The State of Political Science in Japan

The State of Political Science in Japan Masaki Taniguchi* POLITICAL SCIENCE IN JAPAN: ITS HISTORY The history of political science in Japan dates back to 1877. This was the year when Tokyo University, now the University of Tokyo, was founded as Japan’s first modern-style university. The university consisted of four faculties: Law, Science, Letters, and Medicine. Interestingly, the professorship for Political Science was not grouped in the faculty of Law at the time of founding, but in the First Division of the Faculty of Letters, along with professorships of History and Philosophy. It was in 1885 that the faculties at Tokyo University were reorganized and the professorships for Political Science, along with Economics, were reestablished under the Faculty of Law, and it was by this reestablishment that the Faculty of Law in Tokyo University came to deal with the research and education of law, political science, and economics, or the majority of social sciences:1. Moreover, this reestablishment is the root cause for the fact that most Japanese political scientists today belong to the Faculty of Law. That is, since the vast majority of Japanese universities followed Tokyo University’s classification, even today most political scientists in Japan belong to the Faculty of Law. In 1893, the University adopted the Chair system, and accordingly a Chair of Political Science and Political History was established in the Faculty of Law. However, the appointment of a full-time professor would come almost a decade later: it was only in 1901 that the first full-time professor, Kiheiji Onozuka, was appointed to the Chair of Political Science and Political History. Also, although political science has been taught in the University from its founding, whether in the Faculty of Letters or Law, for several decades the teachers were either foreigners (such as Ernest Francisco Fenollosa and Karl Rathgen) or bureaucrats (such as Sadatake Koba, who belonged to the Ministry of Education). * Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo and Chairperson of the JPSA International Exchange Committee. ADDRESS: Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan [email: [email protected]]. 1 Chairs for Economics were grouped under the Faculty of Law until 1919, when it was spinned out to form a Faculty of Economics. 1 After 1901, the University enhanced its chairs related to political science. By 1942, there were seven chairs under the Faculty of Law, including History of Western Political Thought, Political Science, History of Oriental Political Thought, Political History, History of Diplomacy, Public Administration, and American Politics, History and Diplomacy (The University of Tokyo 1985). According to Royama(1949), modern Japanese Political Studies consists of two schools2. The first is the Kokka-gakuha, or Staatslehre school. Under the strong influence of the German Staatsrecht (studies of state law), this school was based on Staatlehre (studies of the state), which assumed that the Rechtsstaat, or the state ruled by law as absolute. Most of the chairs in Japanese national Universities including Tokyo University, may be classified under this school. The other school, the Zissho-gakuha (positivist school), dealt with dynamics of political issues and constitutional thoughts and sought to make an empirical analysis of them, therefore focusing more on studying political phenomena than pursuing research of states. This Zissho-gakuha was in contrast with the Kokka-gakuha in a number of ways, in that Zissho-gakuha had Waseda University as its place of origin, one of the oldest and most prominent privately established universities in Japan; many of those who comprised the school were journalists; and the school were under the strong influence of political science of England and the United States at that time. The methodologies were also different: while the Zissho-gakuha had history at its core, the Kokka-gakuha used law as its research method. It should be noted here that there was little, if any, civil liberties in pre Second World War Japan, and this also imposed a restriction on political science. In prewar Japan, except for the short period between the end of the First World War and early 1930s, lack of academic freedom limited the activities of political scientists. Prewar academic achievements of Japanese political science were mostly restricted to adaptations of the “latest” topics and methods of the European political science, rather than observation of the Japanese political situation and identification of its own issues. In other words, there was a wide gap between actual politics, which should have been the main focus of prewar political science, and what each of the academics in the field was allowed to pursue. So remote was the latter from the former that, even when Japan was defeated in the War and academic freedom was guaranteed, the academics themselves had to assert that Japanese political science had no tradition whatsoever to be “restored” (Maruyama 1947). 2 Royama (1949) and Maruyama (1946) in this paragraph are based on classifications made by Taguchi (2001). 2 Such was the context behind the so-called Postwar Political Science (sengo seijigaku). In the postwar period, it was emphasized that political science should accurately reflect the interests and concerns toward actual politics, and that analysis should be closely related to a value judgment. An outstanding work of this period is Maruyama (1946), which brilliantly carved out the characteristics of Fascism in Prewar Japan by comparing it with Fascism of the Nazis. No other work has left a greater impact on Japanese political science; it is regarded as a classic in the field. Maruyama’s work paved the way for Postwar Japanese Political Science to develop in terms of quality. However, the field would make dramatic progress also in terms of quantity. Indeed, Japanese political science in the postwar era made great developments in the number of academics entering the field. Much of this development was caused by a sharp rise in demand for lecturers of political science at university level. The rise came about as a result of the Postwar Educational Reform, in which the prewar secondary education system, which was segmented according to target professions (e.g. universities, high schools, professional training colleges, teachers training colleges) was disintegrated and universities were reestablished under the new system. Many of the new universities centered around the liberal arts, teaching all aspects of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences; hence the demand for political scientists arose as part of the overall rise in demand for lecturers. Such developments in both quality and quantity eventually led to the foundation of the Japanese Political Science Association (JPSA) in 1948. If the first major development in Japanese political science came with the arrival of the postwar era, then the second major development came in the late 1980s. This development is most typically represented by the launch of the journal Leviathan in 1987. Leviathan criticized the mainstream political studies of the time, arguing that Japanese politics was studied only marginally by researchers in the fields of history, foreign studies, or history of thought, based on impressionistic, subjective attitudes. Rather, it was argued, that studies of Japanese political science should be conducted in a scientific way, free from any specific values (Inoguchi, Otake, and Muramatsu 1987). It is true that there had been some studies that applied the methods of behavioral studies on contemporary Japanese political issues such as studies on voting behavior3; however, it is Leviathan which opened up a new arena of political science, both in terms of quality and quantity. In fact, as Leviathan thrived, Japanese political science reached a higher level. To take an example, 1994 saw a Chair of Contemporary Japanese Politics 3 Examples include studies by Jun-ichi Kyogoku, Ichiro Miyake, and Michitoshi Takabatake. 3 being established for the first time in the Faculty of Law at The University of Tokyo, where Japanese political studies had previously been placed under the Chair of Political Process. Two points should be pointed out in relation to the developments led by Leviathan since the 1980s (Taniguchi 2007). Firstly, it should be noted that the aim of Leviathan was not to lead a revolution by means of a series of empirical studies of Japanese politics. Rather, its aim was to cause a movement, which would promote the application of “empirical” methodologies to Japanese political studies. Empirical approach was an area that was seen at that time to be lacking in momentum as compared to political history, political philosophy, and social critiques. The fact that Leviathan’s aim was a movement may be confirmed in the launch of another journal “Nihon Seiji Kenkyu (Japanese Political Studies)” led by two of the co-editors of Leviathan, Inoguchi and Kabashima in 2004. (For reference, the founding editors of Leviathan were Takashi Inoguchi, Hideo Otake, and Michio Muramatsu, with Ikuo Kabashima and Haruhiro Fukui joining later). Nihon Seiji Kenkyu pursued an apparently opposite approach to that of Leviathan: it was stated that the journal would seek not only empirical or theoretical developments of Japanese political studies, but also seek to boost historical approaches and interests in the field. This seemingly contrasting orientation is actually along

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