The Third Bi-Annual Conference of

The Israeli Association for Japanese Studies (IAJS)

Galapagosizing Japan?
The Challenges of Participation and the Costs of Isolation
May 12-13, 2015, Tel Aviv University
Gilman-Humanities Building, Room 496
Language of the Conference: Japanese, English, Hebrew
Abstracts
(by order of appearance in the conference)

Keynote (Japanese and English)

[Escape to Saga Stories in
Japan's Subcultures]
Eiji Otsuka, Nichibunken, Kyoto, Japan

In this lecture, I propose outlining a process that began with the failure of the left
wing activities in early 1970s Japan, extending into the 1980s, in which the generation
of former left wing activists and zenkyt protestors began constructing "imagined
saga narratives" within the worlds of Japanese subcultures. This was the starting point
of the contemporaneous historical revisionism in Japan. More concretely, by referring
to the first trilogy by Murakami Haruki, Nakagami Kenji, Gundam anime series,
anime by Ghibli Studio etc., I will show how subcultures and subcultural literature
experimented with the "virtual story" and not with "the real history". It provided the
origin of the that underlined the Aum Shinriky Incident in the 1990s. Aum
committed a coup d'tat based on a narrative that replaced "actual history" with a
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subcultural "virtual history". This was the starting point of the contemporaneous
historical revisionism in Japan.

The Galapagos Syndrome in the Economic Sphere (English)

The Digital Galapagos: Japan's Digital Media and Digital Content Economy
Carin Holroyd, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada and Ken Coates,
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
Japan was, for almost twenty years, a leading nation in the development of the digital
economy. The country's business development on mobile computing, video gaming
and video games, and animation led the world. While this prominent role continues,
the country has struggled with a "digital island" reality in three areas: the wireless
industry, which tried but failed to expand globally, an active by Japan-focuses digital
content sector, and digital services, which have not expanded as expected to nonJapanese markets. This paper examines the evolution of Japan's digital media and
digital content sector, focusing on national government economic strategies, business
development and international business expansion strategies, and the intersection of
digital media and Japanese culture, which has created significant global interest but
less business development than expected. The Japanese experience is presented in the
context of the globalization of Taiwan's digital media business, the rise of Korean
digital content internationally, and the continued growth of China in the increasingly
valuable sector.

Overcoming the Tension between International and Domestic Pressures: Responses

of Audit Firms in Japan
Israel Drori, College of management Academic Studies Rishon LeZion, Israel, and
Masaru Karube, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan
Reality is always two-sided. Japanese firms had been highly praised for their
competitive edge based on technological capabilities characterized by technocentrism.
Now the direction in which its scientific and technological development is taking
society is a focus of criticism. To explore the issues of how and why some Japanese
firms in some industries show Galapagos Syndrome, we examine the conditions and
the mechanism by which such uniqueness could hinder the further growth of Japanese
firms as they compete with the rest of the world.
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By shedding light on the globalization process of the Japanese audit industry as

an example of an underexplored field (even in management studies), we examine the
historical process of how Japanese audit firms have overcome the tensions between
international and domestic pressuresin response to the globalization of client firms
and competition with global audit firms from the 1960s to now. In this paper, we find
that 1) audit firms had to tackle globalization even at the early stage of the industry,
which had been highly regulated and protected from foreign competitors, because
they had to respond to the growing needs of the globalized activities of client firms; 2)
the recent trendepitomized by the growing size and complexity of client businesses,
deregulation, and the convergence of accounting practices, which drove them to be
fully integrated as partner firms under the global audit firm network.
Our findings suggest that 1) the degree of "Galapagosization" depends not only
on historical and structural contexts (domestic regulations, market structure, size of
local markets), but also depends on the characteristics of products, services, practices,
and clients' needs.

