Sawako Shirahase
August 2010-February 2011

Yasuhiro Matsuda
   Associate Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia

Research Area
   Political and diplomatic history of Asia, International Politics in East Asia

Current Research Interests
   Politics and foreign relations of the PRC and Taiwan, the Cross-Strait Relations and Japan’s foreign and security policy.

Main Activities at Yale University
　A critical component of understanding international relations in East Asia requires in-depth research on the trajectories of Japanese foreign policy under the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Examining diplomatic relations in East Asia has been an arduous task given the volatile history and rapidly changing political situations in the region. The emergence of a new administration in Japan will likely constitute a significant factor in addition to two unprecedented developments: the first being the quick shift in the balance of power between major regional states, and the second, the rapid change in the regional security outlook.

　A crucial factor to consider when investigating such an environment is the trajectory of Japan’s foreign policy, which can be detected with careful research. On the one hand, Tokyo has taken a minimalist approach in the global stage. It substantially cut the amount of Official Development Assistance, an area in which Japan used to lead the world in terms of net amount provided. Similarly, it shunned UN-sanctioned peacekeeping operations and non-UN-mandated military operations other than war (MOOTW) by the Self-Defense Forces (SDF).  But on the other hand, Japan has also become more forthcoming with regard to regionalist initiatives within the East Asian community. It appears that Japan now grows hesitant to undertake new diplomatic initiatives outside the region, especially those involving the SDF, and that the Japanese people have accepted this reality.

　The goal of my research project is to examine the ways in which Japan’s foreign policy affects international relations in East Asia. Achieving my objective requires a systematic investigation at three levels of analysis—political structure, policymaking process, and agency—into the continuities and changes made during the executive shift from the conservative Liberal Democratic Party to the more reform-minded Democratic Party of Japan. Moreover, this project also intends to make a comparative analysis by studying South Korea and Taiwan: both countries have undergone historic political swings from conservative to progressive governments in the last decade.

Recent Major Publications (in English)
1. Satu P. Limaye and Yasuhiro Matsuda eds., Domestic Determinants and Security Policy-Making in East Asia, The National Institute for Defense Studies and Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu, 2002 　( “Cross Strait Security Relations: The Role of Domestic Politics in the PRC and Taiwan,” pp. 73-88) , available at < http://www.nids.go.jp/event/colloquium/index.html >.
2. “An Essay on China’s Military Diplomacy: Examination of Intentions in Foreign Strategy,” NIDS Security Reports, No. 7, December 2006, available at < http://www.nids.go.jp/english/publication/kiyo/pdf/bulletin_e2006_2_Matsuda.pdf >.
3. “Structural Changes in Japan-China Relations: A Japanese Perspective,” Proceedings of the International Conference on China and the Emerging Asian Century, Organised by Institute of Strategic Studies (ISS) in Collaboration with Hanns Seidel Foundation, Islamabad, Pakistan,  September 27-28, 2005.
4. “The Prospect of China Up to 2020: A View from Japan,” Derek J. Mitchell ed., Bridging Strategic Asia: The Rise of India in East Asia and the Implications for the U.S.-Japan Alliance, Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), February, 2009, available at < http://csis.org/programs/international-security-program/asia-division/bridging-strategic-asia-rise-india-east-asia-a >.
5. “Domestic Political Determinants of China’s External Behavior,” China’s Rise and Its Limitations: China at the Crossroads, Proceedings of the NIDS International Symposium on Security Affairs, Tokyo: National Insitute for Defense Studies, December 2007, available at <http://www.nids.go.jp/english/event/symposium/e2006.html>.
6.  “Japanese Assessments of China’s Military Development,” Asian Perspective, Vol. 31, No. 3 (October 2007) , available at <www.asianperspective.org>.
7. “Taiwan in the China-Japan-US Triangle,” Gerald Curtis, Ryosei Kokubun, and Wang Jisi eds., Getting the Triangle Straight: Managing China-Japan-US Relations, New York: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2010.

