This book is a community study that in its own right illuminates various facets of political change and dynamics even in Japanese national life, and points out various fruitful directions for further studies of Japanese town and urban politics. The work was written for the dual purpose of developing a theory of community power structure and political change and of understanding and describing the politics of a small Japanese town.

Common misconceptions about Japan begin with the notion that it is a "small" country (it's actually lager than Great Britain, Germany or Italy) and end with pronouncements that the Japanese think differently and have different values-they do things differently because that's the way they are. Steven Reed takes on the task of demystifying Japanese culture and behavior. Through examples that are familiar to an American audience and his own personal encounters with the Japanese, he argues that the apparent oddity of Japanese behavior flows quite naturally from certain objective conditions that are different from those in the United States. Mystical allegations about national character are less useful for understanding a foreign culture than a close look at specific situations and conditions. Two aspects of the Japanese economy have particularly baffled Americans: that Japanese workers have "permanent employment" and that the Japanese government cooperates with big business. Reed explains these phenomena in common sense terms. He shows how they developed historically, why they continue, and why they helped produce economic growth. He concludes that these practices are not as different from what happens in the United States as they may appear.

This book seeks to explain how politics actually operates in the Japanese Diet using the author's bilayer theory or dual power structure theory. It is about how politics in Japan operates behind closed doors and how laws are actually made in the Diet. While some parts of the process remain hidden-subterfuge is inherently part of politics-the author uses interviews with party officials, current and former kokkai taisaku-inkai committee members of all parties in the Diet to elucidate the process as much as possible.

First published in 1999, this book offers a new study of local government in Japan. There is an enormous amount of information about Japanese local government that has not yet appeared in English. With the author’s local familiarity, elected local officials and local residents have been extraordinarily open and forthcoming. This allows a rethinking of the topic by mobilising a multitude of solid factual material. Japan has dealt with the dramatically increased public sector, but has done so in a setting of institutional centralisation. How has central authority sought to find ways of managing the continuous expansion of state activities? How have local authorities responded to central government’s initiative in integrating state administration? The answers the book gives to these questions present an alternative understanding of Japanese local government.

Drawing on interviews with one hundred young Japanese women engaged in a spectrum of voluntary political groups, Susan J. Pharr explores how politically active women overcome the constraints that bar or limit the political participation of the average woman. The book treats political volunteers as agents of social change in a process of role redefinition by which prevailing concepts of women's roles gradually adjust to accommodate political behavior. Tracing developments that led to the grant of suffrage and other political rights to women during the Allied occupation, Pharr sets the stage for an analysis of that process as it unfolds in the experience of individual women. She uses women's images of self and society and issues of political and gender role socialization, career and life expectations, and political role and participation to develop a three-fold typology for looking at political women in Japan. She examines both the satisfactions of political volunteerism—from the exhilaration of addressing a crowd from a sound truck to the pleasure of speaking "men's language"—and the psychological and social costs associated with it. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

The authors of this book have joined together for a third time to produce a book on Japanese political parties and elections. The first two books under the title of The Japanese Party System were also published by Westview Press in 1986 and 1992. This book, Japan's New Party System, has a different purpose than the previous volumes. The first two books had as their task the presentation of a vast amount of material on the various parties of the 1955-1993 party system. Since 1955, Japanese politics and parties had been rather uneventful and predictable; consequently, many Japanese political scientists preferred to study other nations. Decade after decade, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ruled Japan while the permanent opposition party, the Japan Socialist Party GSP) revolved around it but could never even come close to replacing it in power on the national level. All of this changed in 1993 after the LOP split, new parties emerged and formed a non-LOP government, and a new party system began. This book is about the Second Party System and how Japanese politics has changed from the old LOP-dominated First Party System.

This book explains why no opposition party has been able to offer itself as a sustained challenger in Japan.