1. Is political science an American social science?

The aim of this article is to review Japanese Political Studies in Japan (JPSJ) circa 2000 for the purpose of identifying the trends of JPSJ and gauging its scope, subjects, and methods. JPSJ has a dilemma. The subject, Japanese politics, is politics at home; thus presumably most familiar to most Japanese political scientists. Therefore, when the Japanese Political Science Association (JPSA) asks its members to register their three specialist areas of study from such a list as political theory, political processes, comparative politics, public policy, and international relations and their sub-areas of study, it so happens that many Japanese political scientists do not indicate Japanese politics as one of the three specialist areas of their expertise Therefore, for example, those who mark modern Japanese politics amount to 121 when the JPSA membership is approximately 2,000. To take my own example, I mark political theory, comparative politics (East Asia), and international relations. Many members resolve their dilemma in favor of not specifying any area of Japanese politics. Japanese politics is so familiar that whatever is written about using Japanese political materials and data must belong to those areas of political science. The adjective, Japanese, is redundant, it seems. The reason I start with this dilemma is that the review of JPSJ may not be able to rely primarily on the official figures of self-reported areas of special expertise. It would be very misleading. For this reason, I adopt the conventional method of identifying the trends and gauging the scope, subjects, and methods by illustrating recent publications that fall into the new emerging trends in JPSJ. This may be criticized as being impressionistic. I have taken note of this criticism by taking into account indicators such as Google Scholar and its Japanese counterparts, JSTOR and CiNii. The time span that this article covers is a quarter of a century to circa 2000. It is a very short period of time, but this choice is justified in my view for two major reasons. First, political science in Japan is blossoming. It is indeed like One Hundred Flowers Bloom, One Hundred Schools Contend! Even limiting the temporal span to a quarter of a century makes the coverage of noted works plentiful. Second, the subject of historicizing Japanese politics has become a vogue, by digging up Japanese political norms, practices, and institutions as far back as possible. Therefore, those historical works of JPSJ are bound to be covered in one way or another in the course of dealing with the subject of historicizing Japanese politics.

It is Stanley Hoffmann (Reference Hoffmann and Hoffman1987 [1977]) who once rhetorically asked a question: is international relations an American social science? Yes, it has been at least for the last half a century – is a standard answer to the question. The same question must be asked of political science. Has political science been dominated by Americans? Yes, it has been for the last half a century – is a standard answer to this question. In terms of amount and variety – and some say in terms of quality as well – it is undeniable that America has led political science in the rest of the world. Just as Midland, Texas nurtured George W. Bush and Tommy Franks and thus shaped United States war policy in Iraq, Ann Arbor, Michigan has exemplified and thus arguably shaped quintessentially American political science. It is the trinity of robust academic professionalism, solid positivism, and heavy methodological armory that has been a trademark of American political science (Gunnell, Reference Gunnell2004; Easton et al., Reference Easton1995; Oren, Reference Oren2003).

In political science journals in other countries, one can easily discern the creeping influence of American paradigms and authors just by looking at the uniformly comprehensive and catholic citation practice and the plain and clear style of presentation. Benedict Anderson, a political scientist at Cornell University, has gone so far as to say that American academic writing is targeted at a narrowly defined professional audience and its style is ‘boring’ to other potential readers (Anderson, Reference Anderson2009: 242). Also, in many other countries, one can discern a robust non-American citation practice. What is called the three stage citation style in one's academic career still robustly exists in most countries (Inoguchi, Reference Inoguchi1985). In the early stage, it is normal to aspire to become a great academician and express this in the form of citing great scholars somewhat shamelessly frequently. In the middle stage, when one perceives that a foothold has been established among great scholars, at least within one's own areas of expertise, it is normal to unabashedly cite own works. In the twilight stage, everything looks so self-evident that it is common to stop citing other's as well as own works. In other words, the cycle of others-citation, self-citation, and no citation, in this order, seems to be a universal truth governing every academic's citation practice. A casual glance at my own writings for the last three decades, after my Ph.D., enables me to say that I have been unwittingly and thus dangerously following the three-stage cycle – now seemingly heading toward the third stage (http://www.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~inoguchi). But Americans are different. Americans are an exception. They have overcome this life-cyclical pattern, says Peter Katzenstein (Reference Katzenstein2006). Indeed, the multiple anonymous reviewing system plus the use of the social science citation index linked to higher salaries, positions, and prestige in one way or another seems to discipline many American political scientists sufficiently to surpass the seductive three-stage citation cycle of many academics of the world.

