Social Science Japan Journal - recent issues

Editorial

Hiroshi, I. — 2009-05-16

Does It Matter Who Cares? A Comparison of Daughters versus Daughters-in-Law in Japanese Elder Care

LONG, S. O., CAMPBELL, R., Chie, N. — 2009-05-16

Japan's mass longevity has led to significant changes regarding the care of frail older people. In 2000, the state created a mandatory Long-Term Care Insurance program designed to provide home-based and institutional services. It has not, however, eliminated the centrality of family assistance and the question for many families remains: who will do what for frail elderly relatives? This paper examines the widespread notion that caregiving by a daughter is a better option for family care than caregiving by a daughter-in-law. As part of a larger study of family care under the new long-term care insurance system, we interviewed 14 caregiver–care recipient pairs in which the caregiver was a daughter or a daughter-in-law. In this paper, we compare the two groups regarding how they became the caregiver, their use of long-term care services and the difficulties and positive outcomes of caregiving they have experienced. We find that what the caregivers do and the difficulties of providing support to their relative are largely similar, but that they differ in the emotional and relational aspects of the caregiving experience.

Negotiating What's 'Natural': Persistent Domestic Gender Role Inequality in Japan

NORTH, S. — 2009-05-16

The burden of family work in Japan falls disproportionately on wives, even those who work full time and have relatively high incomes. Japanese household gender culture shows little of the progress toward equality seen in other industrialized nations and this is contributing to delayed family formation and low birth rates. This study of dual-income Japanese families with young children found a degree of increased mutuality in family work being negotiated. Nevertheless, couples’ actions continue to be oriented strongly to symbols of patriarchal prestige, such as husbands’ birth order position and breadwinner status. To the extent that they embraced tradition, respondents’ negotiations were colored by gender displays that preserved the certainties of historically contextualized gender identities and reproduced their associated unequal family work differentials.

Japanese Perceptions of Trafficking in Persons: An Analysis of the 'Demand' for Sexual Services and Policies for Dealing with Trafficking Survivors

Nami, O., Keiko, H. — 2009-05-16

This paper analyzes and discusses Japanese people's awareness on issues relating to human trafficking, based on the results from a 2006 nationwide survey on perceptions on trafficking and prostitution, conducted by the National Women's Education Center of Japan. First, we summarize prior studies on Japanese people's awareness regarding sex and sexual behavior, and then, based on the findings of our survey, we clarify both the conditions surrounding male demands for sexual services and the consciousness of Japanese society overall in supporting those conditions. Additionally, we analyze people's attitudes regarding different approaches to dealing with survivors of human trafficking. Finally, we discuss the kinds of information necessary to educate the public so as to help eradicate human trafficking.

Law and Community in Japan: The Role of Legal Rules in Suburban Neighborhoods

Kiyoshi, H. — 2009-05-16

This article investigates how people utilize legal rules to conserve hospitable dwelling environments in suburban neighborhoods in Japan, through an examination of building agreements (kenchiku kyotei), which are private contracts between landowners. The discussions in this paper are based on a database that includes interviews with residents and government officials, as well as responses to questionnaires administered to most of the boards of the homeowners associations in Yokohama City. My findings reveal that (a) Japanese residents often take legal rules into account when facing conflicts; (b) residents are often quite familiar with legal rules; (c) when residents discuss and settle disputes, neighborhood associations play important roles and (d) residents occasionally refer to and utilize not only legal rules but also nonlegal rules. My analysis suggests that legal rules are more ubiquitous than previously thought in Japan and that social structure has a decisive influence on the way they work.

