Japanese Political Philosophy

Although modern civilization has brought about great technical achievement, mankind face various problems today. It seems that humans are endlessly pursuing economic development, and they often neglect the preservation of the environment. Japan is not free from this world-wide problem. However, Japanese civilization would be able to offer an important paradigm for the future course of mankind. In particular, animism and tolerance towards religious differences seem to be vital elements for the betterment of this world.

To cooperate by giving differences a chance to show themselves because of the belief that the expression of difference is not only a right of the other persons but is a means of enriching one's life experience, is inherent in the democratic personal way of life.It was on 9 February 1919 that John Dewey, surely a principal representative of what could count as American philosophy, set foot in Japan. As the above words indicate, Dewey's idea of democracy as a way (...) of life is based upon the principle of (and faith in) the idea of mutual learning from difference. He suggests that the understanding of the inner spirit of people in different cultures, those who live in a different universe than the one we are familiar .. (shrink)

Conservadurismo y dogmática constitucional en Japón. Conservatism and the dogmatic part of constitution in Japan.

Why do human beings believe in divinities? Why do some seek eternal life, while others seek escape from recurring lives? Why do the beliefs and behaviors we typically call "religious" so deeply affect the human personality and so subtly weave their way through human society? Revised and updated in this second edition, Eight Theories of Religion considers how these fundamental questions have engaged the most important thinkers of the modern era. Accessible, systematic, and succinct, the text examines the classic interpretations (...) of religion advanced by theorists who have left a major imprint on the intellectual culture of the twentieth century. The second edition features a new chapter on Max Weber, a revised introduction, and a revised, expanded conclusion that traces the paths of further inquiry and interpretation traveled by theorists in the most recent decades.Eight Theories of Religion, Second Edition, begins with Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer--two Victorian pioneers in anthropology and the comparative study of religion. It then considers the great "reductionist" approaches of Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx, all of whom have exercised wide influence up to the present day. The discussion goes on to examine the leading challenges to reductionism as articulated by sociologist Max Weber and Romanian-American comparativist Mircea Eliade. Finally, it explores the newer methods and ideas arising from the African field studies of ethnographer E. E. Evans-Pritchard and the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz. Each chapter offers biographical background, theoretical exposition, conceptual analysis, and critical assessment. This common format allows for close comparison and careful evaluation throughout. Ideal for use as a supplementary text in introductory religion courses or as the central text in sociology of religion and courses centered on the explanation and interpretation of religion, Eight Theories of Religion, Second Edition, offers an illuminating treatment of this controversial and fascinating subject. (shrink)

Japanese nationalism after World War II emerged out of the U. S. occupation of Japan. Rather than oppressing nationalist sentiment, the U. S. occupation administration nurtured the sense of national uniqueness and continuity in Japan and helped absolve Japanese colonial guilt and war responsibility. This U S. strategy toward Japan is best symbolized by the way the emperor system was reconstructed as part of the American reign in East Asia. Although it sometimes reveals its anti-American emotion, Japanese nationalism is in (...) complicity with the US. hegemony in East Asia, in such a way that Japan’s subjugation to US. policies is further intensified as its nationalism manifests more jingoistic tendencies. Perhaps we should find an intimation of today’s global complicity of the peripheral state with the super-state in this entanglement. (shrink)

In this paper, the ethical and spiritual aspects of the trolley problem are discussed in connection with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. First, I show that the dropping of atomic bombs was a typical example of the events that contained the logic of the trolley problems in their decision-making processes and justifications. Second, I discuss five aspects of “the problem of the trolley problem;” that is to say, “Rarity,” “Inevitability,” “Safety Zone,” “Possibility of Becoming a Victim,” (...) and “Lack of Perspective of the Dead Victims Who Were Deprived of Freedom of Choice,” in detail. Third, I argue that those who talk about the trolley problem are automatically placed in the sphere of the expectation of response on the spiritual level. I hope that my contribution will shed light on the trolley problem from a very different angle, which has not been made by our fellow philosophers. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the direction which the Japanese welfare state has pursued and what it has left behind, by contrasting the points of view of two representative approaches in economics: the traditional income approach and the capability approach which has been newly proposed by Amartya Sen. In extracting the structure of the tax-social security system, the paper refers to the framework of John Rawls, precepts of “common sense of justice” and their higher principles in his (...) theory of justice. The main conclusion is that Japanese welfare state has followed universal liberalism based on continuity, the essential characteristic of the income approach, and has left behind the equality of the differences. This paper indicates that the capability approach which makes it possible to analyze the discontinuity within an individual’s life by focusing on her doings and beings is also suitable for understanding the differences among individuals. (shrink)

