Tuesday, August 20, 2024

American Political Science Association 2024

 We hope that many of you will be able to join us at the annual American Political Science Association meeting in Philadelphia! There are some events that we hope you will join:


Friday, September 6


6:30-7:30pm: Japan Political Studies Group Business Meeting in Marriot Philadelphia Downtown Room 412. We will be electing the next JPSG co-president at this meeting. We have one candidate standing for the position, Dr. Yoshikuni Ono of Waseda University. 

Informal happy hour to follow the business meeting. For the happy hour, please give a tentative RSVP at this two-question Google Form for planning purposes by September 3. This is not a firm commitment, but will help find an appropriately sized venue.  This event is open to all. Please do send this invitation out to colleagues or students who may wish to get to know members of our community and may not be on the list. 


Saturday, September 7


The JPSG sponsored panel, “Further Expansion of the Japanese Prime Minister’s Power” will take place from 2:00-3:30 in Loews Philadelphia Hotel, room Washington A. I hope that many of you will be able to join. 


Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Association of Asian Studies JPSG Happy Hour

We hope that many of you will be able to join us at the Association for Asian Studies meeting in Seattle! 

While we are not holding an official business meeting this year, we are holding an open happy hour at a venue near the conference on Thursday, March 14 beginning at 7:00 P.M. 

Thursday, March 14, we will meet in the Pike Street Lobby on Level One of the Convention Center Level at 7:00. We will walk together to Old Stove Brewing on Pike Place (https://www.oldstove.com/pikeplace), about a 15 minute walk from the conference venue. If you wish to join us there later, you are most welcome, and Kristin Vekasi will monitor her email if you need directions. 

Please give your tentative RSVP at this two-question Google Form for planning purposes by March 10. This is not a firm commitment, but will help find an appropriately sized venue.  (Also here: https://forms.gle/UexhXhx9PbgunxMm9.)

This event is open to all. Please do send this invitation out to colleagues or students who may wish to get to know members of our community and may not be on the list. 





Monday, March 6, 2023

Association of Asian Studies 2023 Business Meeting

Please join us at the Association for Asian Studies meeting in Boston! Our business meeting will be on Saturday, March 18 at 7:30 pm in the Arnold Arboretum room on the 5th floor of the Boston Sheraton Hotel.

 
We will spend some time getting to know one another and then we will have a roundtable discussion of current research on Japanese politics from up-and-coming scholars, featuring: 

Aki Nakai, “Japan and Emerging Technologies: Why and How is Japan Responding to Artificial Intelligence?
Jordan Hamzawi, “It Don't Mean A Thing If The District's Got That Swing: Electoral Stability and Policy Volatility in Japan.”
and
Harunobu Saijo, “Ideological Contagion and Class Conflict: Exposure to Bolshevism and Class Struggle in Interwar Japan”

After these presentations, Kristin Vekasi will lead a discussion.
 
Following our meeting, interested participants are welcome to join us at a nearby pub as we get snacks and drinks. 

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Call for Papers: Japan Studies Association 29th Annual Conference

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

 

Japan Studies Association 29th Annual Conference

January 4-6, 2023 in Hawaii

From JSA President Joseph Overton (overton@hawaii.com):

The Japan Studies Association (JSA) invites proposals for individual papers, panels or roundtables for its 29th Annual Conference to be held Wed.-Fri., January 4-6, 2023.  Highlights this year include William Tsutsui moderating a Keynote Conversation: “Japan, Hawai’i and the World”, with AAS Past President Christine Yano and Paul Yonamine, a prominent business leader in Tokyo and Honolulu.  A second Keynote will be by Prof. Alexis Dudden, University of Connecticut, on understanding Okinawa’s current relationships with Japan, China, and the U.S. in historical contexts.

The Conference Hotel is once again the Hyatt Place Waikiki Beach Hotel – yes—within a few blocks from that beach!  For more information about JSA’s interdisciplinary outreach and Conference lodging and registration, please see 
www.japanstudies.org.

The deadline for proposals is Friday, Nov. 11, 2022!

For questions, please feel free to write JSA Program Co-Chair Andrea Stover (andrea.stover@belmont.edu) or Paul Dunscomb (pedunscomb@alaska.edu)or email JSA Vice President for Special Projects, Fay.Beauchamp@gmail.com.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

AAS 2022

Dear Japan Political Studies Group,

We hope that many of you will be able to join us at the Association for Asian Studies meeting in Honolulu! Our business meeting will be on Friday, March 25 at 7:30 pm in the South Pacific IV room of the Hilton.

We will spend some time getting to know one another and then we will have a roundtable discussion of current research on Japanese politics, featuring Saori Katada presenting "States for Markets: Financialisation, Wealth Preservation, and Political Pressure on Central Banks" (a paper co-authored with Gabrielle Cheung and Gene Park), and Michael Strausz presenting "Shy Foreign Labor Supporters? Immigration and Japan's 2019 House of Councilors Election." After these presentations, Anand Rao will lead a discussion.

