“This is a nuts and bolts textbook in the best sense of the term. ... It is bound to be a great boon both to teachers and students of contemporary Japanese politics.” —from the Foreword by Haruhiro Fukui This timely volume is the first book in nearly twenty-five years to focus on the party system of Japan. In the past two decades, the Japanese political scene has undergone a dramatic transformation. What had been a two-party system proliferated during the 1960s and 1970s into a seven-party system. This book provides a comprehensive look at all of Japan’s current major and minor national-level parties. For the first time in English, detailed analyses are presented on the Democratic Socialists, the Clean Government party (KÅmeitÅ), and the New Liberal Club. Thorough coverage is provided for parties in the “1955 System”—the ruling Liberal Democratic party and the two long-term opposition parties, the Socialists and the Communists. Many of the new miniparties that have appeared in recent elections are also discussed. Japanese Political Parties gives readers a solid understanding of party histories, leadership, and internal organization, as well as a look at prospects for the future. The party discussions are preceded by three chapters on the laws and political forces affecting Japanese politics. Chapter 1 describes the basic characteristics of the Japanese party system since 1945 and provides an overview of Japanese voting behavior and political values. Chapter 2 describes the “rules of the game”—the electoral laws—and discusses the ongoing political problem of malapportionment. Chapter 3 interprets data on political finance in contemporary Japan. Along with a wealth of information and interpretation, the authors offer insight into the common patterns Japan shares with democracies around the world, placing the Japanese system within the larger context of world party systems. Designed for courses on Japanese politics, this text should also prove useful to students of comparative politics and political parties.

The Evolution of Japan's Party System analyses the transition by examining both party politics and public policy. This volume discusess how older parties such as the LDP and the Japan Socialist Party failed to adapt to the new policy environment of the 1990s.

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.

The Japanese political system is a parliamentary democracy and was the first western style government in Asia when the parliamentary system was adopted in the 1880s. It has a multiparty system, free elections, and a parliament that functions much the same way that any other democratic parliament functions, however for much of its existence the Japanese party system has been dominated by one party. This fact is crucial to understanding contemporary politics in Japan, especially since the long term ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party, is once again back in power. This book presents an up-to-date analysis of the political parties that make up the Japanese party system and their impact on Japanese politics and government. Given that the executive branch is selected as a result of the pattern of party numbers in the parliament, to understand Japanese politics and policy, one must first know the nature of the ruling and opposition parties and their leaders. Indeed, in the past decade the quality of Japan’s government has been closely associated with the strengths and weaknesses of Japan’s prime ministers and the dominant party in the system. This book focuses on a central question: why Japanese politics and government has been so dysfunctional in the past two decades? With this question in mind, the chapters provide key background information on Japanese politics and political parties; discuss each of the major political parties that have governed Japan since 1955; and finally, examine the December 2012 House of Representatives elections that returned the LDP to power, and the differences between the First (1955-1993) and the Second Post War Party Systems (1993- ). Party Politics in Japan provides a comprehensive analysis of the past sixty years of Japanese party politics. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese politics and Asian politics, as well as to those interested in political parties and political systems more broadly.

In this sophisticated theoretical work, Masaru Kohno presents a systematic reexamination of the evolution of party politics in Japan since the end of the second World War. Because of the long one-party dominance by the Liberal Democratic Party, Japan's parliamentary democracy has often been viewed as unique in the developed world, and most of the existing studies of Japanese party politics have addressed such determinants as its political culture, historical background, and socio-ideological cleavages. According to the author, these explanations do not adequately account for some of the most important changes that took place in Japanese party politics during the postwar period. This study advances an alternative set of interpretations based on a microanalytic approach that highlights the incentive and bargaining power of individual political actors, and their competitive and strategic behavior under existing institutional constraints. According to Kohno, the evolution of political life in postwar Japan depends on the same factors that are acknowledged to be at work in other industrialized nations. He reveals, through detailed case studies of government formation processes and statistical examinations of candidate nomination patterns, that the microanalytic approach can establish forward-looking and internally consistent interpretations of the postwar development of Japanese party politics. Because Japan has usually been treated as a country of unique cultural, historical, and societal characteristics, the analyses of this study point to the broader applicability of the microanalytic approach in the field of comparative politics, especially for the exploration of party competition in advanced industrial democracies.

This widely used text is an even-handed, forthright attempt to explain the political life of Japan as well as the forces that shape it. It demystifies this complex society by explaining the historical background for modern Japan; the political process, its formal structure, the party system, and citizen participation; the social order and the domestic economy; and Japan's role in international politics with emphasis on U.S.-Japanese relations and the international economy. The revised and updated Third Edition covers the new ground of 1995-1999, a period during which Japan experienced extraordinary political and economic change.

Some fledging democracies in the world have encountered setbacks due to political parties trying to grapple with the expectations of sophisticated electorates and introducing gradual political reforms over the years. This book describes how democracy is evolving in East Asia and how it assumes different forms in different countries, with political parties adapting and evolving alongside. It has a two-fold intent. First, it contends that the existing variety of party systems in East Asia will endure and may even flourish, rather than converge as liberal democracies. Second, it highlights the seeming political durability of one party systems OCo unlike two-part or multi-party systems in the US and Europe OCo and their enduring predominance in countries such as Cambodia, China, Singapore and Vietnam.

Some fledging democracies in the world have encountered setbacks due to political parties trying to grapple with the expectations of sophisticated electorates and introducing gradual political reforms over the years.This book describes how democracy is evolving in East Asia and how it assumes different forms in different countries, with political parties adapting and evolving alongside. It has a two-fold intent. First, it contends that the existing variety of party systems in East Asia will endure and may even flourish, rather than converge as liberal democracies. Second, it highlights the seeming political durability of one party systems — unlike two-part or multi-party systems in the US and Europe — and their enduring predominance in countries such as Cambodia, China, Singapore and Vietnam.

Are we seeing the presidentialization of politics in Japan? Certainly, many recent prime ministers have demonstrated powerful leadership, notably Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe. While the phenomenon of presidentialization has been much discussed for years, the Japanese case has not received much attention in the English language. Iwasaki analyses the state of Japanese politics using the established analytical framework of presidentialization – looking at leadership power resources, leadership autonomy, and the personalization of the electoral process – and assesses the factors that have been claimed to lead to similar changes in other countries. He argues that there are also unique variables that contribute to the presidentialization of Japanese politics. Most notably, the introduction of public subsidies to political parties and electoral reform in 1994. A valuable contribution to the global scholarship on presidentialization, which will be of particular interest to scholars of Japanese politics.