Participatory Research by Niigata Minamata Disease Victims, and Empowerment of These Victims

Abstract:  Niigata Minamata disease is the result of environmental pollution. In the present paper I discuss the activities conducted thus far by victims (uncertified patients) of Niigata Minamata disease to receive the necessary physical and medical examinations, as well as requests for administrative appeal. Such activities, stemming primarily from efforts being made in Sentoji of Yasuda Town (Agano City at present), have had relevance in the lawsuits of uncertified patients of Minamata disease. Those who participated in these activities, even those who are not plaintiffs in the corresponding court cases, were able to receive a set amount of financial and medical support following a political settlement related to Minamata disease. As of 2005, the movement has been assisting people who visit the Agano River basin area to learn about Niigata Minamata disease, and approximately half of all victims manifesting symptoms of the disease have had some association with the Sentoji movement. I also examine how the activities being conducted in Sentoji have helped victims learn more about their own bodies, and how these activities have also helped people understand the significance of taking the initiative to become involved in such movements. And I examine how victims of the disease have received empowerment through victim movements.     

Three Paradigms behind River Governance in Japan: Modern Technicism, Nature Conservationism and Life Environmentalism

Abstract:  In this paper I examine river governance or river policy in Japan through the process of modernization over one century and analyze three hidden paradigms, "modern technicism", "nature conservationism" and "life environmentalism", with the theory of environmental value. Japanese rivers were governed traditionally by local people (life environmentalism) but the river management was put under the control of administration and the specialist (modern technicism) in the tide of modernization, and in order to confront this situation a new paradigm of "nature conservationism" was born. In the analysis of the stages of river policy development, the development of economic and political power will be traced according to an environmental sociology point of view. This means analyzing people's initiatives resulting from their recognition and value in the political and economical arena. Structuring of river governance through the interactive process of "government and self-government" is also analyzed by putting an emphasis on local residents as a political body and second, I will describe the theoretical direction of environmental sociology. Lake Biwa and The Yodo River Basin system, which have historical importance in Japanese river policy, will be taken as an example. From the position of environmental sociology, river governance as an interactive process of "government and self-governance" based on independence of people, is one practical model that can give us important keys for the new river governance, transcending difference of social conditions. Consider learning the spirit of traditional communal structure as a process of practice for building a new communalism, life environmentalism model, which fits today's society.     

Education for Democratic Citizenship through A Literacy‐based Approach: A Case of South African Township Children

The study contextualises the position of child citizens in the South African democracy and highlights how education for democratic citizenship is employed through a literacy‐based approach. The qualitative study was exploratory and based on a lesson presented to nine‐year‐old township children by giving them language‐related tasks. Through the children's voices we present the life experiences that expressed their need for basic services, education, extra facilities and security. We argue that children need to experience the benefits of democracy and education for democratic citizenship to build and sustain a resilient democratic society.     

“Creative Reconstruction” and the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games: How Does the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games Influence Japan's Neoliberal Social Reform?

This article critically examines the vision of Japanese society expressed in the idea of a legacy for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games primarily for an internal, domestic audience. This legacy is consistent with the national reconstruction policy adopted after the Great East Japan earthquake of 11 March 2011. The specific issue I focus on here is the centrality of the term “creative reconstruction” to the legacy discourse on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. By interweaving discussions about three places—the Tohoku disaster area, the Tokyo Olympic venue, and Japanese society—this discourse creates an apparently mutual interdependence between the three. Here I assess the idea of this ideological Olympic legacy where these relationships of interdependence are represented as a blueprint for restructuring the system of capital accumulation in Japan. The structure of the article is as follows. First, I provide an overview of creative reconstruction in Japan in comparison with other terms recently used to assess sports mega‐events such as the Olympics. Next, I briefly outline the political transformation of the social integration system from the mid‐1990s, when the phrase creative reconstruction was first used to the present. In the following three sections I discuss the way that each of the key terms in the discourse—Tohoku, Tokyo, and Japan—has been deployed. This article concludes with reflections on the social and political implications of this discourse for Japanese society in the build up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.     

