Governance in Japan
Organizers: Celeste Arrington and Gabriele Vogt
Date: June 13, 2023
Location: Internationales Begegnungszentrum (IBZ) München
Amalienstr. 38, 80799 Munich
This workshop explores the diversity of tools of governance in Japan today. Historically, scholars noted how Japanese approaches to public policy and social control tended to rely on non-binding and cooperative “soft law” measures, such as administrative guidance (gyōsei shidō), strong social norms, and public enlightenment activities (keihatsu). In the new millennium, however, legalistic modes of governance have proliferated, involving more detailed legal clauses, formal sanctions, and more participatory policymaking procedures. New laws set legal caps on work hours, prohibited discrimination against disabled persons, mandated environmental impact assessments, required public comment periods, and obliged new or renovated schools to install barrier-free features. Often, such legalistic rules coexist alongside hortatory soft law measures. Moreover, subnational ordinances sometimes add stronger regulations (uwanose jōrei) or extend the scope (yokodashi jōrei) of national legal frameworks.
By comparing public policy tools across diverse issue areas, this workshop aims to take stock of the range of different forms of governance that exist in Japan today—from recommendations to exercise self-restraint (jishuku yōsei) to obligations to endeavor (doryoku gimu) to legally enforceable rules. We will discuss the following questions: Under what conditions are Japanese policymakers likely to adopt informal versus legalistic tools of governance? Why is public policy becoming more legalistic in some issue areas but not others? How do formal and informal governance approaches interact, whether productively or not? To what extent are citizens more involved in governance? What implications do the diverse tools of governance have for Japanese democracy?
Open to the public.
We acknowledge support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the SFB 1369 “Cultures of Vigilance” at LMU Munich for this workshop.
Workshop Schedule:
13:00 Introductions
13:15 - 15:15 Panel: Governance Beyond State Actors
Chair: Wen-Wei Lan, LMU
Dual Characters – Emerging Patterns of Local Civic Self-Governance in Rural Japan Hanno Jentzsch, Leiden University
The Yanbaru Model of Community Stores: A Case of “Third Place” Local Governance Gabriele Vogt, LMU
The Revival of “Closed Country” Strategy: Japan’s Governance Tools in COVID-19Sian Qian, LMU
New and Old Manners on the Train in Times of the Pandemic Paul Kramer, LMU
Exploring Standards and Rulemaking in Japanese Care Robotics James Wright, Alan Turing Institute
15:15 – 16:00 Coffee Break
16:00 – 18:00 Panel: The Changing Role of Legalism in Governance
Chair: Jane Sarah Khanizadeh, LMU
Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance Florentine Koppenborg, TUM
The Theory and Practice of Media Governance in Japan Yosuke Buchmeier, LMU
Barrier-Free Reforms and Societal Demand for Legalistic Governance in JapanCeleste Arrington, George Washington University
From Soft Law to Legal Pluralism: Japan’s Response to Hate Speech in Interaction between International, National, and Local Regulations Ayako Hatano, Oxford
Same-Sex Marriage and Governance in Japan Guy Baldwin, University of Cambridge
18:00 Concluding Remarks
Abstracts aller Vorträge
Dual Characters – Emerging Patterns of Local Civic Self-Governance in Rural Japan
Hanno Jentzsch, Leiden University
Since 2015, the Japanese government has promoted so-called “regional management organizations” (chiiki unei soshiki, RMO) as part of the “Japan Revitalization Strategy”. RMO are local self-governance bodies to sustain (rural) livelihoods and supplement public service provision at the sub-municipal level. RMO are expected to assume a “dual character” (nimen-sei) by combining deliberation (e.g., devising revitalization plans) and implementation. Moreover, they are characterized as both civic organizations and (often highly dependent) “partners” of the local state. Finally, they serve as a new form of “proactive” local self-governance, while also typically remaining closely tied to traditional local self-governance organizations, such as neighborhood associations. Based on field research in several localities between 2017 and 2022, this paper analyzes the institutional tensions that arise from these ambiguities and explores local attempts to overcome these tensions through adaptation, formalization, or separation.
The Yanbaru Model of Community Stores: A Case of “Third Place” Local Governance
Gabriele Vogt, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
I use the term “third place” local governance to address the seemingly apolitical realm, where citizens contribute to local governance through everyday practices. This paper studies the community store of Oku in the Yanbaru region of Northern Okinawa as an example for a physical manifestation of “third place” local governance. The store contributed to the small hamlet’s relative wealth in the pre- and postwar years; and the profit generated by the store was used for welfare policies. The store’s management style of direct democratic decision-making spilled over into the hamlet administration. More recently, however, substantial outmigration and population aging next to large-scale economic restructuring have robbed the store of its financial power and citizen support alike. Taking the Oku community store as a case, this paper discusses the potential and limitations of “third space” local governance.
The Revival of “Closed Country” Strategy: Japan’s Governance Tools in COVID-19
Sian Qin, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
This paper analyzes various tools associated with Japan’s “closed country” strategy in responding to the COVID-19 outbreak. Building on concepts from authoritarian populism and the performance of crisis, it elaborates on how and why Japan’s closed-door strategy has become a core element in the country’s countermeasures against the pandemic. By deciphering the discursive framings that former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō applied in three decisive moments, we see that Japan’s approach to COVID-19 management was relatively soft when directed at the inside of the nation, and rigid when distancing that nation from physical interaction with the outside world. From the pandemic’s onset, ethnic others were portrayed as a risk for two intertwined reasons: First, Japanese governance relies on self-constraint rather than rules and sanctions, and the ethnic others’ compliance was not fully trusted. Second, this exclusionary strategy fed into populist discourses and was presumed to result in favorable support rates for the administration.