Sawako Shirahase
   Professor of Sociology, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology

Research Area
   Social Stratification and Inequalities, Social Demography, Comparative Political Economy

Current Research Interests　
・Cross-national Analysis on Socio-economic Inequalities related to Declining Fertility Rate, Ageing Population, and the Change in the Family Structure
・Rethinking East-Asian Welfare Regimes focused on Gender Gap in the Labor Market

Main Activities at Yale University
　　In response to the rising power of China and India, Japan no longer receives as much attention as in the 1970s and 80s.  Will Japanese studies disappear in due course?  How does the new version of Japanese studies look like? In order to discuss these issues, Shirahase organized the conference, “Searching for the New Wave of Japanese Studies in Social Sciences,” on November 17, 2010, supported by Todai-Yale Initiative and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) 20223004). It was followed by the workshop in which graduate students from the Department of Sociology, the University of Tokyo and the Department of Anthropology, Yale University, presented their work and all participants had lively discussions afterwards in November 18, 2010. During my stay at Yale, I like to explore possible paths to which Japanese studies in social sciences newly pursue in the global era.

Recent major publications（in English）
1.     “Women and Class Structure in Contemporary Japan,” British Journal of Sociology, Vol.52, Issue 3, 2001, pp.391-408.
2.    “A Study of Income Inequality for Households with Elderly Members: Comparison among Industrial Nations,” Japan Labor Bulletin, Vol. 41, No.12, 2002, pp. 7-10.
3.    “Living Alone Later in Life: A Study for the Future Social Security System in Japan,” Luxembourg Income Study Working Paper, No. 444, 2006.
4.    “Trends in Income Inequality: A Sociologist’s Perspective,” Japan Labor Review, Vol.3, No.4, 2006, pp.76-94.
5.    “Women’s Economic Status and Fertility: Japan in Cross-National Perspective,” in The Political Economy of Japan’s Low Fertility, edited by F. M. Rosenbluth, (Stanford: Stanford University Press), 2007, pp.37-59.
6.    “Income Inequality in the Ageing Society,” in Demographic Challenge: A Handbook about Japan, edited by F. Coulmas, H. Conrad, A. Schad-Seifert and G. Vogt, (Leiden: Brill), 2008, pp.217-233.
7.    “Delay in Marriage and Income Inequality in Japan: The Impact of the Increased Number of Unmarried Adults Living with Their Parents on the Household Economy,” The German Socio-Economic Panel Study Papers, No.190, 2009.
8.    “Age, Change, and Poverty: Coping with Social Transformation,” Global Asia, Vol.4, No. 1, 2009, pp. 38-42.
9.    “Marriage as an Association of Social Classes in a Low Fertility Society,” in Social Class in Contemporary Japan, edited by H. Ishida and D. Slater, (London: Routledge), 2009, pp. 57-84.
10.    “Japan as a Stratified Society: With a Focus on Class Identification,” Social Science Japan Journal, Vol.13, No.1, 2010, pp.31-52.

The International workshop will be held as follows.

Date: 10-11 November, 2010.

Venue: Yale University

Supported by: Todai-Yale Initiative and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Program:

◆Nov. 10, Wednesday @Yale University, 10 Sachem Room 105

Conference 15:00-(Reception 18:00-)

◇Presenters
Kazuo Seiyama (Department of Sociology, University of Tokyo), "Is it still meaninful to study the Japanese society?"

Shin Arita (Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo), "What Determines People's Income and Subjective Social Status?
– A Comparative Study of Social Stratification in Japan, Korea and Taiwan"

Karen Nakamura (Department of Anthropology, Yale University), "Japan Anthropology in the 21st Century and Beyond
– New Frontiers in the Social Science of Japan?"
◇Discussants
William Kelly (Department of Anthropology, Yale University)
Hiroshi Ishida (Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo)
◇Moderator
Sawako Shirahase (Department of Sociology, University of Tokyo)
◆Nov. 11, Thursday, @Yale University, Henry R. Luce Hall Room 203

Workshop for young scholars 13:00-17:00

For more information:

http://todai-yale.jp/2010-11-conference/

The 1st cosponsored Workshop will be held as follows.
Anyone who is interested in this workshop will be welcomed.
We are looking forward to your attendances.