Steering the Poverty‐Environment Nexus in Central Asia: A metagovernance analysis of the Poverty‐Environment Initiative (PEI)

The close and reciprocal ties between poverty and environmental degradation present significant potential for simultaneous improvement of the livelihood of the poorest along with increased opportunities and enhanced resilience of the environment and natural resources. By supporting governments and other stakeholders in designing and implementing development plans that tackle environmental and poverty concerns in a joint manner, the globally operating UNDP‐UNEP Poverty‐Environment Initiative (PEI) addresses a major governance challenge for sustainable development (SD) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in particular. Focusing on Central Asia, and specifically Tajikistan, a country outside the spotlight of studies concerned with SD governance mechanisms, and through the analysis of PEI programme documents and stakeholders’ interviews, this article probes into the governance and governance co‐ordination (metagovernance) settings for SD. The article closes by presenting a set of recommendations to improve governance co‐ordination, while achieving more inclusive decision‐making and ultimately increasing the impact of PEI on the society and the environment. Specifically, it argues for improved information policy and enhanced integration of endogenous knowledge. Furthermore, national and local development planning and private initiatives should be better linked, and the different levels of governance for poverty‐environment mainstreaming should be more coherent. The solutions discussed are of relevance for wider Central Asia and the global community engaged in moving the SDGs into the mainstream of governance and policy frameworks.     

“Hikikomori” and Dependency on Family: Focusing on Father–Son Relationships

Hikikomori is a Japanese term referring to the condition of being “shut‐in” or someone with that condition. Japanese national surveys indicated that the total number of hikikomori is over one million. This paper seeks to elucidate the “hikikomori” problem faced by families and connect those microscopic experiences to a macroscopic common problem related to some social backgrounds of Japanese society. For the study, I examined statistical data from national and KHJ (a nationwide organization of hikikomori families) surveys, and case studies of fathers of hikikomori sons. One of the main findings was that the common problem of families with hikikomori people is not the shut‐in condition of them, but the “dependency” of these adult‐aged children. Fathers' attempts to reduce the dependency included encouraging their sons to secure stable employment or connect them to adequate social security, such as public assistance. However, these efforts are often ineffectual because of social structural backgrounds: transformation of the labor market, inadequate social security, and the infinite duty of family to sustain children. This paper also focused on the policies of the “Japanese model of welfare society” as a political factor that reinforced the family dependency by developing a combination of workfare regime and familialism. The Japanese model of welfare society assumes that the employment of men as breadwinners would be stable. Instability of the employment of men makes the model dysfunctional. The expansion of the hikikomori problem as a family dependency problem is evidence of the dysfunction of the model.     

Who Wants to Work for Japanese Companies? A Case in Malaysia

This study examined the factors associated with job‐pursuit intentions for Japanese companies among young, college‐educated Malaysian respondents. Building on the frameworks of Japanese‐style management and the organizational image theory, the study examined the perceived images of Japanese companies and their relations to the actual job‐pursuit intentions among potential job seekers in Malaysia. Using two types of surveys—one based on students (prospective new graduates), and the other based on mid‐career workers—we found that a positive image of Japanese companies’ human resource management was attractive to both types of potential job applicants. Images related to skill training and monetary compensation were more appealing to students, whereas the image of career development was more appealing to mid‐career workers. We also found that Japanese companies tend to attract members of the workforce who are talented in job‐specific skills and professional knowledge in the Malaysian context.     

(Re)politicizing global financial governance: what's ‘new’ about the ‘New International Financial Architecture’?

Abstract This article is a contribution to the (re)politicization of global financial governance currently underway in the interdisciplinary field of international political economy (IPE). Particular reference is made to the economistic and technicist discourse prevalent in the so‐called ‘New International Financial Architecture’ (NIFA) process. It is argued that a (re)politicized reading of global financial governance is enabled by a conceptualization of governance networks that combines the institutional focus of existing IPE research with a concern with the discursive dynamics of authority relations and that situates governance networks in the power relations, contestation, contradictions and reproduction of global finance. Claims to ‘newness’ regarding the NIFA process, made by both the ‘architects’ themselves and left unchallenged by the majority of IPE scholars, are also disputed. The NIFA process is shown to have continued the contested development of an exclusionary transnational neo‐liberal network of governance that first began to emerge in the mid‐1970s.     

