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Minerva and the Crane (Tsuru): Birds of a Feather? Comparative Research and Japanese Political Change—A Review Article

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Roger Benjamin
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Abstract

Recent work on Japanese politics, as presented in five representative works reviewed here is based increasingly on comparative (cross-national) frameworks of analysis. The studies allow us to consider once again the relationship between area-based (contextual) and comparative-based knowledge. This essay argues that we are further ahead in our understanding of Japanese politics if we move toward strategies of theory construction that place Japanese and comparative research in explicit juxtaposition. Arguments both for and against area-based and comparative-based explanations form the foundations of the conclusions developed.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , November 1980 , pp. 69 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1980

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References

A Theory of Japanese Democracy. By Ike, Nobutaka. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, Inc., 1978. xvii, 178 pp. Tables, Figures, Index. $16.00.Google Scholar

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1 See Almond, Gabriel and Bingham, G. Bingham Jr, Comparative Politics: System, Process, Policy (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1978).Google Scholar

2 For example, see Ashfbrd, Douglas (ed.), Comparative Public Policies (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1978).Google Scholar

3 See Bell, Daniel, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973), for the seminal work.Google Scholar

4 Inglehart, Ronald, The Silent Revolution in Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

5 At the time the contributors to Robert Ward's (ed.) Political Development in Modern Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968)Google Scholar wrote, the level of industrialization and the apparent po'litical stability of the United States and Western European countries was the “development” bench'mark against which Japan was measured. Since then there has been a wholesale reinterpretation of what “development” means in these societies. See Touraine, Alain, The Post-Industrial Society (London: Wildwood House, 1974);Google Scholar cf. Inglehart, The Silent Revolution; also Lindboom, Charles, Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977).Google Scholar

6 Watanuki finds that his Japanese sample has not moved as far away from an emphasis on mate'rial wants and security toward a concern for self actualization, equality, etc., as Inglehart's group. Is this because Japan is not yet as “developed” as Western Europe? Or is it because of the powerful hold of tradition? Neither Watanuki nor anyone else can really judge, because we lack a general theory of sociopolitical change within which to place Japan. By theory I mean nothing more than a structuring principle, approach, or model with which one may order the particular dimension of the “real” world being studied. On the positive and negative features associated with working with endpoints or benchmarks in the process of sociopo'litical change, see Tipps, Dean C., “Modernization Theory and the Comparative Study of Societies: A Critical Perspective,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 15, 2 (March 1973): 199–226.Google Scholar

7 The standard critique remains Hempel, Carl G., “The Logic of Functional Analysis,” in Gross, Llewllyn (ed.), Symposium on Sociological Theory (Evanston, III.: Row, Peterson, and Co., 1959), pp. 207–307Google Scholar. See also Dowse, Robert E., “A Functionalist's Logic,” World Politics 16, 4 (July 1966): 607–22.Google Scholar

8 Harsanyi, John C. puts it thus: “… explaining social institutions essentially amounts to explaining changes in these institutions and these changes themselves must be ultimately explained in terms of personal incentives for some people to change their behavior” (“Rational-Choice Models of Polit’ ical Behavior vs. Functionalist and Conformist Theo’ ries,” World Politics 21, 4 (July 1969]: 569).Google Scholar

9 Almond appears to have admitted as much (Gabriel Almond and Stephen Genco, J., “Clouds, Clocks, and the Study of Politics,” World Politics 29, 4 (July 1977]: 489–522).Google Scholar

10 Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973).Google Scholar

11 This question is really the postindustrial ver'sion of the convergence thesis. Ian Ian, “The Problem of the Convergence of Industrial Socie'ties: A Critical Look at the State of a Theory,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 11, 1 (Jan. 1969): 1–15;Google Scholar cf. White, James, “Tradition and Poli'tics in Studies of Contemporary Japan,” World Poli'tics 26, 3 (April 1974): 400–27.Google Scholar

12 Schmitter, Philippe C., "Still the Century of Corporatism?” in Pike, Frederick B. and Stritch, Thomas (eds.), The New Corporatism (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), pp. 85–131.Google Scholar See also Schmitter, , “Modes of Interest Mediation and Models of Societal Change in West'ern Europe,” Comparative Political Studies 10, 1 (April 1977): 7–38.Google Scholar

13 For a good review of this approach, see Harsanyi, , “Rational-Choice Models.” Standard works in the United States include Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965)Google Scholar and articles in Public Choice, Journal of Political Economy, and Jour'nal of Economic Issues. For an undervalued work on Japan that relies on an interest group approach and uses some collective action arguments, see Steslicke, William E., Doctors in Politics: The Political Life of the Japan Medical Association (New York: Praeger, 1973).Google Scholar

14 An example of the radical political economy school is Jon Halliday's A Political History of Japanese Capitalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975);Google Scholar this work contains a good bibliography. In Japan journals such as the Japan-Asia Quarterly Review present the contemporary radical political econo'my critique of Japanese society and politics.

15 A conference, with distinguished commen’ tators, on the “Life and Scholarship of Norman, E. H.,” was held at Saint Mary's University, Nova Scotia, October 1979.Google Scholar

16 Benjamin, Roger, The Limits of Politics, Collective Goods, and the Political Consequences of Postindustrialization (Chicago, III.: University of Chicago Press, 1980).Google Scholar