Nation or Colony? The Political Belonging of the Japanese in Karafuto

Hiroyuki, S. — 2009-05-16

This article charts the process of policy formulation regarding the political status of Japanese settlers in Karafuto, a Japanese colony in southern Sakhalin from 1905 to 1945. With a focus on the voices of colonists themselves, I analyze the ups and downs of their political movement to obtain the franchise to vote from 1924 to 1945. From the early 1920s, Japanese residents in Karafuto demanded representation in the National Assembly (Diet). They claimed that since the island's majority population was Japanese, settler–colonists possessed the full rights of Japanese citizens (unlike Karafuto's Indigenous Peoples, the Taiwanese or the Koreans). However, before granting the franchise, the central government stipulated a change in Karafuto's administrative status, from colony to unit of local administration. This condition prompted Japanese settler–colonists to resist full political integration with the mother country due to economic dependence on the Karafuto Colonial Government's development and public works projects.

By-Elections in Japan

JOU, W. — 2009-05-16

By-elections have received relatively scarce scholarly attention, and common features identified by existing works largely derive from studies of Western countries with relatively stable patterns of party competition. The following pages contribute to the literature by examining by-elections in the Japanese House of Representatives since electoral reform in 1994. Changing patterns of party competition adds interest to observing by-elections taking place in the context of an evolving two-party system. The paper discusses how results from Japanese by-elections conform to, or deviate from, expectations based on findings from previous studies, in terms of the frequency and direction of seat changes, the turnout rates, the presence of minor party and independent candidates and the timing of by-elections during the legislative period. It then tests the impact of these factors, along with government approval ratings and macroeconomic indicators, on governing party performance in by-elections. The number of candidates, cabinet support and prefecture-level unemployment rates are found to exert a significant influence. Separate analysis is also carried out for by-elections characterized by head-to-head contests between the two major parties.

The Timely Discourse of an 'Ambivalent Savant': Osatake Takeki

VANOVERBEKE, D. — 2009-05-16

Nonregular Workers and Inequality in Japan

WEATHERS, C. — 2009-05-16

Entrepreneurial States: Reforming Corporate Governance in France, Japan, and Korea

VOGEL, S. K. — 2009-05-16

Law in Japan: A Turning Point

UPHAM, F. K. — 2009-05-16

Seikatsu Hogo no Keizai Bunseki (The Economics of Public Assistance in Japan)

Yoshiya, S., Arata, T. — 2009-05-16

Escape from Work: Freelancing Youth and the Challenge to Corporate Japan

WHITELAW, G. H. — 2009-05-16

I'm Married to Your Company! Everyday Voices of Japanese Women

GOLDSTEIN-GIDONI, O. — 2009-05-16

Families in Japan: Changes, Continuities and Regional Variations

MARTIN, R. — 2009-05-16

Utsuri yuku 'Kyoyo' (Changes in 'Cultural Literacy')

ASKEW, D. — 2009-05-16

Media no naka no Manga: Shinbun Hito-koma Manga no Sekai (Comic Art in the Media: The World of Single-Panel Newspaper Cartoons)

STEWART, R. — 2009-05-16

Local Citizenship in Recent Countries of Immigration: Japan in Comparative Perspective

Yuka, I. — 2009-05-16

Gurobarujidai no Nihonshakai to Kokuseki (Japanese Society and Nationality in the Age of Globalization)

Chikako, K. — 2009-05-16

Shokuminchiki Taiwan ni okeru Seinendan to Chiiki no Hen'yo (Youth Association and Transformation of Local Communities in Colonial Taiwan)

MATSUDA, H. — 2009-05-16

The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II

BROOK, T. — 2009-05-16

Erratum

2009-05-16

Acknowledgement of Referees

2009-05-16

Personnel Management Reforms in Japanese Supermarkets: The Positional Warfare and Limited Assimilation of Conversational Communities

KIM, Y. — 2008-11-20

The Japanese general merchandising stores (GMS) industry has, in the 2000s, introduced new personnel management policies based on the principle of determining employee status and treatment according to ‘working conditions rather than employment arrangements’. This paper analyzes the substance and features of the new policies, as well as the factors underlying such policy reforms. By focusing on micropolitics at the workplace level, this paper highlights the possibility that the unofficial power of part-timers may underlie these reforms. The Japanese supermarket industry has increasingly been relying on the transformation of part-time employees into their main workforce both in volume and in substance in order to reduce labor costs. In the supermarket industry, these new personnel management policies serve both to contain the unofficial power of part-time employees through a limited assimilation of core part-timers and to stabilize the profit structure. In addition, the new policies, which offer preferential treatment to employees who are able to accept transfers involving changes of residence, reinforce the gender differentiation that previously adhered to the underside of employment arrangements while weakening notions of differential status based on employment arrangements.

