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Abstract:  Prime Minister Abe, in both his first and second administrations, has emphasized values: democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, in his diplomatic statements. Does the Abe administration’s rhetorical focus on values signify a substantial change in Japanese foreign policy, or is it just window dressing?   In this public talk, Professor Hikotani argued: (1) Japan’s foreign policy was never value-devoid; but the “value” that drove Japan in its foreign policy was different from other western countries in its emphasis; to be less explicit about the value being promoted, and that the value promoted, especially with regard to Asia, emphasized development assistance over democracy promotion. (2) External developments (the rise of China in the region), and internal developments (institutional empowerment of the Prime Minister) led more emphasis in the use of values as slogans in foreign policy. (3) While values are more often used as slogans, the substance of Japan’s foreign policy has not changed much. Democracy and rule of law is mentioned more frequently as the natural bond among Australia, India and Japan, Japan is also careful about not to force Asian countries to choose between China and Japan and to antagonize China along the way.    

Speaker Bio:  Takako Hikotani is Gerald L. Curtis Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy at Columbia University. She previously taught at the National Defense Academy of Japan, where she was Associate Professor, and lectured at the Ground Self Defense Force and Air Self Defense Force Staff Colleges, and the National Institute for Defense Studies. Her research focus on civil-military relations and Japanese domestic politics, Japanese foreign policy, and comparative civil-military relations. Her publications (in English) include, “The Japanese Diet and defense policy-making.” International Affairs, 94:1, July, 2018; “Trump’s Gift to Japan: Time for Tokyo to Invest in the Liberal Order,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2017; and “Japan’s New Executive Leadership: How Electoral Rules Make Japanese Security Policy" (with Margarita Estevez-Abe and Toshio Nagahisa), in Frances Rosenbluth and Masaru Kohno eds, Japan in the World (Yale University Press, 2009). She was a Visiting Professional Specialist at Princeton University as Social Science Research Council/Abe Fellow (2010-2011) and Fellow of the US-Japan Leadership Program, US-Japan Foundation (2000- ).  Professor Hikotani received her BA from Keio University, MA from Keio University and Stanford University, and PhD in Political Science from Columbia University, where she was a President’s Fellow.

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Presentation Abstract:  According to a comparative research of multiculturalism policies among democratic countries, Japan is known to be one of the least multiculturalist countries. Its national government does not affirm its ethnic diversity, has very few supports for immigrant groups, and still keeps its self-image of a “country of non-immigration.”  However, Japan has also a (not so) long history of widening minority’s rights and creating its own version of multiculturalism. During the 1990s and the early 2000s, social scientists and bureaucrats researched the cases of countries in Europe and North America and coined a new term of “multicultural co-existence (tabunka kyosei)” as a response to increasing number of foreign residents. This presentation introduced the special characteristics of multiculturalism policies in Japan from comparative research findings. Then it examined how Japan learned from the experience of multiculturalism in the United States and Canada and how it failed to adopt the vision of “multicultural co-existence” as a platform of integration policy.   

Biography:  Fuminori Minamikawa is a Professor at the College of International Relations at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan and a Visiting Professor at the R. F. Harney Program in Ethnic, Immigration, and Pluralism Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. He received PhD in Sociology from the Graduate School of Social Sciences at Hitotsubashi University, Japan. His field of research is a sociology of ethnicity, race, and multiculturalism in historical and comparative perspectives. He is now engaging in a research projects on the historical making of American multiculturalism and a comparative study of multicultural policies in the United States, Canada and Japan. He published academic books and journal articles both in Japanese and English, including E Pluribus Unum: A Historical Sociology of Multicultural America (Kyoto: Horitsubunka-sha, 2016, in Japanese) and Trans-pacific Japanese American Studies: Conversations on Race and Racializations (Edited by Yasuko Takezawa and Gary Y. Okihiro, Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press, 2016).