Date：21 June(Mon),17：00～18：30
Venue：Conference Room, 3rd Floor, Institute for Advanced Studies, Univ. of Tokyo
http://www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/eng/access/index.html
Lecturer：Dr.Timothy WEBSTER
(Senior Fellow,China Law Center and Lecturer in Law ,Yale Law School,Yale University)
Title：The Exclusionary Rule:Chinese and Japanese Interpretation of American Ideal
Language：English, Chinese and Japanese (not translation provided)
Reservation：Not Required
Summary：
The jurical principle of not being permitted to cite in trials the evidences seized illegally
has developed in America, which was later brought also into China and Japan.
In this workshop, we will exmanine how this principle has accepted and changed.

Sponsord by：The Todai-Yale Initiative
Cosponsored by：Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, Univ. of Tokyo,
Network for Education and Research on Asia
Contact：Professor Takamizawa's Office, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia
takamiza[at]ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Conference Organizers:

Nobuhiro Hiwatari, University of Tokyo, Institute of Social Science
Jun Saito, Yale University, Political Science

Sponsors:

The MacMillan Center and the Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University, The University of Tokyo
 
Schedule & Venue:

Friday, April 2 – Saturday April 3, 2010
Venue: Luce Hall, Yale University, 34 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven, CT, USA

Conference Web Site:

http://pantheon.yale.edu/~js454/jpe/

Registration Required:

Please RSVP with name, institutional affiliation, and dates of planned attendance via email to anne.letterman@yale.edu by March 29, 2010.

Conference Introduction:

In the summer of 2009--for the first time in its post-war history--Japan experienced a  heated election in which two opposing parties competed for control of the government. The lower house election toppled the ruling Liberal Democratic Party from its longtime grip of power. Just four years prior, the ruling coalition of the LDP and the New Komeito won a landslide victory in an election that was mostly about Prime Minister Koizumi's proposed reform of the postal service. Forming a strong majority government, the proposed structural reforms were seen as rock-solid. After the resignation of Prime Minister Koizumi, however, the postal reform met criticism from within both the ruling and opposition parties. This culminated in the crushing defeat of he LDP in the 2007 Upper House election, its struggles in many local elections, and political instability that led to three prime ministers within a short time. Consequently, the influence and popularity of the Democratic Party of Japan increased dramatically. Our international conference--Exploring the Tectonic Change in the Political Economy of Japan--explores the variables to which these four years of political turmoil and unrest can be attributed and investigates how it relates to our knowledge about the role of democratic institutions in the market economy.

Nobuhiro Hiwatari
August 2009-February 2010

Yasunari Takada

Professor in Transcultural Studies,
Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

Research area
Classics and Modernity/Comparative Literature, Thought and Culture
 

Current research interests
• Comparative thought between US and Japan, mainly through six representative figures: Masao Maruryama, Toshihiko Izutsu, Shuichi Kato, Richard Rorty, Hayden White, and Edward Said.
•The Genealogy of De Officiis from Cicero to the 18th-century Europe.