Gender in the Meiji Renovation: Confucian 'Lessons for Women' and the Making of Modern Japan

Sumiko, S. — 2008-11-20

From the early Tokugawa period onward, the expression, ‘The hen does not announce the morning. The crowing of a hen in the morning indicates the subversion of the family’ from the Shujing (Book of Documents) was frequently called upon as a warning. At the height of the Tokugawa period, Ogyu Sorai deployed the authority of the Confucian Classics to subject the daimyo houses' ‘inner quarters’ (oku) to a scorching critique. But in conjunction with the Sanno Gaiki (Secret History of the Three Rulers), attributed to his student Dazai Shundai, Sorai's Seidan (Discourse on Government) could also be perceived as targeting the house of the shogun. While the anonymous author of the Sanno Gaiki meant to expose the sorry state of the shogun's rule, Sorai's Seidan offered a vision of what government ought to be like. Calls to remove ‘the hens’ from the inner sphere of power now rapidly grew in volume. Against this background, the ‘Meiji Renovation’ (Meiji ishin) must also be understood as an attempt to eliminate, in the diction of the times, ‘the power of the women’ (joken) from the deep recesses of the government's power structure, and to reaffirm the power (of men) which alone was considered legitimate. Thus, after their seizure of power, the imperial restorationists hurried to crush what they called ‘the power of women already lasting for centuries’ and moved an empress who ‘does not poke her beak into matters of government’ to the front instead. Ultimately, a program to educate ‘good mothers and good wives’, drawing on examples from Japan, China and the West alike, was embarked upon with the empress at its head.

Bushido Baseball? Three 'Fathers' and the Invention of a Tradition

BLACKWOOD, T. — 2008-11-20

Japanese baseball is often presented as an example of an unchanging Japanese ‘national character’, and Japanese baseball players are depicted as contemporary versions of the samurai, living and playing baseball according to a code of ‘yakyudo’ (‘the way of baseball’, thought to be a present-day incarnation of bushido, ‘the way of the warrior’) by both Japanese and non-Japanese commentators alike. In this paper, however, I argue that rather than Japanese baseball's ideology and practices being reflective of a unique and unchanging ‘essence’ of Japan, they are the result of specific individuals and institutions interacting under particular historical and social forces. Moreover, although the dominant ideology in Japanese baseball has been couched in the rhetoric of bushido for over 100 years, it is in fact closer to 19th-century Western notions of amateurism, sportsmanship and chivalrous masculinity than the ethos of samurai of earlier centuries. This is largely due to the efforts of Christian socialist Abe Iso, considered to be both the ‘father of Japanese socialism’ and the ‘father of Japanese baseball’, as well as his students Tobita Suishu and Saeki Tatsuo, known as the ‘father of student baseball’ and the ‘father of high school baseball’, respectively.

The Burden of Social Capital: Visa Overstaying Among Fujian Chinese Students in Japan

LIU-FARRER, G. — 2008-11-20

This paper provides a sociological analysis of the student visa-overstaying phenomenon among Fujian Chinese immigrants in Japan. Since the mid-1980s, international education has been an important channel of migration from China to Japan. With the rapid increase of Chinese students in Japan, student visa overstaying has also become a major source of undocumented migration. Student visa overstaying is particularly visible among Chinese students from the Southeast coastal province, Fujian. This paper probes into this phenomenon by examining Fujian immigrants’ migration network characteristics. It argues that the social capital that facilitates migration and secures the livelihood for immigrants can become a liability prohibiting them from achieving upward mobility in the host society. Fujian immigrant social network closure cultivates and maintains a norm that positively sanctions undocumented immigration and provides resources that make it difficult for Fujian immigrants to maintain legal status.