We Cannot Use Japanese ATMs! Japans Developmentalist Legacy and Galapagos

Retail Banking
Hiroaki Richard Watanabe, University of Sheffield, UK
This paper explains why Japanese ATM services are poor and insulated in a
Galapagos way by examining Japans financial regulatory system and economic
ideologies. The Japanese government maintained the convoy system in financial
regulation based on the protection of inefficient banks through informal non-market
coordination until it introduced the financial Big Bang (Toya 2006), which liberalized
Japanese financial services, and market-oriented financial supervision (Amyx 2004)
amid the financial crisis in the late 1990s. However, financial liberalization through
the Big Bang was limited to wholesale banking and did not really affect retail banking.
At the same time, despite greater market mechanisms in financial supervision,
competition and market mechanisms have not been introduced in retail banking. ATM
services by Japanese banks are more or less the same and their quality is low. Most
Japanese ATMs do not operate 24 hours/365 days unlike ATMs in many other
countries, customers have to pay fees to use ATMs in the evenings and weekends
even if they have bank accounts, and with only a couple of exceptions, Japanese
ATMs do not accept non-Japanese bank cards even in this era of globalization. This
situation did not change when Japan co-hosted the World Cup with South Korea in
2002 and only recently did Japans three mega banks announce to introduce ATMs
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that would accept non-Japanese bank cards by the time of Tokyo Olympics 2020. The
paper argues that this insulated Galapagos phenomenon is a result of the remaining
convoy system in Japanese retail banking and a legacy of developmentalism (Jonson
1982) aimed at realizing producers economic interests at the cost of consumers.
Theoretically, this phenomenon can be explained with the theory of regulation
(Rosenbluth 1989) based on an analysis of collective action.

Cross-Cultural Encounters in Film Arts (English)

Voluntary Death in the Japanese Film after World War II: Transformations of the
Suicide Aesthetics
Anastasiya Skavysh, Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany
Western and Japanese writings on ritual suicide tend to focus on the cultural roots of
this cultural phenomenon in the ethics of pre-modern Japan. This point of view which
puts in direct comparison a phenomenon of Japanese aesthetics of pre-modern times
with that of modern times seems to me simplified and ahistorical.
In this research the representation of suicide in the Japanese film is brought in
connection with the body discourse nikutai () of the postwar period and the
radical cinema of the 60s. It can be assumed that the elements of the erotic and the
physical as they are found in the radical postwar aesthetics modified the
representation of suicide as a phenomenon which has its cultural roots in pre-modern
Japan. The act of suicide as it is shown in the films of the second half of the 20th
century combined elements of Japanese tradition and Western ideas to create new
aesthetics. The focus has shifted from the dramatic conflict of giri and j to the
depiction of physical decay and destruction which is deployed for political ideas.
How is the suicide related to its cultural roots in pre-modern Japan by the
visual construction and throughout the film story? How is the death theme related to
the discourses of history and power? What stance do the films take to the death
ideology in the period of the Japanese nationalism? How are the concepts sexuality
and death related to the idea of an individual happiness?

The Toei-Tezuka Trilogy: Three Films that Paved the Way to the Global Appeal of
Anime
Raz Greenberg, The Orthodox College, Jerusalem, Israel

Japanese animation (anime) is considered today as one of the country's leading

cultural exports, but this hasn't always been the case. In fact, in the post-war period,
Japanese animation studios had struggled to find an audience outside Japan and Toei
animation, the biggest animation studio founded in the country by some of its most
prominent animators, consistently failed in exporting its productions to both
neighboring Asian countries and the American film market. It was manga artist
Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989) who was the first to successfully export Japanese
animation to foreign markets with the 1964 television adaptation of his iconic series
"TetsuwanAtomu" ("Astro Boy").
Before the global success of "Atomu", however, Tezuka collaborated with
Toei in the production of three animated features "Sayuki" (1960), "Sinbad no
Boken" (1962) and "Wan WanChushingura" (1963). While largely overlooked, and
relatively obscure to the audience outside Japan ("Sayuki" and "Sinbad no Boken"
were distributed in America, but as with other such distribution attempts by Toei,
failed to make significant impression), these three films demonstrate the later
direction that Tezuka has set for himself and the rest of the anime industry, which set
this industry on the path to global success: they show gradual movement away from
both narrative and design elements that can be considered exclusively Japanese to
elements that are modeled after foreign (especially American) animation, while
keeping most of their Japanese themes as subtext, rather than on the surface. The
presentation offers an examination of all three films, and their long-term influence on
subsequent anime productions.

