Contemporary Japanese Politics and Anxiety Over Governance

This book is an integrated examination of Japanese politics in the first two decades of the 21st century, as viewed from the perspective of "anxiety over governance." By empirically highlighting the social-environmental, political environmental, and sociocultural changes that have underlined the long-term political participation and voting behavior of Japanese citizens, the book provides deep insight into how modern democracies function and are perceived in post-industrial societies and reveals the specific processes by which Japanese politics have changed. Additionally, the book provides an analysis of the decline in social capital, the shrinking variety of political parties, and the intermingling of Asian values with liberal democratic values. By examining anxiety over governance, the chapters explore the links between anxiety and Japanese political behavior, revealing that, despite the high regard for democratic politics, Japanese citizens generally experienced a high level of anxiety and negative evaluation of the government, including countermeasures against COVID-19. Featuring surveys of Japanese political behavior over a period of more than 40 years, this book will be valuable reading for students and scholars of Japanese Politics, Political Behavior, and Psychology. The introduction, chapter 4 and chapter 5 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Ken-ichi Ikeda is Professor at the Department of Media, Journalism and Communications at Doshisha University, Japan.

1. Social capital, political actors, and vote choice: A focus on the change of government in 2009 2. A theory of latitude of acceptable party choice and a theory of meaningful choices 3. Social capital and cultural values: The possibility of peculiarity in Japanese cultural values 4. Japanese risk perceptions and anxiety over governance: The international context of Japanese political anxiety 5. The COVID-19 pandemic in the context of anxiety over governance 6. Uncertain political reality and loss of sense of future: Is it possible to reduce anxiety over governance?