Food Security and International Fisheries Policy in Japan's Postwar Planning

SMITH, R. D. — 2008-11-20

Japanese fisheries and food-security policy objectives of the postwar era were first conceived during the Allied Occupation and negotiations for the San Francisco Treaty. Official Japanese planning was largely concerned with food security, involving a high degree of self-sufficiency in fisheries in order to reduce the economic burden imposed by importing necessary food resources. The San Francisco Treaty provided the architecture for international fisheries relations in the North Pacific, whereby the US–Japan–Canada Trilateral Fisheries Agreement had set an important precedent through its support for freedom of the seas, resulting in Japan's largely unrestricted access to fishing grounds around the world.

The LDP's Defeat in Crucial Single-seat Constituencies of the 2007 Upper House Election

Ryosuke, I., Ikuo, K. — 2008-11-20

This paper attempts to clarify and analyze the major factors behind the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) huge loss and the Democratic Party of Japan's (DPJ) overwhelming win in the single-seat constituencies (there are a total of 29 throughout the country), the results that decided the final outcome of the 21st House of Councilors Election held on 29 July 2007. Analysis of the election results reveals that, first, there was a shift in support from the LDP to the DPJ among primary-industry and construction workers, who were hard hit by the structural reform drive under the Koizumi and Abe administrations, and second, that since ‘unified local elections’ had taken place a few months earlier, many LDP supporters, tired out by their efforts in local-level elections, lost interest in the Upper House election and did not go to the polls (a situation known as the ‘Year of the Boar phenomenon’).

The Debate over Japan's War Responsibility

Toshikazu, I. — 2008-11-20

Reexamining Japanese International Relations in the Interwar Period

Kayo, Y. — 2008-11-20

Rekishi de Kangaeru (Thinking with History)

Junnosuke, M. — 2008-11-20

Japan's Imperial Forest Goryorin, 1889-1945

Keiichi, K. — 2008-11-20

Agriculture in the Modernization of Japan (1850-2000)

FRANCKS, P. — 2008-11-20

Community and State in the Japanese Farm Village: Farm Tenancy Conciliation (1924-1938)

Hiroshi, T. — 2008-11-20

Bankrupting the Enemy: The U.S. Siege of Japan before Pearl Harbor

Satoshi, H. — 2008-11-20

Kindai Nihon to Kika Seido (Naturalization in Modern Japan)

Kazuaki, H. — 2008-11-20

Saiban to Shakai: Shiho no 'Joshiki' no Saiko (Litigation and Society: Reconsidering the 'Common Sense' of the Japanese Judiciary)

Tomohiko, M. — 2008-11-20

Kaishaho Nyumon (Introduction to Company Law)

Wataru, T. — 2008-11-20

Japan's Aggressive Legalism: Law and Foreign Trade Politics beyond the WTO

Junji, N. — 2008-11-20

Client State: Japan in the American Embrace

Hideki, K. — 2008-11-20

Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia

KUO, Y. — 2008-11-20

The New Community Firm: Employment, Governance and Management Reform in Japan

JACKSON, G. — 2008-11-20

Corporate Governance in Japan: Institutional Change and Organizational Diversity

CULPEPPER, P. D. — 2008-11-20

The Fable of the Keiretsu: Urban Legends of the Japanese Economy

HOSHI, T. — 2008-11-20

Globalisation and Japanese Organisational Culture: An Ethnography of a Japanese Corporation in France

CONNOLLY, T. H. — 2008-11-20

Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World

Akira, S. — 2008-11-20

Zainichi Korean Ethnicity and Identity

LIM, Y. — 2008-11-20

Queer Voices from Japan: First-Person Narratives from Japan's Sexual Minorities

Akiko, S. — 2008-11-20

Niito tte iu na! (Don't call us NEET!)