De-Glapagosization: Adachi Masao and Eric Bodelaire, Boundary-Crossing

Collaboration
Ayelet Zohar, Tel Aviv University, Israel

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Unwrapping Japan's International Politics in a Changing World

(English)
Japanese Defense Policy in a "Brown Bag"
Alon Levkowitz, Bar Ilan University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Japan's defense policy has changed throughout the years from (inactive) "pacifism" to
"normal state", to what Prime Minister Shinzo Abe calls "active pacifism". These
changes were made by expanding the boundaries of Article 9, which on the one hand
serves as a constraint to Japan's defense policy and on the other hand as a pacifier for
the regional states that were concerned that Japan might revive its militant ambitions.
The change in Japan's role in the international arena and the pressure the United
States has exerted on Japan to become a more active player were two main factors
that led to an incremental change in its defense policy. Another factor in the last two
decades was the increasing security threat from North Korea that forced Japan to
expand the boundaries of its self-defense policy and even consider a preemptive strike
against the DPRK in case an imminent threat arises.
Japan's defense policy, until the current administration, was functioning like the
United States "brown bag" beer system. As long as Japan doesn't use militant rhetoric
and it does not pose a potential threat to the regional players, it was allowed to
incrementally change its defense policy. The current Japanese administration began to
unveil the "brown bag" defense policy.
The paper will discuss the changes within Japan's defense policy and analyze
how Japan's self-defense policy handled the potential Chinese threat and the rising
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North Korean security threat, which allowed it to unwrap the "brown bag" and
become a "normal state".

Beyond East Asia:Sino-Japanese Rivalry in the Middle East

Kai Schulze, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
The mounting rivalry between Japan and China has been a dominant aspect of Japans
foreign relations since the early 1990s. A vast body of literature has analyzed this
issue predominantly within the East Asian region. However; if, why and how this
Sino-Japanese power struggle also affects Japans foreign policy approach beyond
East Asias regional boundaries defies theoretical and empirical analysis. To improve
explanations of the effects of Chinas emergence to great power on Japans crossregional foreign policy approach, this paper explores the changes in Japans crossregional relations to the Middle East in the light of Chinas rising power. In three
interrelated case studies, the proposed project will elucidate the effects of Japans
rivalry with China on the construction and formulation of interests and strategy
development, as well as the generation and implementation of foreign policy
measures towards the Middle Eastern region against the background of Chinas rise.
By merging the strings of Japans readjustment of its Middle East policy and its
increasing rivalry with China, the proposed project offers a new perspective on the
increasingly important discussion on Japans reactions to Chinas rise but also more
broadly on discussions about the new global distribution of power and changing
hierarchies of the international system. To develop and improve explanations of the
mutual influences of Japan's and China's foreign policy in the Middle East, the project
addresses two important but understudied questions: First, how do interstate rivalries
influence foreign policy approaches beyond regional boundaries? Second, through
which factors does the Sino Japanese rivalry change or sustain Japan's Middle East
policy? In order to give answers to these questions, the theoretical framework of this
paper combines definitions of interstate rivalry, the construction of state interests and
the concept of interregionalism without regions.