Public interest or private agenda?: A meditation on the role of NGOs in environmental policy and management in Australia

Non-government organisations (NGOs) have come to assume an important role in environmental policy in Australia. This paper considers the institutional impacts of an enlarged and formal role for NGOs in environmental governance. To foreground the analysis that follows, the paper theorises: (i) the structural democratisation of western societies which provides the preconditions for civic approaches to environmental governance; (ii) civil society organisations as political actors; and (iii) the link between non-state associations and democracy. Against this background, the paper surveys some of the ways in which NGOs are being formally involved in environmental policy and management in Australia. The paper proceeds to identify a series of risks associated with these approaches. The paper concludes by calling for a more nuanced and critical appraisal of the role of NGOs in environmental policy so political space might be reserved for the public interest and to ensure that the democratic effects of civil society are not diminished.     

Governability of Democracies: —A Japanese Perspective—*

Abstract Some twenty years ago, the Trilateral Commission organized a project on ‘governability’ of democracies. At that time, North American and West-European democracies were facing serious crises of governability. while Japan was not. Now, although Japanese democracy is not in total crisis, but is facing new tasks to be tackled as a ‘major industrial democracy.’ Homogenization of economic institutions among major industrial countries is functionally inevitable in an age of globalized economy. Political reforms to enhance it are urgently required. Burden sharing for world democratic governance is posing serious tasks to Japan as a ‘civilian power.’ Although it is certain that Japan will remain as a democracy for any foreseeable future, but her governability in the sense of the capacity to contribute to world democratic governance is now, and will be, put on severe trial for years to come.     

Bending but Not Breaking?: Foreign Investor Pressure and Dividend Payouts by Japanese Firms

This article examines the global diffusion of shareholder‐oriented governance practices, using the case of dividend payouts by Japanese firms. While Japanese firms previously retained profits for rainy days or new ventures, their dividend payouts began to increase in the 1990s, rapidly catching up with the levels prevailing in the United States. Following prior research, we focus on the role of foreign investors in this process but provide a more nuanced account of their influence, using panel data on 2,036 publicly traded Japanese firms from 1990 to 2005. First, we show that pressure from foreign investors increased dividends by Japanese firms not only directly but also indirectly, by extending the cognitive boundaries of organizational fields of Japanese firms beyond their local peers and toward their global competitors. Second, we show that although Japanese firms that remained deeply embedded in the traditional, stakeholder‐oriented governance system resisted shareholder‐oriented governance practices, even such firms yielded under pressure from both foreign and domestic investors. We conclude with theoretical implications of our findings for the literature on the global diffusion of shareholder value and its broader political and social consequences.     

Balancing Control and Coaching in CSO Governance. A Paradox Perspective on Board Behavior

How can the internal governance of civil society organizations be conceptualized more adequately by accounting for the dual and simultaneous requirements of controlling and coaching in board behavior? Empirically, we seem to agree that effective governance of a civil society organization is crucial to its sustained viability. Conceptually, however, we observe a lack of consensus on how to best understand CSO governance. By critically juxtaposing two major theoretical lenses to conceptualize governance, namely, agency and stewardship theory, we identify a number of challenges when dealing with board–management relations that deserve our attention. While agency theory privileges controlling behavior, stewardship theory emphasizes the coaching behavior of boards. The purpose of this article is to offer a concept of governance that is informed by a paradox perspective advancing a subtler, more adequate conceptualization of board governance that accounts for these often conflicting demands on CSO governance. Drawing on illustrations from a longitudinal interpretive case study, we exemplify our propositions empirically. The article concludes with discussing the implications of our argument for CSO governance research and practice.     