Indeed, as Google dominates the world frighteningly steadily, the academic world is flattened to accommodate the American style of writing in many other countries. In tandem with it, the subject and substance of political science writings are being slowly reshaped in other countries as well. In what follows in this article, I will trace the development of political science in Japan over the last quarter of the last century, focusing on key questions that have driven political scientists to search for answers. In so doing, I will examine how they approach their subjects and how they register the bases of analysis and discussion in their references to works on the subject concerned.

2. The development of political science in Japan 1975–2000

Japan's unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers led by the United States set the stage for political science, so argued Masao Maruyama (Reference Maruyama1946), a political scientist who came to dominate the third quarter of the last century in the discipline. He asked the twin questions and shaped Japan's fledging political science in a most effective way (Inoguchi, Reference Inoguchi and Easton1995; Reference Inoguchi, Smelser and Baltes2002). They were: (1) What went wrong for Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, which had been seemingly making progress in the scheme of ‘enlightenment and entrepreneurship’ and was ‘a rich country’ with a ‘strong army’? (2) What is the secret of Western democracy in excelling itself in terms of keeping freedom and accumulating wealth? It was quite natural in Japan to address these two questions and many fellow political scientists flocked to examine modern Japanese history on the one hand and Western philosophies on the other. Maruyama believed that something was entirely wrong with how Japanese leaders designed and molded their political institutions and conducted their political actions, and urged fellow citizens to unravel what went wrong and to search for a better political system. The style of and audience for their writings were almost exclusively domestic. Their message often had direct political implications.

For the last quarter of the last century, Japanese political scientists started to ask a different set of questions. Having built up confidence through democracy and wealth accumulation, in addition to the pacifist credentials of having waged no wars and having no soldiers killed in combat, Japanese political scientists started to take a close look at their own political system. Why is Japanese politics shaped so heavily by bureaucracy? Why has Japan kept a one party dominant system? Why are its citizens so weakly partisan in their voting choice? How are politics and economics intertwined in policy making and electoral behavior? Initially Japanese political scientists tended to look down upon Japan, as they tended to think that Japan was an outlier among Western democracies. Toward the end of the century and toward the end of the Cold War, Japanese political scientists began to take a look at Japan from a comparative perspective. Two initiatives are noteworthy in this respect. The Leviathan group led by the gang of four, Michio Muramatsu, Hideo Otake, Ikuo Kabashima, and myself, began in 1987 to publish a journal called Leviathan in Japanese, underlining a methodologically strong positivist outlook and a substantively Japan-focused analysis. After about a decade of their editorship, new generations of political scientists took over. After another decade, a further new generation is about to take over the editorship. Naturally, as times change, the original tones and the analytical modes have changed.

About the same time, in 1984, the Contemporary Political Science Library was launched by the University of Tokyo Press under the general editorship of myself. Within the decade since publication started in 1988, 18 volumes have been published. Two volumes are now under way toward completion of the original 20 volume publication schedule. The tones and subjects are positivist with strong substantive thrusts. The titles of the Library are: The State and Society, Governance, Political System, Revolution, Voting Behavior, Political Participation, Social Stratification and Politics, Ideology, Public Choice, Public Policy, Policy Process, Legislative Process, Political Party, Interest Groups, Local Autonomy, Enterprises and the State, War and Peace, International Interdependence, World System, and Foreign Policy. The Library was well received. Even now, the Library has been a standard reference for Japanese political scientists. Also noteworthy is the fact that 18 volumes were translated into Chinese and published by China Economic Daily Publisher. Even now the Library remains on sale. I have encountered a number of Chinese academics mentioning that they read the Library. The Chinese editions started publication late in 1989, shortly after the Tiananmen Square massacre took place. Comparative politics was established for the first time in history, in the sense that Japan is compared on an equal footing (JPSA, 200X).