Cross Cultural Readings of Philosophy and Critical Theory (English)

The Conundrums of Tetsugaku, or: Why Japanese Philosophers are Always
Wrong(ed)
Raji C. Steineck, University of Zurich, Switzerland
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On any but an openly racist list of criteria, Japan could aspire to be one of the major
loci of philosophy. In spite of this, its relevant premodern traditions have usually been
subsumed under categories other than philosophy, such as thought, religion,
ethics, or shis. In the modern era, the term Japanese philosophy was virtually
ursurped by the distinctly parochialist Kyoto School, which has received most
attention by Western commentators and translators. In contrast, non-parochial
tetsugaku or professional academic philosophy in Japan is widely regarded as a
largely sterile scholastic discourse that only regurgitates Western models, and some
Japanese universities have moved to replace this unpopular discipline by other, less
narrowly defined subjects.
All this is not due to the lack of originality or philosophical substance in the
pertinent Japanese literature. It is, or so I shall argue, more a question of the historical
timing of contacts between Japanese and Western philosophers, and the discursive
formations in place at crucial instances on the trajectory of the globalization of
Western and Japanese philosophies. This leaves Japanologists with the task of
understanding the mechanisms at work that seem to always place tetsugaku in
awkward spots, and to correct philosophical historiographies and amend canons that
exclude it.

Marx and the Fate of Critical Theory in Japan

Elena Louisa Lange, University of Zurich, Switzerland
This paper seeks to draw attention to the curious, yet significant gap between the
abundant and fruitful adaptation of the Marxian Critique of Political Economy and the
hesitant and sporadic reception of classical Critical Theory in 20th century Japan by
looking at the various responses of Japanese critical sociology to economical crisis
and its theoretization. This attempt will be conducted by giving an overview of the
history of critical social theory in Japan after the War (1950s-1960s) and today (ca.
1980s-2011), its shortcomings and selective reproduction of theses known as the
'canon' of Critical Theory in the West, as well as arguing that the theoretical
negligence especially of the theorem of reification and fetishism a central issue of
Adorno's and Horkheimer's theoretical endeavor led to a truncated understanding of
the capitalist present in modern Japan.
Research in the Critique of Political Economy has been performed
enthusiastically ever since Capital had been first translated into Japanese in 1920.
Notwithstanding military oppression and the tenk (turnaround) policy of the
Japanese ultranationalist government during the early Shwa period (1930-1945), its
defeat and Japan's subsequent occupation by US administrative forces in the post-War
period, the Marxian analysis has remained a vital part of critical intellectual life
before and after the war. Oddly enough, the theories of what we could now call
classical, first generation Critical Theory, an eminent part of Marxian tradition, and
embodied in the work of Max Horkheimer, T.W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Alfred
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Sohn-Rethel, and others, have however not been given much attention in Japanese
academic theoretical formation after the War. To give a striking example: the first
translation of The Dialectic of Enlightenment in Japan appeared as late as 1990.
By examining the conditions of social sciences after the war, this paper aims to
point out the reasons for this hesitant appropriation by critically addressing the cleft of
capitalism-centered theories as performed by pre-War and post-War Marxists as well
as psychological theories of fascism as a collective pathological phenomenon,
performed by modernity theorists such as Maruyama Masao or Otsuka Hisao
(Maruyama 1946, Otsuka 1946). By suggesting that the cleft could not be closed with
the rising popularity of social psychology (1950s-1960s), Habermasian Theory of
Communitative Action (1970s-1980s) or the post modern thought of Associationism
(Karatani) (1990s-today), this paper will also ask if the present political crisis,
expressed in the nationalist backlash of the Abe government, could be explained by
Japanese critical theory's shortfall in providing an attempt to integrate the problem of
capitalist thought-forms, such as the commodity form, into its theories of fascism and
vice versa.
The paper will argue that the negligence of this problem setting continues to
haunt the critical political climate in Japan today.

