From August 18-22, the Japan Studies Program welcomed scholars of political science and economics to the Oksenberg conference room in Encina Hall for the first annual Stanford Summer Juku on the Japanese Political Economy.

The main goal of the program is to attract young researchers who will go on to become leaders in the study of Japanese politics and Japanese economy in the near future. The Summer Juku is distinctive by allowing ample time for informal discussions and interactions beyond the standard presentations and discussions. Juku is a word most commonly associated with the modern Japanese cram schools, but here it actually refers to the private schools at the end of the Edo period, which attracted young, motivated students and ended up producing numerous leaders of the Meiji Restoration.

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The first two days focused on political science, while the second two days were on economics.

In the first session, Yusaku Horiuchi from Dartmouth College presented a coauthored paper analyzing the role of the U.S.-Japan security alliance on Japan’s postwar economic growth. They employed a novel statistical method relatively new to political science called the synthetic control method to contend that the acceleration of Japan’s economic growth from 1958 coincided with the consolidation of the alliance. Discussants were Amy Catalinac (Australian National University) and William Grimes (Boston University).

In the second session, Shorenstein APARC fellow and political science faculty Phillip Lipscy presented part of his book project on the question of what explains cross-national variation in energy policy. He contended that electoral incentives best explained variation in energy efficiency policies. Using a new dataset of transportation trends in OECD countries and an in-depth examination of the impact of Japan’s 1994 electoral reform, he finds that energy efficiency-enhancing policies are more feasible in non-majoritarian systems, which allow the imposition of high, diffuse costs on the general public. Discussants were Gregory Noble (University of Tokyo) and Yusaku Horiuchi (Dartmouth College).

In the final session on the first day, Amy Catalinac presented her paper that poses the question of what led to the dramatic rise in conservative Japanese politicians’ attention to national security since 1997. She argued that electoral reform in 1994 led to new incentives for conservative politicians to focus on national security. Her analysis involved applying a statistical model called latent Dirichlet allocation to over 7000 election manifestoes over 8 House of Representatives elections. Discussants were Saori Katada (University of Southern California) and Christina Davis (Princeton University).

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Kenji Kushida, research associate at Shorenstein APARC, started off the second day by presenting the main argument of his book project on understanding why Silicon Valley companies have continually disrupted the global information and communications technology (ICT) industry. Analyzing the case of Japan’s ICT sector in comparative international context, he showed that national political settlements at initial stages of liberalization shaped industry structures, which in turn shaped global markets characterized by rapid commoditization. Discussants were Gregory Noble (University of Tokyo) and Ulrike Schaede (University of California, San Diego).

The second presenter was Kay Shimizu from Columbia University, who presented her book project analyzing distributive politics under conditions of fiscal austerity. Focused on the question of what happens to personalistic politics when resources run low, she argued that budget-constrained politicians work to find new resources locally and to secure votes by creating more personal linkages to voters. Her study is based on an analysis of Japan between 1991 and 2011, showing how subnational politicians sought to influence lending practices of private regional banks through publicly funded credit guarantees. Discussants were Steven Vogel (UC Berkeley) and Jonathan Rodden (Stanford University).

The third presenter, Saadia Pekkanen (University of Washington), presented the introduction of her edited volume explaining the construction of external institutions by Asian states. She explained how the project was motivated by the desire to better understand how and why Asian states might shape the contemporary world order, and what kinds of institutionalized rules and structures they might bring into play, along with the consequences for global patterns of governance. She presented a typology of external institutional designs based on formal/informal underlying organizational structures, and hard/soft underlying legal rules, based on a new database of over 6000 international institutions covering Asia’s economic, security, and transnational human security institutions. Discussants were William Grimes (Boston University) and Christina Davis (Princeton University).

Following the second day, a conference dinner was joined by both political science and economics segment participants.

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The third day began the economics-focused segment of the Summer Juku, beginning with Ulrike Schaede (UC San Diego) presenting a co-authored paper with Tatsuo Ushijima (Aoyama Gakuin University) analyzing the economic role and valuation effects of subsidiary M&A in Japan between 1996 and 2010. They conducted an event study, pairing and analyzing both sides to the deal, finding that abnormal returns to buyers and sellers both increase with deal size. They find that Japanese firms selling core business subsidiaries lead to negative returns, accentuated in larger deals. They interpret that this penalty was either an uncertainty discount or a signaling effect that the firm was in distress. Discussants were Robert Eberhart (Santa Clara University) and Ayako Yasuda (University of California, Davis).

The second presentation by Hitoshi Shigeoka examined the effects of school entry cut-off ages for children on the timing of births. Given the tradeoff for parents to time births just before and after cutoff dates, his analysis of births from 1974-2010 in Japan led to his finding that more than 1800 births per year were shifted roughly a week before the cut-off date to the week following the cut-off date. He went on to analyze the heterogeneity in responses among mothers along dimensions including work, baby gender, income and skill levels. Discussants were Karen Eggleston (Stanford FSI) and Toshiaki Iizuka (University of Tokyo).