The third wave of democratization made steady progress during the last quarter of the last century. Japanese political scientists started to take a closer look at increasingly democratic East and Southeast Asian countries, examining commonalities and differences again on an equal footing of another sort, taking historical and cultural backgrounds into full consideration (Inoguchi, Reference Inoguchi1993–1994; Inoguchi and Carlson, Reference Inoguchi and Carlson2006). The style and audience of their writings were increasingly mixed. Their style started to become more American: clear, plain, logical, and yet ‘boring’, with neither anecdotes nor jokes attached. As Japan's credentials of wealth accumulation along with peace preservation became an undisputable reality, Japanese political scientists increasingly targeted their writings at an overseas audience, even if most of their writings were in Japanese. In terms of language facility, political scientists in Japan enjoyed (and suffered from) high-level autonomy. A sufficiently large domestic market for their writings ensured that they had a tangible size of audience in Japan. In this respect, political scientists in Japan are placed in qualitatively different environments from those living in, say, Korea, Denmark, or the Netherlands. However, in tandem with the growth of interest in things Japanese as symbolized by Japan as Number One (Vogel, Reference Vogel2001), political scientists published works on Japanese politics. Those that are noteworthy include Junko Kato, Yutaka Tsujinaka, Masaru Kohno, Michio Muramatsu, and Takako Kishima.

This trend is clear if one looks at journals and encyclopedia edited during the last half a century. Nenpo Seijigaku (The Annals of Political Science), the key journal of the Japanese Political Science Association since 1955, has published articles most heavily on Western philosophies and Japanese history. But Leviathan has focused mostly on Japanese politics and increasingly comparative politics and policy, with some of those concepts and methods marginally guided by American political science.

This journal, that is the Japanese Journal of Political Science, which was started in 1999 in English by Cambridge University Press, has an editorial board based on the first generation Leviathan, and is refreshingly ambitious. It has adopted a strong positivist orientation with a comparative perspective, albeit with an East Asian slant. Escaping from falling into what was sometimes referred to as the provincial club, called the ‘Asia ghetto’, a key editorial principle is to elucidate some striking features of Japanese and East Asian politics in comparative perspective. The journal has been recently accorded ISI-approval, and is now widely regarded as a worthy publication site for an author's promotion, especially in the United States. Its impact factor for 2009 is registered 0.441, a respectable figure for a journal editorially head quatered in a non-English speaking society.

Senkyo Kenkyuu (Electoral Studies) is one of the key journals of the Japanese Electoral Studies Association, carrying most energetically strong empiricist analyses of Japanese elections and voting. Kokusai Seiji (International Relations), one of the key journals of the Japan Association of International Relations, has been publishing articles primarily in three areas: Japanese diplomacy and international relations; area and international studies of the rest of the world; and international relations theories. In the last area, Japanese political scientists for the last half a century have been assiduous in selectively absorbing American international relations. Another key journal of the Japan Association of International Relations is International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, which began publicaton in 2000 by Oxford University Press. This journal aims to be a first-rate international relations journal, with a natural focus on Asia-Pacific (http://www/oup.co.uk/irasia). Its impact factor for 2009 is registered 0.824, a no less respectable figure for a similarly situated journal.