The debate over patriotic education in Japan is marked by power shifts between the two different political groups that have different views of the role of patriotic education. By analyzing the power shift from a historical perspective, this essay makes a point that one of the problems of the debate over patriotic education in Japan is that the debate has never been discussed in terms of the conception of patriotism.

The dissertation explores the period 1905--1935 to critically examine Japanese modern literature. I draw on newspaper accounts, popular fiction and philosophy to argue that the dominant form of aesthetic modernism in metropolitan Japan must be understood within the context of Japan's colonialism in East Asia. My research suggests that a cultural logic I call "erotic-grotesque-nonsense" from ero-guro-nansensu, or the genre name for the most popular narrative fiction written at the time, best describes this moment in Japan. I draw on the (...) work of tabloid essayists like Ishimori Sei'ichi and novelists like Yuasa Katsuhiko who were based in the Japanese colonial cities of Seoul, Korea and Dalian, China. Their concerns, including gender blurring, ethnic passing among Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and the uncanny, anticipate by some 20 years similar themes arising in metropolitan Tokyo. The body of the thesis focuses on the modernist erotic-grotesque-nonsense literature---especially the wildly popular horror/detective novels of Edogawa Rampo and Yumeno Kyusaku---and shows that it is inextricable from colonial imperialism. For example, both Rampo and Kyusaku. draw on the work of the popular sexologist Tanaka Kogai who was chief colonial psychiatrist in Taiwan from 1896--1905; colonial themes and experiences fill Tanaka's essays published in Tokyo during the 1920's. Similarly, Umehara, Hokumei's scandalous and widely 1896--1905; colonial themes and experiences fill Tanaka's essays published in Tokyo during the 1920's. Similarly, Umehara Hokumei's scandalous and widely read literary monthly Grotesque was conceived and published first in Shanghai in 1927, and highlights colonial themes and inscriptions. Edogawa Rampo's novels describe the travels of his famous detective Akechi Kogoro back and forth between Tokyo and Korea, China, and India. In considering colonial texts from the 1910's and metropolitan Tokyo from the late 1920's and early 1930's together, following post-colonial theory and cultural studies, I insist that only when Japan's colonial periphery in East Asia is treated together with the center of Tokyo in the same analytic field, can we adequately apprehend Japan's imperial modernity and the war that it spawned. (shrink)

Post-war politics in Japan since the 1960s began to highlight the "hereditary" phenomenon, after the Cold War was getting worse. "Economic power" Japan in the pursuit of "political power" in the process, actually became a "hereditary power." While the reasons for the traditional culture, social and psychological impact, but it must be said that contemporary electoral system, political parties, political and economic interests is crucial to their cause. Some of the seemingly positive factors "hereditary politics", but in fact contrary to (...) the concept of equality, which distorts the democratic spirit, talent selection and impede the channel, induced cause of political corruption, is not conducive to effective decision-making, potentially eroding the foundation of democracy in Japan. Of regime competition to become the focus of the "hereditary problem", the alarm is still at the level of knock from legislative restrictions, there is still a long way to go, can not fundamentally eliminate the short term. Today only the introduction of the selection mechanism through internal and external sound competition between political parties, and gradually enrich the competency-based, policy-based-based electoral system and party system. The hereditary phenomenon in Japanese political circles coming out from the 1960s has become more and more serious after the Cold War. In the process of pursuing political power and economic power, Japan has actually turned into a hereditary nation. There are many reasons for this phenomenon , such as the modem electoral system, party politics and its economic interests as the decisive causes besides the influence of traditional culture and social and psychological reasons. The hereditary politics has some positive impact. However, it goes against the spirit of equality, distorts the idea of ​​democracy, blocks the talent-selection channel, incurs political corruption, stands against the effective decision-making, and erodes virtually the democracy base in Japan. The hereditary politics which is frequently brought to public attention in the transition of power is still at the stage of sounding the alarm and there is still a long way to go before legal restriction. It can not been fundamentally eliminated in a short time. What can be done at present is to establish gradually a competency-based electoral system and a policy- based party system by improving competition between political parties. (shrink)