Between the Global Environmental Regime and Local Sustainability: A Local Review on the Inclusion, Failure and Reinventing Process of the Environmental Governance

Abstract: Japan has undergone drastic changes in ecological policy and practice over the past 40 years. Although this short history began with significant levels of pollution, notoriously termed “kogai”, the country seems to have achieved great ecological improvements, both technologically and institutionally, and now is one of the most highly ecologically modernized countries. But can this process really be posited as a simple, linear one of ecological modernization, a sort of natural, historical progress toward ideal environmental governance? This paper proposes some questions that cast doubt over this view. It focuses on local struggles for environmental governance, particularly in the city of Kamakura, which proclaimed itself an “environmental municipality” in 1993, a designation that seemingly fell by the wayside in 2001. Investigating this 8‐year case we can extract some lessons concerning the contradictions between global and local, and consequently about the inherent difficulties of top‐down environmental ordinances and insufficiently decentralized environmental governance. At the same time, through this case readers may also discover a new type of civic activity: cities with agriculture. After a short sketch of agri‐environmental movements, I will suggest that such movements are converging with more conventional ones and prevailing throughout the country. Therefore, the ecological modernization process can be seen to include a sort of restoration process: an updated return to perma‐cultural sustainability. Consequently, this essay contributes to international environmental discussion, not only by uncovering the cleavages between global and local, but also by suggesting the possibility of environmental governance alternative to technologically and institutionally driven ones.     

Hybrid networks and the global politics of the digital revolution – a practice‐oriented,relational and agnostic approach

The rapid growth of internet users and the importance of networked technologies for most spheres of life raise questions about how to foster and govern the digital revolution on a global scale. Focusing on internet governance and the use of ICTs for development purposes, I provide a multi‐sited, ethnographic exploration of two UN‐based multi‐stakeholder arrangements – comprising governments, business and civil society groups – that have contributed to the construction of the digital revolution as an object of global governance. In this article I show how analytical insights from governmentality studies and actor‐network theory can be used to capture how objects of governance and organizational arrangements are constructed and consolidated. Conventional approaches to networks and governance tend to treat organizational arrangements and issue areas as bounded, separate and fixed. By contrast, I demonstrate the merits of a practice‐oriented, relational and agnostic research strategy, which foregrounds the governmental techniques and moments of translation involved when new objects and modes of governance are assembled and negotiated.     

Korean ethnic education in Japanese public schools

Korean ethnic education in Japanese public schools has played an important role in the persistence of Korean ethnicity in Japan. In Osaka Prefecture, it began as an educational movement at the end of the 1960s. Japanese and Korean activists who led the movement had different political commitments and developed two approaches. Those interested in Korean homeland politics stressed the importance of teaching the ethnic culture of the homeland and tried to develop an ethno-national identity among Korean children. Those involved in civil rights politics in the context of Japan focused on the problem of ethnic discrimination and facilitated the formation of a political subjectivity among Korean children. The old practice of Korean ethnic education is a form of multicultural education and provides many useful ideas for today's multiculturalist teachers in Japan, who are dealing with children of newcomer foreigners.     

ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS IN POSTWAR JAPANESE SOCIETY

Abstract  We can distinguish four historical stages of environmental problems in postwar Japanese society. Historical retrospect shows that Japan was one of the worst countries concerning environmental disruption and that it experienced various issues corresponding to the change of main investment domain. Since the late 60s, residents' movements of victims pushed the business world, the national and local goverments to take more strict measures for the protection of the environment. New policy framework was defined in the beginning of the 70s. But further improvement of environment policy was not carried out under stagflation of first oil crisis. As a result of economic growth, Japanese society multiplied its demands on the ecosystem and it became a society characterized by a "separate-dependent ecosystem" and by "one-way consumption." Diseqilibrium of the power balance and defects in the decision-making process are basic social factors that have accelerated environment destruction in Japan. Despite apparent change, these social conditions continue to exist without change, and constitute an obstacle to the development of an environment-oriented technology and a transformation into a more "regenerative" society with a "self-supplying ecosystem."     