New and Old Manners on the Train in Times of the Pandemic
Paul Kramer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Japan has managed to get through the pandemic with comparatively low case numbers and deaths, with the government enacting mostly legally non-binding measures. This paper asks why people followed these legally non-binding rules. More specifically, the paper analyzes the usage of public educational campaigns in trains like the “manner posters” that have already been used for over a decade. It explores how they have changed in pandemic times, and what effect they might have had on commuters. It does so by bringing together a qualitative analysis of these materials with a series of focused interviews, narrative analysis, and a collection of detailed observational protocols describing the behavior of commuters in the trains during the final phase of the pandemic in Japan during April 2023.
Exploring Standards and Rulemaking in Japanese Care Robotics
James Wright, Alan Turing Institute
This talk will explore the role of standards, regulations, and other approaches to technology governance in the design, development, and use of care robots in Japan. Playing an active role in shaping international discussions around standards and governance frameworks has long been seen as key for Japan to retain a technological competitive edge in international markets (e.g., Kishi 2011). Yet in the case of care robots, the considerable efforts by the Japanese government and research community to position itself as a leader in rulemaking on the world stage, including via the creation of a new international standard, have not proved substantially effective in facilitating the development of the industry domestically or creating a dominant export market for care robot products. I will seek to contextualize these efforts within a broader view of recent Japanese approaches to the regulation of digital technologies.
Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance
Florentine Koppenborg, Technical University of Munich
The regulatory reforms taken up in the wake of the Fukushima disaster on March 11, 2011, directly and indirectly raised the costs of nuclear power in Japan. The independent Nuclear Regulation Authority resisted capture by the nuclear industry and fundamentally altered the environment for nuclear policy implementation. Independent safety regulation changed state-business relations in the nuclear power domain from regulatory capture to top-down safety regulation, which raised technical safety costs for electric utilities. Furthermore, the safety agency’s extended emergency preparedness regulations expanded the allegorical backyard of NIMBY demonstrations. Antinuclear protests, mainly lawsuits challenging restarts, incurred additional social acceptance costs. Increasing costs undermined pronuclear actors’ ability to implement nuclear power policy and caused a rift inside the “nuclear village.” Small nuclear safety
The Theory and Practice of Media Governance in Japan
Yosuke Buchmeier, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
In theory, freedom of expression enjoys powerful protection in Japan as the Japanese Constitution guarantees press freedom and explicitly prohibits censorship (Article 19 & 21). Japanese law (Broadcast Act, Article 3) bans any interference in editorial freedom and mandates media independence as well. In practice, however, media professionals, academics, and civil society members have repeatedly pointed at cases of political interference and a widespread exercise of self-censorship and agenda-cutting in the media. How can this gap between legal theory and media practice be explained? Guided by this key question, this paper will have a close look at media governance in Japan, thereby revealing weaknesses in the regulatory environment, examining the relationship between media and politics, and explaining why the current state of media governance is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Barrier-Free Reforms and Societal Demand for Legalistic Governance in Japan
Celeste Arrington, George Washington University
Recent reforms to improve the accessibility of public transportation and buildings in Japan exemplify a shift away from informal, bureaucratic, and non-binding “soft law” measures and toward more legalistic governance, which includes enforceable rules and formalized procedures. Binding rules and barrier-free standards apply to more facilities; government bodies must craft plans for “hard” measures to enhance the accessibility of the built environment and “soft” measures to reduce prejudice; policy design and assessment committees must include disabled persons; and even training program to cultivate “barrier-free mindsets” (kokoro no bariafurī) have become mandatory. Through a qualitative analysis of policy deliberations, legislation, lawsuits, interviews, documents from disabled persons’ organizations, news coverage, and Japanese scholarship, this case shows how activists and lawyers are contributing to the legalistic turn in governance by demanding and using more formalized regulations and participatory policy processes.
From Soft Law to Legal Pluralism: Japan’s Response to Hate Speech in Interaction between International, National, and Local Regulations
Ayako Hatano, Oxford
The surge of hateful rallies in Japan since the early 2000s drew national and international criticism, prompting the UN human rights treaty bodies to recommend that the government take legal measures against hate speech. In response, Japan enacted its first anti-hate speech law in 2016. Despite criticisms of the law’s narrow definition of hate speech and lack of penalties, it has had some impact on the judiciary, police, and administrative organs. Notably, by devolving responsibility to local governments to develop their own strategies for addressing hate speech, the law stimulated stricter regulations in municipalities. Some municipalities’ anti-hate speech ordinances have wider protection and even more extensive enforcement mechanisms, including penalties, than the national level. This case demonstrates how a non-binding and cooperative soft law approach at the national level can encourage legalistic modes of governance at the municipal level, resulting in a legal pluralistic regulation of hate speech.
Same-Sex Marriage and Governance in Japan
Guy Baldwin, University of Cambridge
Japan is increasingly isolated among advanced economies in not having made provision for same-sex marriage or civil unions at the national level. The main political obstacle to legal recognition of same-sex couples is the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been a governing party almost continuously since 1955. However, beginning with a move by Shibuya in 2015, many local governments have moved to certify same-sex partnerships. Moreover, cases are progressing through the courts seeking a finding that same-sex marriage is required under the 1947 Constitution through claims under the State Redress Act. So far, the results of these cases have been mixed, with the Sapporo District Court finding the current law unconstitutional and the Osaka District Court and Tokyo District Court finding it constitutional. Despite the significance of these developments, so far, they seem to have had little impact on governance at the national level.