Major Publications (in English)
Books
Transcendental Descent: Essays in Literature and Philosophy (Collection UTCP, 2007)
(Ed.) Surprised by Scenes：Essays in Honour of Professor Yasunari Takahashi (Tokyo:Kenkyusha,1994)
(Ed. with Kevin M. Doak) Overcoming Postmodernism: ‘Overcoming Modernity’ and Japan (Tokyo: Shubun-Kan, 2002)

Chapters in Books or Articles
1. “How to Do Things with ‘Fall-Out” Systems in Troilus and Cressida,” Shakespeare Studies,Vol.20,1984
2. “Hevene’ in Criseyde: Dnate’s Festa’ and Chauceｒ’s ‘Feste, in Philologia Anglica: Festschrift in Honour of Professor Y.Terasawa　(Tokyo:Kenkyusya,1988)
3. “The Brooch of Thebes and the Girdle of Venus: Country Love in an Oppositional Perspective,”　Poetica,29/39(1989)
4. “Vulcan Cuckolded by Mars: Archetypal Adultery and Its Subsequent Undercurrents,” Proceedings of the College of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo,38(1991)
5. “From The House of Fame to Politico-Cultural Histories,” in Chaucer to Shakespeare, eds. R. Beadle & T. Takamiya (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer,1992)
6. Against the Grain of Tragedy,” Proceedings of the College of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo, 39(1992)
7. “Chaucer’s Use of Neoplatonic Traditions,” in Platonism and the English Imagination, eds. S. Hatton & A. Baldwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1994)
8. “An Augustan Representation of Cicero,” in Enlightened Groves: Essays in Honour of Professor Zenzo Suzuki (Tokyo:Shohakusha,1996 [in Japanese]
9. “Shakespeare’s Cicero,” in Shakespeare’s Plutarch: A Special Issue of Poetica 48 (1997).
10. “Common Profit and Libidinal Dissemination in Chaucer,” in The Body and the Soul in Medieval Literature (papers from J.A.W. Bennett Memorial Lectures), (D.S. Brewer, 1999）.
11. “The Illusions of the Modern and the Pleasures of the Pre-Modern,” Overcoming Postmodernism: “Overcoming Modernity” and Japan, (eds.) Kevin Doak & Y. Takada (Tokyo: Shubun-kan, 2002), 125-139.
12. “Leonardo Bruni’s Cicero Novus,” European Studies (DESK, the University of Tokyo, 2002), pp. 65-79.
13. ”Shakespeare as Shake-Scene,” Studies in World Literature and Translation (Beijing: Peking University, 2004), pp. 9-13..
14. “Postmodern Girl,” Cultural Studies in Asia, eds. S-K. Kim & A. Gordon (Seoul: Seoul National UP, 2004), 157-184. [Korean translation in 21st Century 17 (Seoul: ISU, 2002), pp. 19-34.]
15. “A Shakespearean Distance,” Shakespeare Studies, XLIII (2005-6), pp. 1-36.
16. “Translatio and Difference: Western Classics in Modern Japan,” in The Classics and National Cultures, eds P. Vasunia and S. Stephens (Oxford UP, 2010)

Longer Reviews
1. “Francis A Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the　Elizabethan　Literature” (The English Literary Society of Japan), English Number 1982
2. “Helen Gardner, In Defense of Imagination,” Studies in English Literature (The English Literary Society of Japan), English Number 1984
3. “D.S. Brewer, Tradition and Innovation in Chaucer; English Gothic Literature,” Poetica 19 (1984)
4. “Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature：An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes,” Studies in English Literature (The English Literary Society of Japan), English Number 1985.
5. The Italian World of English Renaissance Drama, Cultural Exchange and Intertextuality, eds. M. Marrapodi, Rivista di Letterature Moderne e Vomparate (Firenze), vol. LIV (2001), pp. 108-110.
6. “On Overcoming Modernity, trans. & intro. by R. Calichman,” the Journal of Japanese Studies vol. 35, no. 2, (summer 2009), pp. 380-385.

Nobuhiro Hiwatari
(PhD, Political Science, University of California, Berkeley)

Professor of political economy,
Institute of Social Sciences

Research area
Political economy/International political economy

Current research interests
• Why Reform? Global recessions, high unemployment, and the adoption of structural reforms and budgetary restraint

• Economic Interdependence and Political Rivalry: Democracies, non-democracies, and stagnant regional arrangements in East Asia
 

What kind of creature is a political economist?

