Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Conventions
Introduction: Crisis Narratives, Institutional Change, and the
Transformation of the Japanese State
Christian Wirth and Sebastian Maslow
Part I: Narrating Japan's Social Crisis
1. Japan's Melting Core: Social Frames and Political Crisis
Narratives of Rising Inequalities
David Chiavacci
2. Authoritarian Populism in Everyday Life: The Discursive Politics
of Demographic and Lifestyle Changes in Japan
Hiroko Takeda
3. Save Our Students? Shifting Subjects of Higher Education Crisis
in Japan
Jeremy Breaden
Part II: Narrating Japan's Political and Economic Crises
4. A Crisis of Democracy: Civil Society and Energy Politics Before
and After the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
Koichi Hasegawa
5. From Leader to Laggard? Crisis Narratives and Structural Reform
in Japanese Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy
Iris Wieczorek
6. Contradiction and Discontent in Japan: Abenomics and the Failing
Politics of Economic Reform
Saori Shibata
Part III: Narrating Japan's National Security Crisis
7. "Failures" and "Crises" in Japanese Foreign Policy: The
Democratic Party of Japan's Rule 2009–2012
Paul O'Shea
8. From Ashes to New: The Delegitimization and Comeback of Japan's
Official Development Assistance
Raymond Yamamoto
9. A State of Crisis: North Korean Missiles, Abductions, and the
Transformation of Postwar Japan
Ra Mason and Sebastian Maslow
10. "The World Is Marveling at Japan!" Japanese Strategies to Avoid
its "Crisis of Confidence"
Shogo Suzuki
Conclusion: Narrating Japan's Crisis, Narrating Japan's Rebirth
Sebastian Maslow and Christian Wirth
Contributors
Index
Sebastian Maslow is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Sendai Shirayuri Women’s College in Japan. He is the coeditor (with Ra Mason and Paul O’Shea) of Risk State: Japan’s Foreign Policy in an Age of Uncertainty. Christian Wirth is Research Fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and Adjunct Research Fellow at the Griffith University Asia Institute. He is the author of Danger, Development and Legitimacy in East Asian Maritime Politics: Securing the Seas, Securing the State.
"Collectively, these ten chapters contribute to our understanding
of the post-Abe political economy in Japan." — Japan Review
"As crisis and precarity become regular features of our 'new
normal,' Crisis Narratives, Institutional Change and the
Transformation of the Japanese State is a timely collection of
essays. It provides us with a single point of reference on the
scope, scale and impact of the various crises faced by the Japanese
state and its people over recent years, as well as the diversity in
responses. In fact, it was a crisis—the triple disasters of 2011's
earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns—that provided the
editors with the inspiration for this volume and they are to be
applauded for extending their analysis beyond this milestone event
and assembling a balanced and representative team of expert
contributors across a wide range of topics from the social via the
political to the economic, from the domestic to the international.
Both individually and collectively, these essays represent a
must-read for anybody curious about recent developments in Japan
and where the country might be headed." — Hugo Dobson, University
of Sheffield
"This innovative, broadly conceived volume offers a series of
fresh, up-to-date, convincing portraits of recent political,
diplomatic, economic, and demographic challenges facing Japan.
Rather than cataloguing 'Japan's Problems,' it incisively adopts a
cohesive theoretical stance on crisis narratives, showing how
pervasive accounts of national decline become opportunities for
political entrepreneurs to enact their visions of a stronger, more
secure Japan, even when their proposed solutions are at best
partial or even ruinously self-serving. Judicious, compelling, and
insightful, this volume makes important contributions to our
understanding of the problems and problematic solutions now facing
advanced industrial nations." — David Leheny, Waseda University
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