The fifty-seventh session of the Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS) took place on November 13, 2025. Christina Davis (Harvard University) chaired the seminar and moderated the Q&A session.
Erik H. Wang (New York University) presented his paper, co-authored with Weiwen Yin (University of Macau), on the risks of premature state-building efforts. They identify two distinct and sequential dimensions of state building, territorial reach and administrative capacity. Building upon recent literature that call into question the expectation that war make states, the authors theorize the counterproductive effects when pressures of war lead rulers to expand territorial reach without commensurate levels of administrative capacity. They focus on the Kamakura Shogunate’s keigo banyaku policy during the 13th century, a case of rushed efforts to expand the shogunate’s reach into localities for military manpower in the face of Mongol invasions. The authors utilize geocoded data of rebellions, disputes, and castles to measure the outcomes of a weak state and a difference-in-differences analysis to test its relationship to the localities affected by the policy. They find robust evidence in support of the theory even after accounting for confounding factors, such as disasters and economic activity.
Emily Sellars (Yale University) and Junichi Yamazaki (Kyoto University) offered insightful comments on the theoretical contribution of the paper, ways to improve clarity of the empirical strategy, and construct validity of the outcome variables. During the Q&A, participants furthered discussions on the measures, possible alternative explanations, the actors driving the disputes and rebellions, and ways to improve the framing of the paper.
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/.