Driven by the demographic tsunami of a rapidly aging population, costs of universal healthcare in Japan have grown at an unprecedented rate. These trends are mirrored elsewhere, so industrialized countries are asking if Japan will become a global test case for healthcare delivery.

In Japan, electoral campaigning in plurality districts often appears strangely ineffective to observers. In their explanations, political scientists have so far fallen back on the proximate cause, namely the strict Public Office Election Law (K), claiming that it is this law that prohibits different and more effective campaigning. This study, however, is based on the assumption that such an explanation could be insufficient since even those campaign tactics legally allowed are often executed and/or selected in an apparently ineffective way in (...) terms of their appeal to voters. Especially when looked at from the perspective of structural learning theory, which assumes that actors adapt their behavior within stable structures by learning what works well and what does not, these observations invite further investigation. (shrink)

Vote mobilization qua local and national organizations has played an important role in postwar Japanese elections for both Houses of Parliament. However, while there is an abundant literature on personal support organizations (kôenkai) of individual politicians in the Lower House, the role of national organizations for vote mobilization in Upper House elections has so far received only scant attention. The phenomenon of the in postwar Upper House elections in Japan raises a number of questions. How important has it been in (...) terms of voting behavior? What are the factors underlying organized voting? And how has the electoral clout of national organizations changed over time? This article tries to make a modest contribution to the debate on . In particular, it addresses the proposition that the ability of national interest groups to mobilize votes has declined significantly. The main empirical point of reference in this article are the 2001 Upper House elections. (shrink)

We analyse the contention that privacy is an alien concept within Japanese society, put forward in various presentations of Japanese cultural norms at least as far back as Benedict in The chrysanthemum and the sword: patterns of Japanese culture. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1946. In this paper we distinguish between information privacy and physical privacy. As we show, there is good evidence for social norms of limits on the sharing and use of personal information (i.e. information privacy) from traditional interactions in (...) Japanese society, as well as constitutional evidence from the late 19th century (in the Meiji Constitution of 1889). In this context the growing awareness of the Japanese public about problems with networked information processing by public sector and commercial organisations from the 1980s (when a law governing public sector use of personal information was first passed) to recent years (when that law was updated and a first law governing commercial use of personal information was adopted) are not the imposition or adoption of foreign practices nor solely an attempt to lead Japanese society into coherence with the rest of the OECD. Instead they are drawing on the experience of the rest of the developed world in developing legal responses to the breakdown of social norms governing interchange and use of personal information, stressed by the architectural changes wrought by networked information processing capabilities. This claim is supported by consideration of standard models of Japanese social interactions as well as of Supreme Court judgements declaring reasonable expectations of protection of privacy to hold in Japan. (shrink)

Competing interests among big powers played a role in the making of World War II. But, and not separated from this, another element had a serious impact: the sense of psychological insecurity experienced, each in its own way, by Germany and Japan in the context of their quest for recognition by other major powers and the implications this had internationally. In connection with their material conditions compared to other great powers, this pushed Germany and Japan to embrace policies that were (...) ultimately self-defeating. It led them to see and assess themselves, others, and the international environment in conflicting terms and, faced with the unwillingness of other big powers to accommodate them to the extent they wanted, to overplay their hand, with lethal outcomes as a result. (shrink)

