Full Description
Japan lives twice. Japan belonged to the East before 1962, when The Economist's editorialized, "Consider Japan". It gave the world a warning-cum-welcoming signal to Japan about joining the West. Thereafter Japan belonged to the West in science, industry and international law, whereas Japan was regarded psychologically in the West as belonging to the East in sakura, sushi, and snow country. After 1992, the morning after the bubble collapse, Japan belonged to the new West, not bereft of mishaps and mistakes and embedded with stall and stagnation as the rest of the old West. Yet Japan has been going through the "lost three decades" of muddling through recession and deflation, as if Japan had trod the Dengist path to "hide your strength and bide your time" without loud fanfare. By 2022 Japan will come up quietly as the oasis of stability when the world is struggling with climate change and infectious disease diffusion in addition to its decline from the overconfidence of its own capabilities. Japan has emerged, combining its aggregate niches of technology of its own erstwhile dominant manufacturing, further enhanced by technological prowess obtained by massive foreign direct investment due to sluggish domestic market demand. In examining Japanese politics in comparative angle, this book starts by asking: from the East to the West, and then whither?
Contents
List of Figure - List of Tables - Acknowledgements - Introduction - The Pragmatic Evolution of Japanese Democratic Politics - 1945: Post-World War II Japan - Globalization and Cultural Nationalism - Clash of Values across Civilizations - The Emergence of Comparative Politics in Japan - Comparisons with Asian and Non-Asian Societies: The United States, Australia, Japan, Russia, China, and India - An Evidence-Based Typology of Asian Societies: What Do Asian Societies Look Like from the Bottom Up instead of Top Down? - Political Theory: Conversations between the Normative and the Empirical - Democracy and the Development of Political Science in Japan - Political Science in Three Democracies: Disaffected (Japan), Third-Wave (South Korea), and Possibly Fledgling (China) - Social Science Infrastructure: East Asia and the Pacific (Research and Teaching) - Foreseeing Perspective (Voir pour Prevoir) - Index.