Japanese Architecture: Beyond and Within Japan (Hebrew)

Japanese Architecture as an International Ambassador of Cool Japan policy:
The case-study of Kisho Kurokawa in planning The New Wing of Van Gogh
Museum in Amsterdam
Sigal Galil, Independent multidisciplinary researcher, Israel
Does Kisho Kurokawas Abstract Symbolism succeeds in implementing Cool Japan
Values, aimed to conquering the Western heart? Does the pleasing architectural
experience of the New Wing of Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Planned by
Kurokawa realize his Philosophy of Symbiosis as a sort of resolution to the charged
relations between East and West ?
Through the lines and forms, the full and empty spaces of the building Ill try
to read how Kurokawa uses Japanese aesthetics as a power field, and activist strategic
philosophy for leverage of wide rainbow of interests. Starting with Japanese national
interests, and going on with personal interests of worldwide prestigious reputation. In
my lecture I will demonstrate how Kurokawa turns his building into a political text, a
Japanese Manifest, aimed subversively to please millions of visitors at the van Gogh
Museum, experiencing the secrets of Japanese Aesthetics.
Philosophic reading of the building will show the Invisible thread that Kisho
Kurokawa weaves, that connects between architecture, philosophy, and culture in one
of the most touristic monuments in the heart of Amsterdam .
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Van Gogh Museum, A pilgrimage site for millions of people from all over the
world, who worship one of the greatest cultural heroes of human history, is located
between the Rijks Museum and the Stedelijk Museum of modern art and the famous
national concert hall Concertgebouw, the beating heart of the cultural heritage of
Holland.
The traits of the irregular and different building in his architectural
surroundings will show how Kurokawas architecture tries to function as the Soft
Power of Japan foreign policy, and how by the unique visual language of the
Japanese Space he loads Japanese cultural cods at the heart of western cultural
fortress in Holland.
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Discourses Around Modernist Built Legacy Before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics
Erez Golani Solomon, Waseda University, Japan and Bezalel Academy of Arts and
Design, Jerusalem, and Christian Dimmer, Tokyo University, Japan
On September 7, 2013 the International Olympic Committee announced that Tokyo
would host the 7171 Summer Olympics. Although less than two years have passed
since then, the announcement appears to have catalyzed a significant re-evaluation of
heritage conservation in Japan, and in particular of its modernist iconic buildings and
infrastructure built in the 1950s and 60s. Structures that have been completed in the
context of another key moment in Japans modern historynamely the 1964 Tokyo
Olympicshad so far only been appreciated by a handful of academics, professionals
and architecture tourists but werent broadly recognized as valuable historical assets
worthy of material preservation. Significant modernist buildings have been steadily
and quietly disappearing for years, without much ado, or public protest. It seems that
the decision to host the summer Olympic Games once again after 56 years has created
a sincere sensitivity to the post-war built legacy. Ironically, this novel preservation
effort is only paralleled by a similar sense of urgency that had these structures built in
anticipation of the mega events of 1964.
The lecture explores the new wave of heritage conservation from two
perspectives. On the one side it examines the inclusion of heritage as a central
category in Tokyos failed bid of 2009 and the following successful bid of 2013. Here,
along with the declared intension to re-use 1964 Olympic facilities such as Kenzo
Tanges Yoyogi National Gymnasium or Mamoru Yamadas Nippon Budokan Hall
[Arena for traditional Japanese martial arts] heritage functions also as part of a
dubious language that appeals to a global common sense for preservation, without
feeling a genuine commitment to this cause. On the other side the chapter examines
those heritage discourses that have been spurred around controversial events such as
the imminent destruction of Yoshiro Taniguchis Hotel Okura [1962] or Mitsuo
Katayamas National Stadium [1958], and the adoption of Zaha Hadids plans for the
new Olympic Stadium. It looks at a new and rich preservation rhetoric of post-war
architecture as well as important infrastructures like the inner city expressway system
or the Tsukiji fish market and sets them against the background of a new national
11

image being currently constructed around ideals such as environmentality and

maturity.
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Galapagos Homes: Recent Japanese Houses "Post International Style"
Architect Arie Kutz, Tel Aviv University, Israel
A wide range of Japanese architects, all born after WW 2, are producing in recent
years extra ordinary architectural solutions in the field of private houses. They are
enthusiastically accepted by the professional media and well exposed internationally.
What is striking about most of them is that the extreme architectural solutions, usually
common to most of them, do not seem to be possible anywhere outside Japan... "this
can be accepted only in Japan" is a reaction usually heard.
The materials used are surprising (10 mm steel plate), the climatic performance
are sometimes questionable (walk out doors for the bath), the approach to privacy
(visual and acoustical) is non-conventional, etc.
This paper will introduce some of the architects and these "extreme"
architectural solutions and will try to understand the profile of the Japanese client
ready to accept these extreme solutions and prefer them over the common market's
available prefabricated homes

