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This research explores one of the baffling mysteries in contemporary non-Western democracies. The conversion to a mixed system of the first-past-the-post system and proportional representation for the Japanese House of Representatives in 1994 has not realised the widely spread desire for recurrent changes of government, as the Liberal Democratic Party have maintained their grip. Dr Nagatomi monitors Japanese politics with the theories and methodologies of electoral geography. From a comparative perspective, the operation of the electoral system can mostly be explained by the geographical distributions of party supports, the arrangements of electoral constituencies and the candidacies of parties. Packed with a volume of the analyses unpublished elsewhere, this book will offer food for thought to political scientists, Asian watchers and broadly comparative researchers.
Depopulation, Deindustrialisation and Disasters are three of the biggest problems facing Japan today. This book discusses how sustainable communities are being created in Japan in an attempt to overcome the threat of the triple Ds . It provides an overview of how each of these three core issues endangers the sustainability of local communities especially, but also discusses how they might also provide an opportunity to replace outdated paradigms, rooted in expansion and competition, with a new way forward on a global scale. The authors explore how the Japanese government has followed the worldwide trend of implementing neo-liberal policies in response to globalisation and how these policies ...
Martin Bell, Ken Livingstone and Richard Taylor (the doctor who became an MP to save his local hospital) are the best known of a growing band of British politicians making their mark outside the traditional party system. Some (like Livingstone) have emerged from within the old political system that let them down, others (Bell, Taylor) have come into politics from outside in response to a crisis of some kind, often in defence of a perceived threat to their local town or district. Richard Berry traces this development by case studies and interviews to test the theory that these are not isolated cases, but part of a permanent trend in British politics,a shift away from the party system in favour of independent non-aligned representatives of the people.
In many developed countries, democratic political systems have demonstrated significant shortcomings. Malfunctioning Democracy in Japan: Quantitative Analysis in a Civil Society, by Yoshiaki Kobayashi, investigates the causes of these problems via quantitative analysis, using Japan as a particular case study.
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This is a study of visual and textual images of the mythical creature tengu from the late Heian (897–1185) to the late Kamakura (1185–1333) periods. Popularly depicted as half-bird, half-human creatures with beaks or long noses, wings, and human bodies, tengu today are commonly seen as guardian spirits associated with the mountain ascetics known as yamabushi. In the medieval period, however, the character of tengu most often had a darker, more malevolent aspect. Haruko Wakabashi focuses in this study particularly on tengu as manifestations of the Buddhist concept of Māra (or ma), the personification of evil in the form of the passions and desires that are obstacles to enlightenment. Her...