The article is focused on one of the first biggest armed conflicts between Japan and Soviet Union, battle of lake Khasan, which took place in July, 31 - August, 11 1938. The author analyses the battle of lake Khasan from the perspective of Japanese troops, which draw some conclusions from the conflict. The author considers them as the ‘lessons that Japan learned‘. In particular, the merits and drawbacks of the Japanese army’s actions were analyzed. Drawbacks include problems with supplies and (...) equipment for army, command’s uncoordinated action resulted in disability of Japanese aviation to participate in that armed conflict. Among the merits, strong spirit of the Japanese troops and their capacity to seize the initiative in battle can be named. The other merits were use of the different tactics to destroy enemy’s weapons in the rear of the battlefield, heroism of the sappers, who fought face-to-face against tanks. On the whole, the findings of the Japanese military coincided with an information taken from G. S. Lyushkov, who flew to Japan trying to escape Stalin’s Great Purge and who gave a lot of valuable information regarding the Soviet army to Japan. It should be noted that, on the one hand, the Russian historical science looks at the battle of lake Khasan as a victory of the USSR, on the other hand, in Japan historians are not inclined to believe that this armed conflict ended up with Japan’s defeat. It is believed that the USSR won primarily through the excellence in human resources and well-equipped troops, as well as due to the imperial decree on the prohibition of attacks. (shrink)

© 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.Transnational migration is seldom associated with Japan even though Japan has been dependent on immigrants for several generations. The research presented in this article explores a reform effort viewed as radical within the Japanese context that took place in a metropolitan school known for having one of the largest number of immigrant students in Japan, most of whom hail from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and China. While many of these “Newcomers” are of Japanese ancestry, absence (...) from the homeland for two to four generations has left them without the cultural and linguistic skills to navigate the nuances of Japanese society. As a result, schools, which have never had to respond to the needs of immigrant youth, find themselves at a loss as to how to integrate young people whose parents have been drawn back from the Japanese diaspora through government policies designed to assuage the labor shortage of the 1980s and 1990s. Over the course of 5 months of ethnographic field work in the community in which this school is located the author offers insights gleaned from extensive time spent with social workers, translators, government workers, teachers, staff, students, parents, and community liaison volunteers, all of whom shared their frustrations and challenges with the education of immigrant youth within the context and constraints of Japanese schools. (shrink)

This paper makes three related points. First, Japan has played an instrumental role in helping to define the shape and substance of multilateralism in Asia in ways deeper than scholarly literature on Asia's regional architecture has allowed. A key driving force behind Japan's contributions is the perceived utility of multilateralism in facilitating Japan's engagement of and/or balancing against China. Second, Japan has been able to achieve this because of the United States' support for Asian multilateralism and Japanese security interests. In (...) the immediate post-Cold War period, Japan facilitated US participation in regional arrangements such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the ASEAN Regional Forum. But Japanese ambivalence over its dependence on the United States was also apparent in Tokyo's attempts to exclude Washington from the newly formed East Asia Summit in late 2005, despite Japan's felt need to balance China. Japan's reliance on quiet diplomacy and an implicit regional leadership has equally been instrumental to its achievements in regional integration. Third, in the light of Japan's longstanding aim to become a normal military power and adopt a more assertive policy toward China, Japan‒US security ties are likely to deepen with negative consequences for Asian multilateralism. However, if its ties with China and South Korea worsen over their islands disputes in the East China Sea, Japan risks undermining its relations with the United States. How Japan balances its normalization with a continued engagement with multilateralism could be key to a stable and secure Asia. (shrink)

This essay offers a critical reading of Japan’s attempt to craft a modern identity. Eschewing the conventions of most scholarly writings, however, the essay builds on a personal history of political and intellectual engagement with key figures in post-war Japan to outline a counter-narrative about the ethno-politics of contemporary Japan. In distinction to both Orientalist and Occidentalist versions of Japanese modernity, the essay draws attention to the invidious return of notions of ethnic supremacy in Abe Shinzo’s con­temporary state project and (...) the occlusion of a long-standing tradition in Japan of pluralistic co-existence among diverse communities. In drawing attention to the occlusions shaped by the entanglements of Japanese colonialism and state-building with American hegemony, this essay attempts to locate practices of exclusion within Japan in an account of what the essay contends is a civilizational project, best thought of as “Smart Occidentalism”, dominant in in contemporary Japan. (shrink)