Turning to encyclopedia, the 500 page long political science encyclopedia published in 1999 under the principal editorship of the present author of this article summarizes the achievements of Japanese political science for the period 1975–2000 (Inoguchi et al. (eds.), Reference Inoguchi1999). A similarly edited encyclopedia of international relations was also well received (Inoguchi, et al. (eds.), Reference Inoguchi2005). Both encyclopedias preceded two big encyclopedias, i.e. the Oxford Handbook of Political Science under the general editorship of Robert Goodin and the International Encyclopedia of Political Science (Sage) under the coeditorship of Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser, and Leonardo Morlino. The former represents a first-rate, most comprehensive encyclopedia of political science in terms of subjects and authors. It is strikingly fair to all strands of political science, ancient, modern, and postmodern; normative and empirical; descriptive and formalistic, etc. – although one cannot help noting that most contributing authors teach and write in English-speaking societies. The Sage volume is still in production, but judging from the coeditors, and those working under their leadership, it represents a global and inclusive encyclopedia, or one that is a little more culturally sensitive, historically attentive, and philosophically pluralist. Compared to these two encyclopedias, the two Japanese encyclopedias are characterized as encyclopedic in the original sense. In other words, the number of concepts examined is very large, but the number of words allotted to each item to describe and explain them is much less. The Japanese encyclopedias each appear as one big volume, whereas the two global encyclopedias consist of multi-volume handbooks.

Japanese political science has been most bumi putra (sons of the earth) when compared to that in South Korea and China, for two major reasons. First, it has a long history of being exposed to and selectively absorbing Western social sciences and thus has endogenized much of it already (Inoguchi, Reference Inoguchi, Smelser and Baltes2001). Second, privileged elites normally do not send their children to universities abroad unless for special purposes. Thus compared to Koreans and Chinese, who are educated and teach and publish their works abroad, Japanese political scientists rarely teach and publish their works abroad. Those who do graduate abroad do not undertake post-graduate research there, but return to Japan to continue their studies, and to teach and publish their works. Like most returned Korean political scientists, they do not publish much in English once they get back – do in Rome as Romans do. Nevertheless, Junko Kato (Reference Kato1993, Reference Kato2003), Takako Kishima (Reference Kishima1991), and Masaru Kohno (Reference Kohno1997) have published works on Japanese politics in English.

An increasing number of works have been published in areas other than Japanese politics, and noteworthy ones include: Takashi Shiraishi (Reference Shiraishi1990) and Rieko Karatani (Reference Karatani2002) on Indonesian and British politics respectively, Arihiro Fukuda (Reference Fukuda1998) on political philosophy, Sueo Sudo (Reference Sudo2002) on Japan's international relations with Southeast Asia, and Hideaki Shinoda (Reference Shinoda2002) on state sovereignty. But it remains Leviathan's gang of four who collectively and individually energized Japanese political science in 1975–2000.

3. The development of political science in Japan 2000–2025

Entering into the new millennium, we can identify new trends in Japanese political science. They are: (1) historicizing the normative and institutional origins of Japanese politics, (2) putting Japanese politics in comparative perspective, and (3) the new self-conscious impetus for data collection and theory construction.

About the author

Takashi Inoguchi is Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo and President of the University of Niigata Prefecture. He specializes in Japanese politics, comparative political behavior, and international relations. He has published numerous books and articles, amongst which are Japanese Politics Today (Palgrave, 1997), Japanese Foreign Policy (Palgrave, 2000), Japanese Politics: An Introduction(Trans Pacific Press, 2005), Political Cultures in Asia and Europe (Routledge, 2006), Citizens and the State (Routledge, 2008), Globalisation, Public Opinion and the State (Routledge, 2008), American Democracy Promotion (Oxford University Press, 2000), Reinventing the Alliance (Palgrave, 2003), The Uses of Institutions (Palgrave, 2007), The Quality of Life in the Six Confucian Societies (Springer, 2009). He is Executive Editor of the Japanese Journal of Political Science (Cambridge University Press) and Director of the AsiaBarometer project.