Hirotaka Takeuchi

Peter F Drucker

Aurelia George Mulgan

Yoichi Funabashi

Michael E Porter

Milton Ezrati

Edward J Lincoln

Morihiro Hosokawa

Nicholas D Kristof

M Diana Helwig

Leonard J Schoppa

William H Overholt

The United States and Japan

With the advent of the second Abe administration, the question of ‘who leads’ in Japan has become much easier to answer - the Prime Minister and his executive office, backed by a substantial policy support apparatus. This rise of the ‘prime ministerial executive’ is therefore one of the most important structural changes in Japan’s political system in the post-war period. This book explains how the prime ministerial executive operates under the Abe administration and how it is contributing to Abe’s unprecedented policymaking authority. It analyses how reform of central government under Prime Ministers Nakasone, Hashimoto and Koizumi has produced the necessary institutional innovations to allow the prime minister to assert a more authoritative policy leadership, turning Japan’s traditional, decentralised and bottom-up politics on its head. Comparing the Westminster and presidential systems of governance and applying them to Japan’s contemporary politics, the book shows that whilst elements of both can be found, neither captures the essence of the transformation involved in the rise of the prime ministerial executive. Providing a thorough analysis of power in Japanese politics, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese Politics, Comparative Politics and Asian Studies.

The Abe Administration and the Rise of the Prime Ministerial Executive

This book should be read by all political scientists, journalists, economists, and students interested in contemporary Japan. Ellis S. Krauss Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies University of California, San Diego. The author takes a scalpel to dissect Japan’s dysfunctional political system. She shows with wonderful clarity and depth of knowledge why the Koizumi reforms are not succeeding, and why revolutionary political change is needed as a precondition for economic recovery. The book should be required reading for anyone involved with contemporary Japan. J.A.A. Stockwin University of Oxford -- Publisher's description.

Koizumi and the Politics of Economic Reform

Japan’s Failed Revolution

Aims to tell the 'inside story' of a Japanese politician - Matsuoka Toshikatsu - one of the more controversial members of Japan's national Diet, and who's behaviour has been the subject of much speculation and commentary in the media.

A Japanese Political Life

Power and Pork

Expectations and Realities

The US-Japan Global Partnership

Written by the world’s leading expert in the field, this book examines the evolution of Japanese agricultural policy in the post-war period, focusing particularly from the 1970s onwards when both domestic and external pressures for reform began to intensify. The author explains how the MAFF has safeguarded their institutional capacity to intervene by accommodating both public interest in agricultural policy reform alongside the interests of government in maintaining agricultural support and protection. The book provides a major reinterpretation of agricultural policy, examining how the MAFF’s role as an ‘intervention maximiser’ has been redefined in the face of continued bureaucratic involvement. Making available in English for the first time Japanese policy changes in the post-war period, the book will appeal to political economy specialists and political scientists, and those with an interest in Japanese politics and bureaucratic institutions.

Japan's Agricultural Policy Regime

Agriculture is one of the most politically powerful sectors in Japanese national politics. This book provides the first comprehensive account of the political power of Japanese farmers. This definitive text analyses the organisational and electoral bais of farmers' political power, including the role of agricultural interest groups, the mobilisation of the farm vote and links between farmers and politicians in the Diet. Agrarian power has helped to produce the distinctly pro-rural, anti-urban bias of postwar Japanese governments, resulting in a general neglect of urban consumer interests and sustained opposition to market opening for farm products. This book represents a major study of Japanese agricultural organisations in their multifarious roles as interest groups, agents of agricultural administration, electoral resource providers and mammouth business groups. It describes the policy issues that engage farmers' concerns and identifies the agricultural commodities that carry the greatest political significance.

The Politics of Agriculture in Japan

Ozawa Ichirō was the axis on which Japanese politics turned for more than two decades. He helped to reshape the electoral system, political funding rules, the evolution of the party system, the nature of executive government, the roles and powers of bureaucrats, and the conduct of parliamentary and policymaking processes. Admired and reviled in almost equal measure, Ozawa has been the most debated and yet least understood politician in Japan, with little agreement to be found amongst the many who have debated his patent political assets and palpable political flaws. This book examines the political goals, behaviour, methods and practices of Ozawa Ichirō, and in doing so, provides fascinating insights into the inner workings of Japanese politics. It explores Ozawa’s paradoxical and conflicting contributions in terms of two contrasting models of ‘old’ and ‘new’ politics. Indeed, therein lies the problem of understanding the ‘real’ Ozawa: he remained a practitioner of old politics despite his rhetorical agenda of change to bring about new politics. In seeking to unravel the Ozawa enigma, Aurelia George Mulgan reveals his primary motivations, to establish whether he sought power primarily to enact reforms, or, whether his reform goals simply disguised power-seeking objectives. This volume seeks to illuminate Ozawa’s true character as a politician, and untangle the complex elements of old and new politics that he represents. Through an in-depth study of Ozawa and his political activities, this book shows how the Japanese political system works at the micro level of individual politicians, political relationships and systems. As such it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese politics, Asian politics and political systems.

Old Versus New

Ozawa Ichirō and Japanese Politics

Aurelia George Mulgan

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