LUNSING, W. — 2008-11-20

Gakureki to Kakusa-Fubyodo: Seijukusuru Nihongata Gakureki Shakai (Education and Social Inequality: Contemporary Educational Credentialism in Japan)

FUKUZAWA, R. E. — 2008-11-20

Erratum

2008-11-20

Introduction: Social Science Matters

MANZENREITER, W., WIECZOREK, I. — 2008-06-10

From Class Struggle to General Middle-Class Society to Divided Society: Societal Models of Inequality in Postwar Japan

CHIAVACCI, D. — 2008-06-10

After the fierce class struggles in the first postwar years, a societal model describing Japan as a general middle-class society with outstanding equality in opportunities and outcome became dominant. In recent years, a new societal model of Japan as a divided society has replaced this general middle-class model. Nonetheless, empirical research and comparative studies neither fully support a model of Japan as an exceptionally equal society from the 1960s onward nor do they show a fundamental transformation of contemporary Japan into a socially divided society. This paper argues that the sequence and timing of societal models of inequality in Japan since 1945 reflect the degree of resonance that societal models of inequality have in the lifeworlds of society.

Physical Anthropology and the Reconstruction of Japanese Identity in Postcolonial Japan

NANTA, A. — 2008-06-10

This article will attempt to show how Japanese identity was conceptualised within the theories and models of Japanese physical anthropology after the fall of the colonial empire in 1945 as part of the broader debate about the ‘origins of the Japanese’. Whereas at the time of the colonial empire, researchers considered that the ‘Japanese people’ had arrived on the archipelago during the proto-history of the archipelago, after the late 1940s, major researchers such as Hasebe Kotondo, president of the Tokyo Anthropological Society, stated that the Japanese had never known any interbreeding and form an uninterrupted line of descent since the Palaeolithic period. This theory was transformed into a model during the 1950s and 1960s by Suzuki Hisashi of the University of Tokyo, using the concept of microevolution and the craniometrical analysis of thousands of skeletons discovered after the war. It then became the dominant paradigm from the 1950s to the 1970s. However, at the same time, researchers from old colonial universities in Taipei and Seoul formulated an opposing model, based on the work of Kanaseki Takeo, who thought the Japanese people were the product of interbreeding, as the excavations he led in western Japan tended to show. This idea was further developed by Hanihara Kazuro in his Dual Structure Model and then by several geneticists from the 1980s–1990s onwards. This, therefore, permitted an alternative to the ‘homogeneous people’ paradigm, but at the same time showed a persistence towards the concept of ‘race’ within the research on ethnogenesis, as well as what must be called an obsession with identity that goes beyond variations between models in physical anthropology.

The Politics of Political Knowledge: Exploring the Boundaries of Academic Inquiry into Japanese Politics in the Early Postwar Period

TAKEDA, H., HOOK, G. D. — 2008-06-10

The academic knowledge of politics, including the study of Japanese politics, is mobilized by a range of actors in order to articulate the nature of political boundaries. How these boundaries are set is important for our understanding of the politics of political knowledge in Japan. The purpose of this article thus is to analyze how academics engaged in inquiry into Japanese politics have sought to define the scope of their studies by separating the study of politics from other activities by drawing boundaries in a way meant to settle the tension between academic inquiry and the act of politics. By exploring the boundaries set through these different academic endeavors, the article seeks to illuminate the distinguishing features of the academic inquiry into Japanese politics up to the 1960s.

Quality Assessment and Assurance in Japanese Universities: The Plight of the Social Sciences

Akiyoshi, Y. — 2008-06-10

Japanese universities are currently experiencing rapid development in quality assessment and assurance activities. In 2004, the national government introduced corporate-style governance into national universities, accompanied by a new evaluation scheme to be carried out by both a governmental committee and a national agency called the National Institution for Academic Degrees and University Evaluation. Most local public universities operated by prefectures and cities have also adopted corporate-style governance and face pressure from local assemblies to engage in formal performance assessment. Furthermore, since 2004 the Japanese government has required seven-year, cyclical ‘certified evaluations’ (accreditation) for all national, local public and private universities and colleges. This certified evaluation is implemented at the institutional level and applies to new and evolving forms of professional post-graduate education programmes. Project-based funding schemes, such as ‘Centres of Excellence (COEs)’ in research and ‘Good Practices’ in various other education programmes are regarded as indirect forms of performance assessment. Despite the implementation of these initiatives, however, the means by which the quality of university education and research is best assessed remains the subject of hot debate, especially within the humanities and social sciences. This article considers the latest initiatives in quality assessment and assurance of education and research activities in Japan, focusing on policy and administrative reform and the particular challenges faced by the social sciences.

