East Asia and globally.