A Basic Accounting of Variation in Municipal Solid‐Waste Generation at the County Level in Texas, 2006: Groundwork for Applying Metabolic‐Rift Theory to Waste Generation

Abstract Environmental social scientists debate whether or not modern development reduces society's impact on the biosphere. The empirical research informing the discussion has not yet adequately examined the social determinants of municipal solid‐waste (MSW) generation, an increasingly relevant issue, both ecologically and sociologically. A primary problem for this research concerns the increasing exchange of MSW across state and county borders. A convenient way to avoid this problem is to examine variation between counties with landfills that service only the county in which the landfills are located. I applied this restriction to a cross‐sectional analysis of total MSW generated in Texas at the county level for 2006. Using robust regression, this study found that two basic measures of modern development, population per square mile and per capita income, are both positively related to total MSW generated at the county level and together explain about 73 percent of the variation in the dependent variable. The evidence corroborates the metabolic‐rift theory. The concentration of people onto smaller land areas, or urbanization, and increasing wealth in a capitalist economy contribute to the metabolic rupture between human society and the environment.     

Japanese Sociology in a Global Network. Internationalization,Disciplinary Development,and Minority Integration in the Road Ahead

The dual trajectories of Japanese sociology and Japan itself are poised at a watershed moment in their shared history. In recent years, Japanese sociology has enlarged its international presence in unprecedented fashion and the Tokyo Olympics have positioned the global spotlight on the entire nation of Japan, making it an opportune moment to reflect on the future of Japanese sociology in connection to Japanese society by way of internationalization. This article draws on the author's reflections on the latest 92nd Japan Sociological Society Annual Conference in the context of recent socio‐structural and intellectual transformations in counterpart sociological cultures in Anglo‐America. Drawing on three theorizations of disciplinary development by Abbott, Connell, and Burawoy, this article articulates two dimensions (socio‐structural and intellectual) with which to examine (i) what Japanese sociology can contribute to improve the internationalization decolonization, and pluralization of global sociology; and (ii) what global sociology can do to advance Japanese sociology's public contribution to improving and preserving LGBTQ minorities' societal well‐being.     

Relative Rank‐order of Salient Identities of the Japanese

How are multiple identities of Japanese people rank‐ordered? Previous studies on multiple identities almost exclusively focus on people in the USA. Little is known about the structure of multiple identities of people living in other countries. Japan is a good comparative case because it has both similar and different social contexts than the USA. Analyzing a recent survey of a nationally representative sample of Japanese adults, I examine how multiple identities are rank‐ordered by their salience among the Japanese. The results suggest that among ten identities, the most salient are the family–marital status identity, the occupational identity, and the national identity, while the least salient identities are social class, religious, and political identities. This identity rank‐order differs from that found in a comparable study of Americans in that the rank‐orders of national and religious identities are reversed. The observed patterns also seem to contradict an emerging line of cross‐cultural research that suggests national identity is less important for the Japanese than for Americans. Overall, this paper empirically demonstrates the fundamental dictum of symbolic interactionism that self reflects society, and suggests the importance of specifying and examining country‐level factors to study identity structures.     

Deliberative Democracy and the Paradox of Participation

Citizen involvement and participatory governance have been adopted as essential components of urban development policies in many countries. For instance, participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre was successful in mobilizing and empowering poor people. However, in many cases, participation is merely a buzzword which often leads to co‐optation. In this article, we propose an explanatory model of participatory governance for making comparative analyses and compare participatory budgeting in the 1990s in Brazil with the Japanese community policy of the 1970s. Based on this, our analysis identifies the paradox of participation and the importance of gatekeeping functions. As a consequence of enhanced citizen participation, the power of the bureaucratic administration becomes dominant unless politicians and the legislature retain their autonomy in decision‐making. If the gatekeeping functions of involvement and decision‐making are monopolized by the administrative body urban development is de‐politicized, which, in turn, leads to co‐optation by government and exclusion. It is important to retain the function of politics to deepen democracy through citizen participation in urban development.