Based on four major case studies, this book offers an overview of contemporary Japan's changing attitudes and policies regarding environmental issues. Beginning in the 1970s, the author traces how the rapid growth of environmental politics and actions contributed to the development of a vibrant civil society.
Civil Society and Japan's Foreign Aid examines the changing relations between the Japanese state and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in promoting effective aid policies and analyzes the changing nature of policy making and governance in Japan. It is based on extensive research in Southeast Asia and Japan, investigating the role of Japanese aid in fields such as education, health care, environmental protection, and economic development. It analyzes the key players in aid policymaking, including donor governments, multinational organizations, international and local NGOs, the business community, and aid recipients.
"Book Abstract and Keywords: The study of Japanese politics has flourished over the past several decades. This Handbook provides a state-of-the-field overview for students and researchers of Japanese. The volume also serves to introduce Japanese politics to readers less familiar with Japan. In addition, the volume has a theme of "evaluating Japan's democracy." Taken as a whole, the volume provides a positive evaluation of the state of Japan's democracy. The volume is divided into two parts, roughly corresponding to domestic Japanese politics and Japan's international politics. Within the domestic politics part, there are four distinct sections: "Domestic Political Actors and Institutions," covering the Japanese Constitution, electoral systems, prime minister, Diet, bureaucracy, judiciary, and local government; "Political Parties and Coalitions," covering the Liberal Democratic Party, coalition government, Kōmeitō, and the political opposition; "Policymaking and the Public," covering the policymaking process, public opinion, civil society, and populism; and, "Political Economy and Social Policy," covering industrial, energy, social welfare, agricultural, monetary, and immigration policies, as well as social inequality. In the international relations part, there are four sections: "International Relations Frameworks," covering grand strategy, international organizations, and international status; "International Political Economy," covering trade, finance, foreign direct investment, the environment, economic regionalism, and the linkage between security and economics; "International Security," covering remilitarization, global and regional security multilateralism, nuclear nonproliferation, naval power, space security, and cybersecurity; and, "Foreign Relations" covering Japan's relations with the United States, China, South Korea, ASEAN, India, the European Union, and Russia. Keywords: international relations, comparative politics, democracy, international order, alliances, space security, elections, Liberal Democratic Party, multilateralism, remilitarization, international organizations, populism, civil society, coalitions, political parties, trade, finance monetary policy, foreign direct investment, cybersecurity"--
The 1990s have been termed as 'Japan's lost decade' to describe how the phenomenal growth in the Japanese economy ground to a halt and the country was crippled by enormous and ongoing political, economic and social problems. In responding to these unprecedented difficulties, wide-ranging reforms have been adopted including NPO, information disclosure and judicial reform legislation. Controversially, this book argues that such reforms are creating a more robust civil society and demonstrate that Japan is far more dynamic than is generally recognized.
"Devoting particular emphasis to Bolivia, Chile, and Mexico, proposes a theory of civil society to explain the economic and political challenges for continuing democratization in Latin America"--Provided by publisher.
This book looks at the emergence of internationally linked Japanese nongovernmental advocacy networks that have grown rapidly since the 1990s in the context of three conjunctural forces: neoliberalism, militarism, and nationalism. It connects three disparate literatureson the global justice movement, on Japanese civil society, and on global citizenship education. Through the narratives of fifty activists in eight overlapping issue areasglobal governance, labor, food sovereignty, peace, HIV/AIDS, gender, minority and human rights, and youthAnother Japan is Possible examines the genesis of these new social movements; their critiques of neoliberalism, militarism, and nationalism; their local, regional, and global connections; their relationships with the Japanese government; and their role in constructing a new identity of the Japanese as global citizens. Its purpose is to highlight the interactions between the global and the localthat is, how international human rights and global governance issues resonate within Japan and how, in turn, local alternatives are articulated by Japanese advocacy groupsand to analyze citizenship from a postnational and postmodern perspective.
This book examines the impact of global human rights norms on the development of women's, children's, and minority rights in Japan since the early 1990s.
One of the most vexing problems for governments is building controversial facilities that serve the needs of all citizens but have adverse consequences for host communities. Policymakers must decide not only where to locate often unwanted projects but also what methods to use when interacting with opposition groups. In Site Fights, Daniel P. Aldrich gathers quantitative evidence from close to five hundred municipalities across Japan to show that planners deliberately seek out acquiescent and unorganized communities for such facilities in order to minimize conflict. When protests arise over nuclear power plants, dams, and airports, agencies regularly rely on the coercive powers of the modern state, such as land expropriation and police repression. Only under pressure from civil society do policymakers move toward financial incentives and public relations campaigns. Through fieldwork and interviews with bureaucrats and activists, Aldrich illustrates these dynamics with case studies from Japan, France, and the United States. The incidents highlighted in Site Fights stress the importance of developing engaged civil society even in the absence of crisis, thereby making communities both less attractive to planners of controversial projects and more effective at resisting future threats.
Making Japanese Citizens is an expansive history of the activists, intellectuals, and movements that played a crucial role in shaping civil society and civic thought throughout the broad sweep of Japan's postwar period. Weaving his analysis around the concept of shimin (citizen), Simon Avenell traces the development of a new vision of citizenship based on political participation, self-reliance, popular nationalism, and commitment to daily life. He traces civic activism through six phases: the cultural associations of the 1940s and 1950s, the massive U.S.-Japan Security Treaty protests of 1960, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the antipollution and antidevelopment protests of the 1960s and 1970s, movements for local government reform and the rise of new civic groups from the mid-1970s. This rich portrayal of activists and their ideas illuminates questions of democracy, citizenship, and political participation both in contemporary Japan and in other industrialized nations more generally.