Following our meeting, interested participants are welcome to join us at a nearby pub as we get snacks and drinks.

Best,

Michael Strausz and Kenneth McElwain



Tuesday, August 31, 2021

APSA 2021 (times updated)

 

We have some exciting events to report that are taking place at the upcoming APSA meeting. These events are all virtual, but due to APSA’s policies you will have to be registered for the conference to be able to attend.  

Our business meeting will take place the weekend before APSA, on Friday, September 24, 4:00-5:00pm PDT (8am-9am, September 25 JST). Our business meeting will include a roundtable discussion of the politics of agriculture in Japan, and it will feature short presentations by Patti Maclachlan, Hironori Sasada, and Hanno Jentzsch (all of whom have recent, exciting books about agriculture). 

We would also like to ask you to check whether your formal membership with JPSG is up to date. You can check on your status by 1) logging into your APSA account, 2) going to your profile page (click your name, which should be highlighted on the top of the page, 3) clicking on the "Related Groups" link on the right side of the page , and 4) checking the box for Japan Political Studies Group. 

 In addition, we were fortunate enough to be able to sponsor two JSPG-sponsored panels: 

First, "A Region of Regimes Prosperity & Plunder in Asia: Contribution of T.J. Pempel" will take place on Wednesday, September 29 from 2:00-3:30pm PDT (6am-7:30am, September 30 JST).

Here is a description of that session: In celebration of T.J. Pempel’s retirement from University of California, Berkeley and the publication of his newest book, this roundtable discusses Pempel’s recent work in the context of his lifetime contribution as a scholar and mentor. “A Region of Regimes” focuses on the successes and challenges among ten East Asia economies, analyzing the interpenetration of political, socio-economic, and international forces in three distinct regime types along with their corresponding economic policy paradigms. It also explores readjustments of regimes under challenges to regime coherence as well as the ways in which shifting regime combinations have led to changes in the regional order. This work is a capstone project in Pempel’s long academic career spanning five decades during which he has tackled ambitious and thought-provoking questions including comparative political economy, domestic sources of foreign policy, the impact of economic crises on political regimes and East Asian regionalism. Pempel’s contribution to the academy goes beyond his written work. He has been an invaluable mentor to many both inside and beyond the institutions where he has been affiliated, and he has been a leader in establishing a creative and exciting scholarly community in the studies of East Asia’s economy, politics and external relations. By gathering together experts from the field of East Asian political economy and his colleagues and former students, this roundtable analyzes his recent book as a way to honor Pempel’s lifetime contribution.

Second, "Government Structure, Capacity, and Leadership in Japan" will take place on Friday, October 1 from 6am-7:30am PDT (10:00pm-11:30pm JST). That panel will include papers by Douglas Miller, Sayaka Kamio, Nobuhiro Hiwatari, and Miwa Nakajo. Here is a brief overview of this panel: Japanese governance has evolved rapidly in the postwar period. Economic growth and malaise, demographic change, and international challenges after the Cold War have exerted pressure to adapt electoral and legislative strategies. This panel examines changes in institutional structure, state capacity, and political leadership, leveraging evidence from Japan. 

We hope to virtually see you at all of these events!

 

Sincerely,

Michael Strausz and Kenneth Mori McElwain

Thursday, August 6, 2020

APSA 2020: Virtual APSA

As we all know, the 2020 APSA meeting will be online. However, this will not stop the JPSG! There are two events that we want to tell you about:

First, our business meeting:

We will virtually meet at 9:00am Mountain Time on Tuesday, September 8 (this is 10am Central, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific, and Midnight in Tokyo). Our meeting will have two elements: we will all get to do brief self-introductions, and then we will discuss and vote on the bylaws that APSA has required us to write (if you would like to see a copy in advance, contact Michael Strausz or Kenneth McElwain).

Along with these bylaws, APSA is also going to require its members to explicitly claim membership in related groups (like your beloved JPSG). This will likely require a small fee. Groups with too small a membership will eventually lose their status as related groups. So, along with the bylaws we will also discuss ways to keep our membership up.

Second, our panel:

Our panel, “Evolving Legal Norms Regarding Hate Speech in Japan” is scheduled for Thursday, September 10 from 8am-9:30am Mountain Time (9am-10:30am Central, 10:00am-11:30am Eastern, 7am-8:30am Pacific, and 11pm-12:30am Japan Time). 

Presenters on that panel include: 

Masaru Kohno, Hae Kim, and Kentaro Hirose; Go Murakami and Yoshitaka Nishizawa; Taehee Kim and Yuki Ogawa; and Airo Hino, Robert Andrew Fahey, and Stefano Camatarri. Stuart Soroka is the chair, and Gill Steel and Erik Bleich are discussants. It should be great!

 In addition to these announcements, we collect resources for teaching about Japanese politics, which you can find here:  (we recently fixed the links).  If you have a syllabus, an updated syllabus, or other resources to share, please share them with Michael Strausz or Kenneth McElwain.

We look forward to seeing you!