The History of Science from a Japanese Perspective (English)

Chase after Tools and Sources for Studying Japanese History of Science
Yona Siderer, Independent Researcher, Israel
In an attempt to understand Japanese culture and the evolution of its scientific
terminology, an exciting chase that can be compared to a detective story of collecting
evidences from various sources is underway. My research on adapting science from
the West in Japan in the 19th century has carried me to many places in Japan and other
countries. In order to form new scientific disciplines new terminology had to be
coined. My lecture will show (i) routes to obtain research documents and (ii) the
importance of comparing these sources that were written in several European
languages. In the following examples, the lecture will present 18th-19th century
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explanation of what is light and on routes to reach the original documents which
were used in this study.
1. A Speech on the Japanese Nation 1784 delivered by the botanist Thunberg.
Original Swedish hand written faccimillia and its English translation are
presented in a book of 2007, published by The Swedish Royal Academy of
Sciences in Stockholm. The beautiful red bound book was donated to the
Japanese Emperor on his visit in Sweden.
2. Translations of Lavoisier French Chemistry book of 1789 into English, Dutch,
and Japanese. Documents describing light were gathered from the British
Library, London; Kyo-U Library of Takeda Science Foundation in Osaka;
National French Library Website. Changes of terms and descriptions in the
various versions shed light on Japanese and others understanding of science
at that time.
3. Roscoes Chemistry book of 1871 and its Japanese translation of 1873. Griffis
teaching chemistry in Fukui, asked his sister Maggie in a letter to Philadelphia
to send him that book in July 1871. Recently I received a Japanese translation
from a Kyoto University scholar and a digitized English copy from Oxford
University Press Website.

The Transformation of Organic Chemistry in Japan: From Locality to Universality

Masanori Kaji, Graduate School of Decision Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute
of Technology, Japan
Majima Riko (18741962) graduated from the Department of Chemistry at the
College of Science at Tokyo Imperial University in 1899. After a four-year stay (1907
to early 1911) in Europe, he became a professor of organic chemistry at the newly
established Tohoku Imperial University in March 1911. He was one of leading
research organic chemists of the first generation in Japan, and became famous,
especially for his study of urushiol, the main component of the sap of the Japanese
lacquer tree. His research strategy involved studying the structure of the components
of Japans local natural products using newly developed methods from Europe to
catch up and compete with chemists in more advanced-countries in the West.
Majimas approach became the primary research method employed by research
chemists in Japan until the 1950s.
After Fukui Ken-ichi received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in Japan in 1981,
six other Japanese chemists also went on to receive the same award. These chemists
all discovered and developed new methods or theories from the 1950s to the 1970s.
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During the period between 1906, when Majima thought out his research strategy and
attempted to apply it to urushiol, and 1950, when Tsuda Kyosuke (19071999) started
to study tetrodotoxin, the poison from puffer fish, the Japanese became well prepared
to compete on an equal footing with their Western counterparts without taking
advantage of locality; Majimas approach gave some lead time to those chemists with
good accessibility to natural products for their research. Organic chemistry in Japan
completed its transformation at the end of the 1950s, and since then, Japanese
chemists reached the stage of universality and began to study equally in terms of
facilities and theoretical settings with overseas top researchers.

