Japan is an excellent case for the comparative study of the connections between democracy and culture.

—It is a country with a well established system of constitutional democracy with roots in the nineteenth century. Politically, the country has been constitutionally and electorally democratic for the entire period since the end of World War II.

—Democracy in Japan also has strong social and cultural underpinnings. Despite a hierarchical Confucian tradition, the country is largely egalitarian in its educational, economic, and informational systems. The Japanese citizen enjoys a democratic day-to-day existence.

—Because Japan's democracy, like that of all countries, is far from perfect, it is a good case study for examining ideal conceptions of democracy in contrast to practical democratic realities.

Japan, the non-Western world's first country to introduce and continue a parliamentary system of government, and one of the most stable democracies in the industrialized world today, provides an excellent case for the study of political parties and representation.

—It was the first non-Western country to introduce a parliament in 1890 and mass male suffrage in 1925.

—Political parties and popular elections were an important basis for governance in the period prior to World War II, and have been the sole basis for the selection of Japan's governments since then, making Japan one of the few non-Western examples of electoral representation.

—Japan today, despite free elections and a competitive multiparty system, has had an unbroken string of governments formed exclusively by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party since that party's formation in 1955, making Japan the best example of uninterrupted conservative rule among the advanced industrialized democracies.

—There are enough similarities and differences in Japan's electoral and party systems to make it an informative, but not totally anomalous, comparative case study for those generally interested in these phenomena.

Japan, the first Asian country to enter the ranks of the industrialized democracies, provides an excellent case study of a non-Western, but highly modern, national bureaucracy. As such, it provides a useful, informative, but culturally different, country for comparative purposes, whether with the United States specifically or with other industrialized democracies more generally.

—Because of the central role that the Japanese bureaucracy has played in planning and implementing so many of the major changes in Japan, it is a good example of bureaucracy as planner and agent of change.

—Because the Japanese bureaucracy has been so closely linked to political leadership, it provides an important contrast to countries where bureaucrats and politicians are presumed to have rather separate and antagonistic roles.

—Because Japan has selfconsciously limited the size of its governmental bureaucracy, the Japanese case provides an excellent counter-case to presumptions that bureaucratic expansion is inevitable. Japan instead offers a most important case of systematic downscaling of bureaucracy.

—Because the Japanese bureaucracy has gone through several conscious historical reformulations, including explicit imitation of the Prussian model, and systematic reformulation by American bureaucrats, it is an excellent case for examining the interaction of competing bureaucratic traditions.

Why should one study elite recruitment and political leadership in Japan? Because, our answer would go, we live in a world of ever deepening interdependence among nations where the peace, security, and prosperity of each is greatly influenced by policies and actions of another. This is particularly true when the latter is an economic superpower like Japan, the largest creditor nation and aid donor in the world of the early 1990s with a gross national product equal to about fifteen per cent of the world's total. Who makes Japanese domestic and foreign policies and how they are made has important implications for the welfare of other nations, including the United States, which maintains what a former American ambassador to Japan, Mike Mansfield, called the “most important bilateral relationship” in the world.

“Elite” and “leadership” are two concepts that help us identify and analyze those who play central roles in a nation's policymaking process. Commonplace as they are in the vocabulary of both modern political science and the mass media, these words are often used ambiguously and interchangeably. They are, however, etymologically distinctive words that can serve us as useful analytical tools only if they are clearly and distinctively defined. In the discussion that follows, we use “elite” to refer to a group of individuals who hold privileged positions in society or organizations and “leadership” to refer to the exercise of power, broadly defined, to lead others in collective action. As William Welsh has suggested, elites are thus “set apart from the rest of society by their preeminence in political and governmental hierarchies,” while leadership means “ability to mobilize human resources in pursuit of specific goals.”

Is Japan enigmatic because it is unique? Problems of social and economic policy in contemporary Japan challenge myths about uniqueness. By focusing on comparable problems, this essay notes the limits of world views about Japanese uniqueness and the exceptionalism of countries.

An aim is to unbundle areas that illustrate the policy process and reflect on models of policymaking. In the diversity within Japan, policy-making in specific areas reflects on the approaches of corporatism, pluralism, and state-centered theorists.

Across policy areas, instructors will discover problems of Japan's industrial society that are nonetheless comparable to elsewhere. Throughout East Asia, scholars note the distinct social, ideological, and historical contexts that challenge past social theory. A leading Asian country can offer rich additions to a course on comparative politics and public policy. In Japan, one also can emphasize familiar features of industrial society, economy, and polity that test various approaches and models of policymaking. Using areas of labor, welfare, agriculture, and education as examples, instructors may pursue these and additional topics found from the bibliographies and readings.

The Importance of Japan's Political Economy: The importance of Japan's political economy probably will be more obvious than any other subject concerning Japanese politics. Being the world's second largest economy and the United States' greatest overseas trading partner, and with increasing Japanese investment in America, the politics and policy-making that affect Japan's industry and economy probably have a more direct impact on the lives of more Americans than any other subject concerning a foreign country that American students can study.

With increasing friction over trade and investment beginning to undermine the United States-Japan relationship, one that former Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield liked to call the most important bilateral relationship in the world, Japan's political economy has become the stuff of daily newspaper headlines for many Americans. How much, how, and how well the Japanese state intervenes in the economy to promote economic growth has probably received more attention in the United States in recent years than any other topic concerning Japan. Words previously unfamiliar to American ears, such as “industrial policy,” “targeting,” “MITI,” keiretsu, and so forth, are now common in the American media and in policy debates in Washington about the origins of Japan's massive trade deficit with the United States and what the United States can and should do about it. No college graduate, indeed no American citizen, can claim to be politically literate today without some knowledge of this subject.

Japan serves as an excellent case of the anomaly of the economic giant-political pygmy whose ability to influence international events is severely limited despite a manifest desire to play a larger role. Japan's attempts to achieve political standing commensurate with its economic clout internationally have enjoyed only minimal success.

Historical factors, especially its defeat in World War II and the Occupation of Japan by the United States, continue to influence Japan's postwar foreign policy. So too does the so-called “peace clause” of the U.S.-imposed Constitution and the pacifist public consensus that has grown around it.

Since the war Japan's defense alliance with the United States has had an enormous impact on foreign policy, both inhibiting and aiding Japan's relations with other states. Japanese dependence on American defense guarantees sometimes conflicts with Japan's attempts to strike a more independent foreign policy.

Dissatisfaction with paid campaign advertisements in recent elections has generated heartfelt pleas for fundamental change in the ways elections are conducted. Following the example of Australia and until recently West Germany, some have called for an outright ban on television campaign ads in the United States. Others more worried about the effect on last-minute deciders have suggested the application of the French model, where ads are banned during the closing weeks of the campaign (Schoenbach, 1987: Penniman and Ranney, undated).

These calls undoubtably reflect the deep frustration felt by viewers over the poor educational quality of advertisements in the United States. But it is far too simple to blame ads for these deficiencies. The problem of political commercials is as much a function of campaign structure and voter reactions as candidate behavior. Structural and attitudinal changes in the nature of campaigns have loosened the forces which used to restrain elite strategies. The rise of a mass-based campaign system at a time when candidates have powerful means of influencing viewers creates big incentives for media campaigns. Voters are bombarded with spot ads precisely because of the short-term possibilities evident in recent races (West, 1991a; 1991b).

Since the problem of advertisements goes much deeper than ads themselves, it is unlikely that the elimination of television ads would solve the problems which plague American elections. After all, nonsubstantive appeals by candidates did not originate with television ads in 1952. Fluffy rhetoric has a long tradition in American politics (Jamieson and Campbell, 1988).