Crisis Narratives, Institutional Change, and the Transformation of the Japanese State

Mired in national crises since the early 1990s, Japan has had to respond to a rapid population decline; the Asian and global financial crises; the 2011 triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns; the COVID-19 pandemic; China’s economic rise; threats from North Korea; and massive public debt.

At this event, established specialists in a variety of areas such as sociology, public policy, political science, and international relations, will discuss the discrepancies between official rhetoric and policy practice, along with current perceptions of decline and crisis, in contemporary Japan.

They will gauge the effectiveness and the implications of political responses through analyses of how crises are narrated and used to justify policy interventions. Transcending boundaries between issue areas and domestic and international politics, these contributions paint a dynamic picture of the contested but changing nature of social, economic, and, ultimately, political institutions as they constitute the transforming Japanese state.

Thursday, 17 February 2022 | 10:00–11:30 a.m. (CET) | 6:00–7:30 p.m. (Tokyo)

Speakers: Prof. Dr. David Chiavacci is Professor in the Social Sciences of Japan at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Dr. Paul O’Shea is Senior Lecturer at the Centre of East and Southeast Asian Studies at Lund University, Sweden.

Prof. Dr. Hiroko Takeda is Professor of Political Analysis at the Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, Japan.

Prof. Dr. Gabriele Vogt is Chair of Japanese Studies and Director of the Department of Asian Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Germany.

Moderators: Sebastian Maslow is Senior Lecturer at Shirayuri Women’s College in Sendai, Japan.

Dr. Christian Wirth is Research Fellow at the GIGA Institute for Asian Studies in Hamburg, Germany.