Japan as a Multilayered Democracy (English)

What is Multilayer Analysis? The Case of Japan
Sigal Ben Rafael-Galanti, Beit Berl College, Israel
As one of the earliest non-Western countries to adopt democracy, Japan provides an
excellent case-study for formulating theories about democracy. Hence, while some
researchers, such as Reed, Curtis and Kohno, argue that "culture" and traditions play a
very limited role in the way Japanese democracy functions, Inatsugu, Blechinger,
Pempel and others point out Japans difficulties in developing liberal values.
In this direction, in the volume Japans Multilayered Democracy, we ask together with Nissim Otmazgin and Alon Levkowitz - two central questions: (1) what
constitutes Japanese democracy and what are its historical, institutional, and
behavioral expressions?; and (2) what can we extrapolate from the Japanese
experience about democratization and the very nature of democracy?
Furthermore, we suggest addressing those questions through an integrative
model that refers in tandem to different angles, epochs, and disciplines to be called
here a multilayered analysis. It enables learning about Japan through its historical
roots, postwar institutions, and its civic and cultural expressions.
Such an approach we contend is able to evaluate Japans democracy in
depth, contribute to the ongoing discussion about non-Western societies capabilities
to become genuine democracies, and is likely to ameliorate the analysis of
democracies and their comparisons.

Failures in Leadership: How and why Politicians Equivocate on Japanese

Televised Political Interviews?
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Ofer Feldman, Dshisha University, Japan

This paper examines how Japanese leading politicians cope with the communicative
problems posed to them during televised political interviews. Based on data gathered
for 14 months during 2012-2013, the paper replicates and modifies the "Theory of
Equivocation" to detail the responsiveness of both national and local level politicians
(and for comparison purposes also of nonpoliticians) to interview questions they are
asked on live broadcast shows. The paper's main focus is on the extent to which
Japanese politicians equivocate during televised programs, and the reasons underlying
this equivocation. It aims to identify the motives behind interviewees' equivocation,
thereby to also assess the significance of these talk shows in the broader context of
political communication in Japan.

Building Democracy through "Pink Power": Dynamic Gender in Japan's Women's

Politics
Ayala Klemperer, Tel Aviv University, Israel
The paper examines the work of prominent female politicians who adopt while at the
same time subvert femininity discourses in order to climb the Japanese political ranks
that are so often over-populated with men. It suggests that commonly used terms such
as "feminine" or "masculine" are not the only valid terms in which one can describe
women's politics, but rather that finer terminology needs to be recognized and
explored by politicians as well as scholars.
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The Japanese Labor Tribunal System as a Litmus Test of Japan's Democratization

Wered Ben-Sade, Bar Ilan University, Israel
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The Labor Tribunal System (LTS) is a speedy non-contentious tri-partite procedure

within Japan's district courts to mediate or otherwise suitably adjudicate individual
labor disputes. The LTS was introduced to cope with the multitude of employment
disputes that were lacking an adequate judicial resolution forum. By introducing such
a forum, the LTS provides protection for the weak party in labor relations (often the
worker) from abuse by the powerful party, and advances democratization of labor
relations. The Labor Tribunal Act (LTA, 2004) enactment process involved all
stakeholders in a consensus-building process, supporting Hararis (2002) argument:
Participation by sharing knowledge creation and information facilitates reform.
The LTS incorporates a civic expression of democracy via the tri-partite
structure that engages lay judges (albeit labor-relations experts) on an equal footing
with the professional judge. The unique resolution system, in which mediation and
adjudication closely interact, reflects Japans tradition of dispute resolution,
challenging Western concepts of democratic ideas, e.g., due process. Thus, these
aspects of the LTS, namely, the enactment process, civic participation structure and
consensus-based adjudication, provide a litmus test of Japan's ongoing
democratization process. Moreover, the nine years that have passed since the LTAs
implementation in 2006, enable an initial assessment of the role the LTS plays in
setting democratic norms and in encouraging democratic practices in other dispute
resolution systems.
The deviation of the LTS from Western concepts of dispute resolution seems
to constitute a step towards a new paradigm of the field. However, what does it tells
us about the nature of Japan's "maturing democracy" (Harari 2012)? I consider the
LTS not merely an effective tool to mediate labor-disputes without dealing too much
with questions of justice, but an important step towards democratization.

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