Author: Jiajia Zhou

Categories
comparative politics Japan-related research

JPOSS #32: “The Politics of Omote and Naishō: Performative Compliance and Spaces of Impunity in Meiji Japan”

The thirty-second session of the Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS) took place on October 6, 2022. Charles Crabtree (Dartmouth College) chaired the seminar and moderated the Q&A session.

Reo Matsuzaki (Trinity College) presented a paper co-authored with Fabian Drixler (Yale University), which looks at an alternative understanding of failure in law enforcement that emerges from tacit cooperation between the state and its subjects. The authors identify a puzzling lack of enforcement of infanticides during the Meiji period in Japan despite apparent state capacity. The authors propose the theory of omote-naishō to explain how state actors reconciled the conflicting demands of domestic pressures to uphold the legal protection of newborns and the need to respond to people’s desire for autonomy in order to maintain state-society relations. They argue that not only does the bottom-up construction of falsified statistics on stillbirths constitute an omote performance — “a fictional reality that manifests the outward-facing norms of society” — but the performance also diverges from existing concepts with the presence of naishō. Unlike concepts of performance that emphasize elements of deception between the state and its subjects, naishō is a form of tacit cooperation that is enabled by shared values in society and occurs specifically when these values conflict with formal laws.

Iza Yue Ding (University of Pittsburgh) and Dan Mattingly (Yale University) offered insightful comments on the theory and its translation, as well as important distinctions from similar concepts. During the Q&A session, participants raised questions about the applicability of the theory to other cases and made suggestions for comparative study.

This event attracted around 25 participants and produced an engaging Q&A session. The organizers would like to thank the presenters, discussants, and participants, as well as the staff at the Harvard Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, who provided administrative support. We look forward to seeing you at the next session of JPOSS:  https://jposs.org/

Categories
comparative politics Japan-related research

JPOSS #31: “Ideological Positions and Committee Chair Appointments”

The thirty-first session of the Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS) took place on June 16, 2022. Amy Catalinac (New York University) chaired the seminar and moderated the Q&A session.

Jochen Rehmert (University of Zurich) presented a paper co-authored with Naofumi Fujimura (Kobe University) which looks at the role of ideology in committee chair appointments in the case of Japan. As committee chairs are conferred power in the legislative process and have the potential of affecting the cabinet’s legislative performance, existing literature in this area has sought to understand the factors that influence the delegation process of chair appointments. The authors contribute to the literature by investigating the role of ideology and how its effect varies between different types of committees. Using survey data on Japan’s committees and Members of Parliament from 2003 to 2017, the authors model the process of chair appointment using a conditional logit model that predicts the selection of committee chairs from the choice-set of all committee members. The role of ideology is measured as the ideological distance between the committee member and the average of all cabinet members along two dimensions of political competition, foreign policy and economic policy. The authors find evidence supporting the role of ideological proximity in chair appointments, especially on the economic policy dimension for chair appointments in high policy committees.

Benjamin Nyblade (UCLA School of Law) and Yoshikuni Ono (Waseda University) offered insightful comments on the theory and research method. During the Q&A session, participants raised questions about the assumptions behind the statistical model and validity of the measures generated from the survey data.

This event attracted around 20 participants and produced an engaging Q&A session. The organizers would like to thank the presenters, discussants, and participants, as well as the staff at the Harvard Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, who provided administrative support. We look forward to seeing you at the next session of JPOSS: https://jposs.org/

Categories
Japan-related research

JPOSS #30: “Nationally Prioritized Migrant Groups and Public Perception: Evidence from Framing and Conjoint Experiments in East Asia”

The thirtieth session of the Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS) took place on June 9, 2022. Phillip Y. Lipscy (University of Toronto) chaired the seminar and moderated the Q&A session.

Yujin Woo (Hitotsubashi University) presented a paper co-authored with Jaehyun Song (Kansai University), which looks at the effect of repeated government messaging on public perception of migrants. Drawing from the cognitive psychology literature, the authors study the competing theoretical expectations that message repetition leads to increased support for policies due to persuasion (“truth effect”) and decreased support due to overexposure (“reactance”). Their study also makes use of cross-country comparisons to investigate the effect of variation in the discursive contexts surrounding migrant integration. The authors conducted combined framing and conjoint experiments through online surveys in Japan and South Korea between 2020 and 2021. Their analyses produce mixed findings. On one hand, when respondents are exposed to vignettes about policies aligned with the government rhetoric, the results do not lend support to the truth effect or reactance theories. However, the authors do find evidence of framing effects for policies targeting migrant groups that are less common to the country context.

Charles Crabtree (Dartmouth College) and Kikuko Nagayoshi (University of Tokyo) offered insightful comments on the research method and interpretation of results. During the Q&A session, participants raised questions about the survey design and offered suggestions on alternative ways to understand the results obtained by the authors.

This event attracted around 30 participants and produced an engaging Q&A session. The organizers would like to thank the presenters, discussants, and participants, as well as the staff at the Harvard Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, who provided administrative support. We look forward to seeing you at the next session of JPOSS: https://jposs.org/