front cover of Japan in the American Century
Japan in the American Century
Kenneth B. Pyle
Harvard University Press, 2018

No nation was more deeply affected by America’s rise to world power than Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt’s uncompromising policy of unconditional surrender led to the catastrophic finale of the Asia-Pacific War and the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history. Japan in the American Century examines how Japan, with its deeply conservative heritage, responded to the imposition of a new liberal order.

The price Japan paid to end the occupation was a cold war alliance with the United States that ensured America’s dominance in the region. Still traumatized by its wartime experience, Japan developed a grand strategy of dependence on U.S. security guarantees so that the nation could concentrate on economic growth. Yet from the start, despite American expectations, Japan reworked the American reforms to fit its own circumstances and cultural preferences, fashioning distinctively Japanese variations on capitalism, democracy, and social institutions.

Today, with the postwar world order in retreat, Japan is undergoing a sea change in its foreign policy, returning to an activist, independent role in global politics not seen since 1945. Distilling a lifetime of work on Japan and the United States, Kenneth Pyle offers a thoughtful history of the two nations’ relationship at a time when the character of that alliance is changing. Japan has begun to pull free from the constraints established after World War II, with repercussions for its relations with the United States and its role in Asian geopolitics.

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Japanese Corrections
Managing Convicted Offenders in an Orderly Society
Elmer H. Johnson
Southern Illinois University Press, 1996

In his analysis of the current Japanese corrections system, internationally respected criminologist Elmer H. Johnson focuses on three basic questions: What are the characteristics of the major programmatic elements? How do various personnel carry out their programmatic responsibilities? Why are the various duties and activities carried out in a particular way?

Johnson points out that compared with the United States, where prison populations are huge and often violent, Japan incarcerates relatively few criminals. In 1989, for example, Japan locked up only 34 out of every 100,000 citizens while the United States imprisoned people at a rate of 271 per 100,000. Examining the cultural differences leading to this disparity, Johnson notes that in Japan prosecutors are reluctant to refer defendants for trial and the courts often suspend sentences for convicted felons.

In Japan, two bureaus—the Correction Bureau and the Rehabilitation Bureau—administer all Japanese correctional activities. Placing these bureaus in the organizational scheme of the Ministry of Justice, Johnson traces the history, describes the organizational ideologies, and outlines the special features of each.

A central feature of the Japanese penal system is the industrial prison, a concept that met such fierce opposition in the United States that it lost almost all access to the free market by the 1940s. Johnson traces the history of the industrial prison, noting particularly that the industrial operations in adult institutions explain in part why there is almost no violence and why few try to escape. Juvenile institutions enjoy similar success; even though they produce no industrial products, the juvenile training schools emphasize education, vocational training, and counseling.

Japanese correctional officers rely heavily on the community and on unsalaried volunteer probation officers for supervision of probationers and parolees. Although Japanese courts regard probationary supervision as too punitive for most convicted defendants and return many to the community without supervision, the probation caseload is weighty. Johnson describes the responsibilities and operations of the Regional Parole Boards. He also discusses the aid hostels (halfway houses) that are primarily operated by private organizations and that serve released or paroled prisoners.

Johnson sums up by noting that both the Correction Bureau and the Rehabilitation Bureau depend on the overall operations of police, prosecutors, and judges. More broadly, he asserts, both bureaus are creatures of Japanese society and culture. The assets and disadvantages of the bureaus reflect society’s reluctance to sentence defendants to prison and, to a lesser extent, the reluctance to place them on probationary supervision.

 

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Jobs for the Boys
Patronage and the State in Comparative Perspective
Merilee S. Grindle
Harvard University Press, 2012

Patronage systems in the public service are universally reviled as undemocratic and corrupt. Yet patronage was the prevailing method of staffing government for centuries, and in some countries it still is. In Jobs for the Boys, Merilee Grindle considers why patronage has been so ubiquitous in history and explores the political processes through which it is replaced by merit-based civil service systems. Such reforms are consistently resisted, she finds, because patronage systems, though capricious, offer political executives flexibility to achieve a wide variety of objectives.

Grindle looks at the histories of public sector reform in six developed countries and compares them with contemporary struggles for reform in four Latin American countries. A historical, case-based approach allows her to take into account contextual differences between countries as well as to identify cycles that govern reform across the board. As a rule, she finds, transition to merit-based systems involves years and sometimes decades of conflict and compromise with supporters of patronage, as new systems of public service are politically constructed. Becoming aware of the limitations of public sector reform, Grindle hopes, will temper expectations for institutional change now being undertaken.

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