Abstract :
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 ‘enlightenment and
entrepreneurship’ and was ‘a rich country’ with a ‘strong army’? (2)What is the secret
ofWestern 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.
