Social scientists are frequently concerned with the “local”, including issues such as subnational elections, local governance, the formation of local identities and communities, or local economic “clusters”. However, the social and spatial boundaries of the “local” are often elusive, and subject to change. This seems particularly true in Japan, where local administrative boundaries were abruptly redrawn in a wave of municipal mergers in the mid-2000s, initiating an ongoing process of local socio-spatial readjustments. Beyond the Japanese case, refining our conception of what constitutes a subnational “locality” – its spatial, social, formal and informal boundaries – produces new questions, reveals different stakeholders, and uncovers the impact of social constellations that otherwise remain invisible.

The two speakers will address political and economic consequences implied by differing delineations of subnational spaces in Japan and China.

Speakers:
Carolyn Cartier, University of Technology, Sydney
Franz Waldenberger, German Institute for Japanese Studies

Navigating an international research career is a potentially hazardous journey, with many unforeseen challenges and pitfalls to be faced. Japanese Studies like all Area Studies necessarily invites such challenges, as scholars will almost certainly spend long periods on sojourn in radically different scholarly environments. One challenge is to know about and act on institutional expectations and norms with the intention of securing and improving employment opportunities. This is particularly important for early career researchers (ECRs) who may spend long periods on field work or in junior employment in Asia. Moreover, although academics generally insist on evidence based scholarship in their fields of interest, they may rely on personal experience, institutional norms, and hearsay as guides when making decisions in their own organizations. Naturally the decisions that both ECRs and employers make in their respective roles will, in the absence of systematic empirical evidence, be strongly subject to heuristic biases. This research will present quantitative and qualitative evidence from the UK and Japan to inform both ECRs of the potential pitfalls in navigating an international career in academia, and employers in making more informed decisions on hiring junior scholars. It will be followed by a short workshop for participants to support them in working on their own, evidence based, career development planning.

This is a special joint workshop session organized by the DIJ History and Humanities Study Group and the Social Science Study Group designed to encourage conversation among early career scholars.

Speaker:
Peter Matanle, University of Sheffield

This presentation focuses on the discourses in contemporary Japanese popular media and in the recent Japanese academic literature revolving around sexless (hetero-sexual) couple relationships and extra-marital affairs from 2000 to 2017. In addition, this presentation draws from an interview research conducted with 45 Japanese men and women in their 20s to 40s. The aim of this study is to clarify the transformation and the characteristics of the Japanese sexless phenomenon in conjunction with the rise of extra-marital affairs, by demonstrating how the meaning of sexuality (and its lived behavior) in extra-marital affairs diverges from the social expectations on sexuality within couple relationships.

Speaker:
Alice Pacher, Meiji University

Going by statistical measures, Japan is reportedly one of the least religious countries in the world. It is thus striking to observe the seemingly disproportionate impact of religious organizations on Japanese elections, legislation, and policymaking. The most powerful of these groups is Sōka Gakkai, a Buddhism-based lay association whose millions of adherents treat electioneering on behalf of its affiliated political party Kōmeitō (Clean Government Party) as a component of their religious practice. Since its founding in 1964, and particularly since it partnered with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1999 in the governing coalition, Kōmeitō has exerted a decisive political influence. And, while the party’s representatives consistently promote Kōmeitō as a brake on LDP efforts toward remilitarizing Japan and revising the 1947 Constitution’s peace clause (Article 9), Kōmeitō has reversed its stance on security issues – a move away from its founding pacifism that has alienated some of its Gakkai supporters.

This panel brings together researchers who work from within and outside Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai. They will suggest reasons why Sōka Gakkai grew into a political powerhouse; how the party and religion interact in the present; what insights drawn from elections data, archival sources, and ethnographic engagement tell us about where Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō may be headed in the near future; and how changes now unfolding within Japan’s politics/religion relations may affect constitutional amendment efforts.

Speakers:
Asayama Taichi, Ritsumeikan University
Axel Klein, University Duisburg-Essen
Levi McLaughlin, North Carolina State University

The integration of scientific advice in environmental policy processes is more than ever of great importance: ‘Science translators, ‘knowledge broker’, or ‘intermediaries’ theoretically facilitate the relationship between science and policy (Nowotny, 1993; Litfin, 1994; Young & Osherenko, 1993). However, the manner and degree to which scientific advice is integrated in the policy process differs markedly between countries, and scholarship has yet to fully describe the role of such actors.

This study looks at how scientific advice is integrated in the policy-making process in Japan in comparative perspective by hypothesizing that the degree of such integration, and the provenance of intermediaries acting as knowledge transmitters can explain the problem of lacking independent scientific advice.

Speaker:
Manuela Hartwig, University of Tsukuba

Kostiantyn Ovsiannikov from the University of Tsukuba will discuss how the pursuit of shareholder-value by management has affected labor policies at large enterprises listed in the Nikkei 400 index. He will focus on the issue of labor bifurcation, which refers to the division between regular and nonregular employees. The share of nonregular employees in Japan has been growing rapidly and is now close to 40% of all employees.

The research corroborates the positive correlation between total shareholder return and the share of nonregular workers in a firm. Moreover, it shows that foreign stockholding is not correlated with an increase in nonregular employment.

The presentation is based on a paper, which received the 2018 FFJ (Fondation France-Japon)/SASE Best Paper Award and which will soon be published in The Japanese Political Economy.

Speaker:
Kostiantyn Ovsiannikov, University of Tsukuba