Grassroots Pacifism in Post-War Japan presents new material on grassroots peace activism and pacifism in two major groups active in the post-World War 2 peace movement - workers and housewives. Yamamoto contends that the peace movement, which was organised in tandem with other activities to promote democratic, economic and humanitarian issues, served as a popular lever which helped to eliminate feudal remnants that lingered in Japanese society and individual attitudes after the war, thereby modernizing the political process and the outlook of the ordinary Japanese. Including extensive primary material such as letters, essays, memoirs and interviews, specialists in Japanese history, peace studies and women's studies will appreciate the richness of the text supporting Yamamoto's narrative of how workers' and women's political awareness developed under the influence of organizational and ideological interests and contemporary events.

Grassroots Fascism profiles the Asia Pacific War (1941Ð1945)Ñthe most important though least understood experience of JapanÕs modern historyÑthrough the lens of ordinary Japanese life. Moving deftly from the struggles of the home front to the occupied territories to the ravages of the front line, the book offers rare insight into popular experience from the warÕs troubled beginnings through JapanÕs disastrous defeat in 1945 and the new beginning it heralded. Yoshimi Yoshiaki mobilizes personal diaries, memoirs, and government documents to portray the ambivalent position of ordinary Japanese as both wartime victims and active participants. He also provides equally penetrating accounts of the war experience of JapanÕs imperial subjects, including Koreans and Taiwanese. This book challenges the idea that the Japanese operated as a passive, homogenous mass during the warÑa mere conduit for a militaryÐimperial ideology imposed upon them by the political elite. Viewed from the bottom up, wartime Japan unfolds as a complex modern mass society, with a corresponding variety of popular roles and agendas. In chronicling the diversity of the Japanese social experience, YoshimiÕs account elevates our understanding of JapanÕs war and ÒJapanese Fascism,Ó and in its relation of World War II to the evolutionÑand destructionÑof empire, it makes a fresh contribution to the global history of the war. Ethan MarkÕs translation supplements the Japanese original with explanatory annotations and an in-depth analytical introduction, drawing on personal interviews to situate the work within Japanese studies and global history.

While Japanese pacifism is usually seen as a national policy or an ideology rooted in the provision of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, it cannot be adequately understood without grasping Japanese social discourses on peace, war and justice. The perspective of political sociology provides a more in-depth understanding of Japanese pacifism and helps us to find the reasons for the critical changes that have occurred in Japan’s policies since the mid-2000s. These changes include sending its self-defense force to Iraq and Afghanistan outside UN missions and the enactment of new security legislation in 2015. Nishikawa explores Japanese pacifism in a changing domestic and regional context, from the perspective of political sociology. Getting to grips with the social bases of politics, she examines whether Japan is likely to remain a pacifist country or retain its pacifist image in changing regional and global context. This book comprehensively examines Japanese pacifism by fully examining the social forces in action. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, the book contributes to theoretical debates on political sociology as well as Japanese and Asian studies. Japan is in an important transitional period and Japanese pacifism is being brought into question in changing national and international contexts.

This is the first systematic, historical inquiry into the emergence of "victim consciousness" (higaisha ishiki) as an essential component of Japanese pacifist national identity after World War II. In his meticulously crafted narrative and analysis, the author reveals how postwar Japanese elites and American occupying authorities collaborated to structure the parameters of remembrance of the war, including the notion that the emperor and his people had been betrayed and duped by militarists. He goes on to explain the Japanese reliance on victim consciousness through a discussion of the ban-the-bomb movement of the mid-1950s, which raised the prominence of Hiroshima as an archetype of war victimhood and brought about the selective focus on Japanese war victimhood; the political strategies of three self-defined war victim groups (A-bomb victims, repatriates, and dispossessed landlords) to gain state compensation and hence valorization of their war victim experiences; shifting textbook narratives that reflected contemporary attitudes and structured future generations' understanding of the war; and three classic antiwar novels and films that contributed to the shaping of a "sentimental humanism" that continues to leave a strong imprint on the collective Japanese conscience.

Since the end of World War II, Japan has not sought to remilitarize, and its postwar constitution commits to renouncing aggressive warfare. Yet many inside and outside Japan have asked whether the country should or will return to commanding armed forces amid an increasingly challenging regional and global context and as domestic politics have shifted in favor of demonstrations of national strength. Tom Phuong Le offers a novel explanation of Japan’s reluctance to remilitarize that foregrounds the relationship between demographics and security. Japan’s Aging Peace demonstrates how changing perceptions of security across generations have culminated in a culture of antimilitarism that constrains the government’s efforts to pursue a more martial foreign policy. Le challenges a simple opposition between militarism and pacifism, arguing that Japanese security discourse should be understood in terms of “multiple militarisms,” which can legitimate choices such as the mobilization of the Japan Self-Defense Forces for peacekeeping operations and humanitarian relief missions. Le highlights how factors that are not typically linked to security policy, such as aging and declining populations and gender inequality, have played crucial roles. He contends that the case of Japan challenges the presumption in international relations scholarship that states must pursue the use of force or be punished, showing how widespread normative beliefs have restrained Japanese policy makers. Drawing on interviews with policy makers, military personnel, atomic bomb survivors, museum coordinators, grassroots activists, and other stakeholders, as well as analysis of peace museums and social movements, Japan’s Aging Peace provides new insights for scholars of Asian politics, international relations, and Japanese foreign policy.

Writings on post-war Japanese politics have tended to take for granted the dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as inevitable, without questioning how this came about. This book analyses the nature of Japanese party politics over the first four decades following the Second World War, assessing how the chief contenders – the conservative LDP and the socialists JSP (Japan Socialist Party) – competed in terms of their strengths and weaknesses relative to the other. Throughout, it addresses the questions: How effectively were the parties’ strengths harnessed? How did they alter over time? To what extent was the winning formula challenged? Did the loser have access to strengths with a major potential, and, if so, why did these remain underdeveloped? It extends widely to include discussion of the political system, the social and economic environment in which parties operated, internal party matters, especially factions, personal support groups, special interest groups, and the role of government bureaucracy. It shows why the Liberal Democratic Party was dominant, why the Japan Socialist Party remained out of power, and how successive prime ministers conducted policymaking in ways which often resulted in the bureaucracy taking the lead. Overall, the book shows how precedents for the political system and for policymaking were set in this important period, precedents which continue, and which have contributed significantly to the present conservative stance on many key issues.