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About the Lecture:  The trilateral relationship among China, Japan and the United States has generally been stable, and it explained the regional order in East Asia since the 1970s. The trilateral relationship has been stabilized primarily by the stability of the US-China and US-Japan relations, and secondly by the fact that American preponderance has been maintained and the commitment to Asia is certain, with the remaining two parties formulating strategies on the basis of that balance of power. Although Japan-China relations have been repeatedly confronted and approached politically over time, they have not shaken the trilateral relationship to that extent. Also, in the area of regionalism, the role of the United States has gradually become more important and contributed to the stability of order.  Now, however, the fundamental conditions of the trilateral relationship are changing because of a shift in the balance of power, a loss of confidence on American diplomacy, and the overwhelming importance of the Chinese economy. Relations between the United States and China are described as an era of competition, or as an era of confrontation. How will a change in the relationship between Japan, the United States and China affect the order of Asia? What does good Japan-China relations mean? Is the Japan-U.S. relationship still strong? How will the answers to these questions affect Canada and Canadian foreign policy?    

Speaker Biography:  Ryo Sahashi is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo.  Dr. Sahashi specializes on international politics in East Asia, and his most recent book is In a Search for Coexistence: the United States and Two Chinas during the Cold War (Tokyo: Keiso, 2015). He recently edited Looking for Leadership: The Dilemma of Political Leadership in Japan (Tokyo and New York: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2015) in English, and wrote on the impact of rising China on Asian order, Japan’s security policy and Japan-Taiwan relations. Concurrently, he serves as Research Fellow, Japan Center for International Exchange. He frequently contributes to NHK, Nikkei, Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun and other major media outlets. Dr Sahashi taught at Kanagawa University as professor until March of 2019 and has been Visiting Associate Professor at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, as well as Shigeru Yoshida Chair at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He joined the University of Tokyo with tenure in April 2019, and concurrently was Associate Professor at the institution’s Future Vision Research Institute.  He also served as adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, the Tokyo Foundation-German Marshall Fund of the United States Partnership Fellow, and as a Guest Researcher for First Special Committee Research Office, House of Councilors. He is a member of the UK-Japan 21st Century Committee.

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More ethnic minority candidates ran for office in the 2019 Canadian federal election than ever before. Many other democratic states around the world are experiencing a similar increase in the number of ethnic minority candidates running in elections due to the growth of their populations with diverse ethnic backgrounds over the past few decades. In contrast to this trend, few ethnic minority candidates have run for office in Japan to date. Given that Japan has already accepted some, and may accept more immigrants in the future, Japanese people are likely to see more ethnically non-Japanese candidates in the near future. If these candidates run for election at the national level, would Japanese voters support them? Which voters would be more or less likely to vote for these candidates and why? Studying these counterfactual questions presents important implications not just for understanding Japanese voters, but for electoral democracy in many countries worldwide.

To discuss these questions, Professor Go Murakami presented the major results of three online voting experiments he conducted in Japan between 2011 and 2019. In these experiments, he showed several hypothetical candidate profiles to participants and asked them to vote for one. In the study, one of the candidates’ ethnicity was randomly altered to be either Japanese, Korean or Chinese. The study showed that a significant proportion of Japanese voters avoided supporting the non-ethnic minority candidate, an effect that depended largely on voters’ partisanship, ethnic group attitudes, and relevant policy preference. During this presentation, Professor Murakami discussed the implications of these findings for future Japanese elections.  

Biography:  Go Murakami is an Associate Professor in the College of Law at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Mississauga. He received a PhD in Political Science from the University of British Columbia. Professor Murakami studies political psychology and behaviour, with special interests in race, ethnicity and immigration. His recent publication includes "Effects of Candidates’ Ethnicity on Vote Choice in Japan: An Experimental Approach" (Ritsumeikan Law Review, 2019) and "Survey Experiment on Majority Building" In Yoichi Hizen, ed., Experimental Politics (with Kiichiro Arai and Masaru Kohno, 2016 [in Japanese]).