The term “political economy” is probably as old as the study of economics. That fact notwithstanding, what is currently known as positive political economy, which is my field of study, is a relatively new and emerging discipline. To the best of my knowledge, graduate courses in political economy and international political economy were not commonly taught at major universities when I started out as a student as they are of late. My impression is that the field developed by amalgamating works that branched out from three different research traditions: One is the empirical study of macroeconomics (including labor economics), within which a number of students started to examine political institutions in order to explain differences among countries in their macroeconomic policy and its effectiveness. The other is a group of scholars in comparative politics who turned to labor market organizations and the partisan characteristics of government to explain differences in economic performance and economic policy, sharing a similar interest with the economists. The third branch originate in international politics, from which researchers started to stress the importance of economic conflict and cooperation among states, as well as the role of international organizations, as an inherent part of international political activities. Although of several lineages, students working in the field of political economy/ international political economy have in common their emphasis of political variables as a key factor in explaining economic policies and economic outcomes.

The advent of political economy/international political economy in the social sciences seems to owe a lot to the rapid development of events in the real world since the 1970s. To my mind, it is difficult to explain the development of the field without citing the outburst of stagflation immediately after the Oil Crises of the late 1970s and the transition of developed countries to low-growth post-industrial societies, which necessitated a recalibration of the welfare state and the implementation of structural reforms, on the one hand. On the other hand, the spread of market economic activities across the Globe, including developing nations and former Communist nations, and the emerging dominance of economic issues among states can be regarded as the other development that spurred the study of political economy and international political economy. Against this historical backdrop, current students of the field tend to have a positivist bent, meaning a strong emphasis on empirical work that explains why certain choices were made and certain outcomes occurred post facto. However, the reason for the research is hardly to shed a new light on past history but to make policy recommendations for the future, even if they are based on retrospective empirical foundations rather than prospective extrapolation. As such, political economists dwell beyond the ivory towers of the academe and a can be found in international organizations, such as the OECD, the IMF, or the World Bank, and in government organizations, such as the central bank and treasury, as well as think tanks of various sorts. The broad participation of academics based at governmental and international organizations has been a critical factor in the amassing of new and improved data on the economy and polity of nations, fueling the rapid development of the field.

As a political economist, I place Japan as the source of my research puzzles and try to answer them by mobilizing new theories in political economy and international political economy. More concretely, my current work consists of, on the one hand, a comparative analysis of OECD countries in the way they respond to economic crisis. Here, my puzzle is why some governments undertake structural reforms and maintain budgetary constraint even during the thick of a global recession at the cost of aggravating unemployment, while others, such as Japan, resort to spending-based stimulus packages. On the other hand, my other research is about cooperative institution building, or rather the lack thereof, in East Asia in spite of strong and expanding economic ties. My hypothesis here is that the variation in the degree of democratic governance, meaning the existence of democracies as well as non-democracies in the region, makes it difficult for governments to engage in enduring, contractual agreements. This idea is based on robust empirical findings that similar political regimes—democracies and democracies, non-democracies and non-democracies—are more likely to cooperate with each other than a pair of un-similar political regimes.

The first of my two research interests will be part of a joint research undertaken under the aegis of the TYI, which will host two conferences in April and August 2010 titled “Fiscal Adjustment, Structural Reform, and Government Change.” My other interest is what I plan to pursue during my stay by utilizing the rich and unique resources available at Yale.

My Plans at Yale

My main purpose at Yale is to set up an enduring arrangement that enables the two universities to organize political scientists and economists at both sides of the Pacific and collaborate in joint research projects that analyzes ongoing developments in the Japanese political economy and publishes the results in a periodical manner. Naturally, I hope to undertake research that contributes to such efforts. For this purpose, I am currently working on the following:

(1) Academic Collaboration under the Aegis of TYI

As mentioned above, in collaboration with Professor Jun Saito of the political science department and the support of Yale’s East Asia Council and the Todai Horiba International Conference Fund, we plan to hold two international conferences in April at Yale and in August at Tokyo that will put together papers addressing the question of whether structural reforms and fiscal adjustment by the Liberal Democratic government in the 2000s have led to its downfall and/or the rise of the Democratic Party of Japan, which was swept into power by a landslide this fall.