Pictures of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–5 have come down to us from China and Japan. This article shows that war pictures in both countries relied on a Western-inspired iconography. Moreover, it argues that Japan triumphed not only on the battlefield but also in the ‘picture war’, adopting more of the discourses which were important in the West at the end of the nineteenth century.

The quantity and quality of Japanese political studies in China are influenced by political developments in China and Japan, Sino-Japanese relations, and academic development of political science. After the collapse of Japan's bubble economy and the end of the LDP's long rule in the early 1990s, many Chinese scholars diverted their attention from economic issues and took more interest in Japanese political studies. Political issues such as the resurgence of nationalism, the rise of right-wing forces, the end of the , (...) the political origin of long and heavy recessions, the , national strategy, and foreign policies have been discussed and debated. New approaches and perspectives such as the political pluralist approach, the new institutional approach, the ecological approach and the political process approach have been used. It is imperative to overcome the institutional, political, and financial problems in order to improve the state and raise the quality of Japanese political studies in China. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to review Japanese Political Studies in Japan (JPSJ) circa 2000 for the purpose of identifying the trends of JPSJ and gauging its scope, subject areas, and methods. I then identify the key questions asked in JPSJ, i.e. for the third quarter of the last century: (1) What went wrong for Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, which had been seemingly making progress in the scheme of and was with a ? (2) What is the (...) secret of Western democracy in excelling itself in terms of keeping freedom and accumulating wealth? For the last quarter of the last century: (1) Why is Japanese politics shaped so heavily by bureaucracy? (2) Why are its citizens so weakly partisan in their voting choice? (3) How are politics and economics intertwined in policy making and electoral behavior? Following these trends in JPSJ in the latter half of the last century, I identify the three trends that have emerged in the first quarter of this century: (1) historicizing the normative and institutional origins of Japanese politics, (2) putting Japanese politics in comparative perspective, (3) the new self-conscious impetus for data collection and theory construction. Despite the steady tide of globalization and the strong influence of American political science, market size, long tradition, and language facility, lead political scientists in Japan to think and write more autonomously. (shrink)

New China was founded six years ago, Japan has gone from hostility to restore diplomatic relations to the different stages of the establishment of strategic and mutually beneficial, relationship is a step by step in depth, is a modern Sino-Japanese relations since the best of times. Six decades, the international situation, the balance of power in Japan, great changes have taken place in Sino-Japanese relations are changing. Non-governmental exchanges are always the driving force behind the development of Sino-Japanese relations. Prominent (...) politicians in Japan's major turning point in history, have a good grasp of the historic opportunity, the Sino-Japanese relations to a new stage. In the 21st century, the gradual formation of a Sino-Japanese competition, cooperation and development of the situation. China and Japan work together to develop such a good situation, not only for China and Japan, and to pay the peaceful development of East Asia and the world is a major contribution. Since People's Republic of China was founded 60 years ago, China and Japan have experienced different stages of diplomatic relations, from hostility to the resumption of diplomatic relations, then to the period of strategic reciprocity. In this period, Sino-Japanese relations have experienced the best time and developed step by step in modem times. During sixty years, Sino-Japanese relations have been changing along with the great changes of international situation and the balance of power of two countries. Non-governmental exchanges have always been the driving force of Sino-Japanese relations. The statesmen of China and Japan have successfully seized opportunities at the major historical turning point and put Sino-Japanese relations to new stages. After entering the 21st century, China and Japan gradually formed a competition, cooperation and developing relationship. China and Japan work together to develop a good posture, and this will not only do great contribution to China and Japan, but also to the East Asia and the world's peaceful development. (shrink)