Reflections on the Trajectories of Social Science Research in Contemporary Japan

MANZENREITER, W., WIECZOREK, I. — 2008-06-10

This survey on the science of the social sciences in Japan reflects upon a largely invisible discourse that has been hardly systematically explored so far. Since the current transformation of the field is first of all a reaction to a new global political economy of science, we introduce the concept of ‘academic neo-colonialism’ for a critical assessment of the vested and ramified dynamics impacting the social sciences. The survey features a short review of major contributions to the science of the social sciences, and evidence of the dynamics and consequences of the current process of change within the fields of social science demand, the academic division of labour and Japan's position within the international academic world. We argue that the apparent passivity of Japan's social sciences as well as the asymmetrical global flows of people, texts and ideas are a reflection of Japan's semi-peripheral position in the world system of the social sciences.

‘Science is in danger, and for that reason it is becoming dangerous’ (Bourdieu 2004: vii).

Fairness versus Freedom: Constitutional Implications of Internet Electioneering for Japan

Takaaki, O. — 2008-06-10

In recent years, there has been an increasing trend for legal scholars in Japan to question and reconsider the extreme strictness of electioneering regulations, which has been maintained since the prewar period. Under these circumstances, what is termed Internet electioneering started to garner attention because of its possibility of realizing the two conflicting ideas of the freedom and fairness of elections. On the other hand, Internet electioneering does not necessarily receive an unqualified endorsement from constitutional scholars. In particular, some republican standpoints have inquired whether the Internet diminishes the constitutional guarantees of the democratic process. With regard to such concerns, this article examines the constitutional validity of the development of Internet electioneering in Japanese politics.

Two Paths towards Understanding the Importance of Civil Government

Noboru, S. — 2008-06-10

Deciphering Maruyama Masao: The Challenge of Originality

KERSTEN, R. — 2008-06-10

Lever of Empire: The International Gold Standard and the Crisis of Liberalism in Prewar Japan

Masanao, I. — 2008-06-10

Kingdom of Beauty: Mingei and the Politics of Folk Art in Imperial Japan

KIKUCHI, Y. — 2008-06-10

A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People

Koichiro, M. — 2008-06-10

Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism, and Borders

MARK, E. — 2008-06-10

War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005

SAALER, S. — 2008-06-10

Japan's Contested Memories: The 'Memory Rifts' in Historical Consciousness of World War II

BEN-ARI, E. — 2008-06-10

Kita Chosen e no Ekusodasu: 'Kikoku Jigyo' no Kage o Tadoru (Exodus to North Korea: Tracing the Shadows of the 'Returnee' Project) * Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan's Cold War

Haruki, W. — 2008-06-10

Pilgrimages and Spiritual Quests in Japan

Naoko, K. — 2008-06-10

Making Pilgrimage: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku

Yasuhiro, A. — 2008-06-10

Genders, Transgenders and Sexualities in Japan

Masakazu, T. — 2008-06-10

Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization

Shuhei, H. — 2008-06-10

Japanese Love Hotels: A Cultural History

REISEL, M. — 2008-06-10

Ethnography at Work

Atsushi, S. — 2008-06-10

Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army

Fumika, S. — 2008-06-10

Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

ALLEN, M. — 2008-06-10

The Political Economy of Japan's Low Fertility

Shigemi, K. — 2008-06-10

Shoshi Korei Shakai no Mienai Kakusa (Invisible Inequalities in an Aging, Low Fertility Society)

SCHOPPA, L. J. — 2008-06-10

Erratum

2008-06-10