We hope to publish the papers in English and Japanese. However, beyond that we hope to develop this into a prototype case of collaborate research that will be followed by joint research organized by Yale and Todai scholars on contemporary Japanese political economy and international political economy.

(2) Research at Yale

I am also conducting individual research on the international and especially domestic political factors that explain variations among OECD countries in the foreign aid and defense efforts. I hope this research will lead to another joint research project Professor Saito and I are planning under the aegis of TYI, tentatively titled “Government Change and Foreign Policy: A comparison of Japanese and Korean responses to U.S. initiatives.” We plan to adopt a structured research design in which we compare U.S. foreign policy initiatives that affected both Japan and Korea in a very similar way, and examine whether government change has affected the responses of both countries as well as whether differences in the political systems—Japan being a cabinet system and Korea being a presidential one—has any effect on each countries responses. We hope this project will serve as a successor to the ongoing joint research described above.

Major Publications (in English)

1. “The Problem of Macroeconomic Policy Crossroads: Explaining the economic policy paradox of Switzerland and Japan in the 1990s,” The Swiss Political Science Review, 10-3 (2004), 137-178.

2. “Embedded Policy Preferences and the Formation of International Arrangement after the Asian Financial Crisis,” The Pacific Review, 16-3 (2003), pp.331-359.

3.“Disinflationary Adjustment: The link between economic globalization and challenges to Postwar social contracts,” in Olivier Zunz, Leonard Schoppa, and Nobuhiro Hiwatari (eds.), Social Contracts Under Stress: The Middle Classes of America, Europe, and Japan at the Turn of the Century (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002), pp. 281-318.

4.“The Reorganization of Japan's Financial Bureaucracy: The politics of bureaucratic structure and blame avoidance,” in Takeo Hoshi & Hugh Patrick (eds.), Crisis and Change in the Japanese Financial System (New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. 109-136
5. “Japanese Corporate Governance Reexamined,” in Margaret Blair & Mark Roe (eds.), Employees and Corporate Governance (Washington D.C., Brookings Institution, 1999), pp. 275-313
6. “Adjustment to Stagflation and Neoliberal Reform in Japan, the UK, and the US,” Comparative Political Studies, 31-5 (1998), pp. 602-632.
7. “Explaining the End of the Postwar Party System,” in Junji Banno (ed.), The Political Economy of Japanese Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
 

The Todai Liaison Committee was appointed by the Chair of the Council on East Asian Studies (The MacMillan Center), Professor Daniel Botsman, to facilitate the ongoing work of the Todai-Yale Iniitiative participants and staff from Todai. The Committee will meet with the Todai faculty and staff group once or twice each semester to provide advice and information and to assist as needed in the planning of the Todai-Yale Initiative projects.

To The Council on East Asian Studies Website:

In concrete terms, targeting all fields of Japanese Studies and Japan-related research in the social sciences and humanities, we are sending graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and assistant and associate professors to Yale University. Doctoral and higher level graduate students will be sent on the “Visiting Assistant in Research (VAR)” program, while the “Yale Summer Session” will accept principally first year Master’s students. Assistant professors and postdoctoral researchers will be accepted to Yale University as “Research Affiliates at the MacMillan Center.” The Initiative aims to nurture academics capable of carrying out research activities on the global stage, including producing papers and research presentations in English, taking part in events organized by The Todai-Yale Initiative, and creating opportunities for academics, researchers and students in the United States to meet and exchange ideas. Further, by publishing research results obtained through academic activities centered on Yale University, from this research center at Yale we hope to encourage the revitalization of Japanese Studies in the United States.

To JSPS International Training Program Homepage：