Courses:

This subject is designed for upper level undergraduates and graduate students as an introduction to politics and the policy process in modern Japan. The semester is divided into two parts. After a two-week general introduction to Japan and to the dominant approaches to the study of Japanese history, politics and society, we will begin exploring five aspects of Japanese politics:

1. Party Politics
2. Electoral Politics
3. Interest Group Politics
4. Bureaucratic Politics

The second part of the semester focuses on public policy, divided into seven major policy areas:

1. Social Policy
2. Foreign Policy
3. Defense Policy
4. Energy Policy
5. Science and Technology Policy
6. Industrial Policy
7. Trade Policy

We will try to understand the ways in which the actors and institutions identified in the first part of the semester affect the policy process across a variety of issue areas.

Undergraduates are required to write two essays:

1. One short (five-seven page) paper on an issue of your own choice, chosen from among the weekly discussion topics and
   
2. One book report (also five-seven pages) on a book chosen from those listed on the last pages of this syllabus. (Books not on this list require the permission of the instructor.)

There will also be a midterm and a final exam for the undergraduates. Special discussion sessions for undergrads are integrated into this syllabus.

Graduate students are responsible for one classroom presentation and two medium length synthetic papers (ten-fifteen pages). One paper should address Japanese politics and the other public policy. The paper assignments for both graduate students and undergraduates are attached. Reading, attendance, and participation are required of all students.

Four paperback texts are:

Curtis, Gerald. The Logic of Japanese Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Gordon, Andrew, ed. Postwar Japan as History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Pyle, Kenneth. The Making of Modern Japan. 2nd ed. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1996.

Schwartz, Frank, and Susan Pharr, eds. The State of Civil Society in Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. (Selected chapters)

Vlastos, Stephen, ed. Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.