In the third session, Thomas Cargill (University of Nevada) presented a paper co-authored with Jennifer Holt Dwyer (City University of New York) examining the concept of central bank independence and the case of Japan. Their core contention was that the postwar evolution of Bank of Japan policy reveals that de facto central bank independence was neither necessary nor sufficient for price stability. They argue that the causal association between central bank independence and price stability is a myth, with the broader implication that less time should be spent measuring central bank independence in correlation with inflation measures, with efforts instead focused on understanding the political and economic conditions under which central banks are most likely to contribute to price stability and how to design operating frameworks that facilitate this. Discussants were Helen Popper (Santa Clara University) and Ken Kuttner (Williams College)

The fourth day opened with Koichiro Ito (Boston College) presenting his paper co-authored with Takanori Ida (Kyoto University) and Makoto Tanaka (GRIPS) that investigates how consumer responds to marginal prices of dynamic electricity pricing. Their randomized field experiments yield various findings including consumers’ reduction of consumption facing hourly marginal price changes,  the effectiveness of dynamic pricing with certain parameters over conservation warnings, and differences across factors such as income levels and the level of electricity usage. Discussants were Aoki Masahiko (Stanford Shorenstein APARC) and Matthew Kahn (University of California, Los Angeles).

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The second presentation was by Satoshi Koibuchi (Chuo University) of a paper co-authored with Takatoshi Ito (RIETI), Kiyotaka Sato (Yokohama National University), and Junko Shimizu (Gakushuin University). The paper examined the choice of invoicing currency for Japanese export firms based on an extensive questionnaire. Key findings included variation of yen-invoicing according to arms-length versus intra-firm trade, size and trade type, and the extent of currency hedging that the firm engages in. Discussants were Katheryn Russ (University of California, Davis) and Mark Spiegel (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco).

The final presentation was by David Vera (California State University, Fresno) of a paper co-authored with Kazuki Onji (Australian National University) and Takeshi Osada (Bunri University of Hospitality), which examines how capital injections into Japanese banks triggered labor force rejuvenations at those banks. Using a difference-in-difference analysis of a panel of Japanese banks from 1990-2010, they find that for banks receiving public capital injections, the average age of employees got younger.  They also find that the number of employees of those banks was reduced on a stand-alone basis, but on a consolidated basis including subsidiaries, the number of employees was not reduced. Their findings suggest that lifetime employment survived, though in a limited form, among restructured banks. Discussants were Masami Imai (Wesleyan University) and Kelly Wang (Federal Reserve Board).

Each day, the sessions finished shortly after two o’clock, leaving ample time for informal discussion and networking. Summer Juku participants could be found around Encina Hall and other parts of campus working on collaborative projects, exchanging information, and discussing ideas for future collaboration. We look forward to future collaborations hatched at this event, and are committed to further developing this Stanford Summer Juku as an ongoing activity at the Shorenstein APARC Japan Studies Program.

2008的6月，超过1000万的考生参加了高考，以竞争570个进入大学的名额。尽管高考的初衷是给予每个学生平等的机会，但严重的不平等依然存在着。同等条件下，北京的考生相对于陕西的考生就有更多的上大学的机会，因为北京有更多大学和招生名额。同世界上其他地方一样，中国的大学也倾于照顾本地的生源。

JSP director Takeo Hoshi's coauthored article, "Japanese government debt and sustainability of fiscal policy," is the most downloaded article from the Journal of the Japanese and International Economies. In the article, Hoshi and his coauthors construct quarterly series of the revenues, expenditures, and debt outstanding for Japan from 1980 to 2010, and analyze the sustainability of the fiscal policy. 

Just a couple of weeks after last month's defeat of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the upper-house elections comes the timely publication of Japan under the DPJ: The Politics of Transition and Governance, a new book from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, coedited by Kenji E. Kushida (Takahashi Research Associate in Japanese Studies) and Phillip Y. Lipscy (Thomas Rohlen Center Fellow).

Japan under the DPJ endeavors to explain the DPJ's rapid rise to power in 2009, examines the limited policy change that occured while the party was in power, and analyzes what led to the party's dramatic fall in 2012. The volume consists of 14 chapters addressing electoral structure, party recruitment and partisianship, DPJ domestic and foreign policy, and the DPJ's response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Japan under the DPJ is available for purchase now from Brookings Institution Press; you can also download the table of contents and introductory chapter from the related publication link, below.

HIROSHIMA, Japan – Keijiro Matsushima was in eighth grade, sitting at his school desk next to a window facing the sea. He recalled looking out at the sky the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, drawn to the sound of American B-29 bombers flying over his island.

Much of the Japanese population was starving. “They were so beautiful and I was so hungry that they looked like silver pancakes to me,” he said of the bombers overhead.

Matsushima figured it was a routine reconnaissance mission and turned back to his books.

Second later, he was hit by the blast. He felt the shockwave, then the wave of heat. He was forced to close his eyes when hit by a surge of blinding, orange light.

“The whole world turned into a sunset world,” he said. He covered his ears and jumped under his desk. Though his school was destroyed, a standing stairwell protected his desk.

Today, the 84-year-old retired schoolteacher is one of the storied hibakusha, the Japanese word for “explosion-affected person,” or survivors of the atomic bombs dropped by the B-29 bombers 68 years ago this week. Their average age is 78 and they have spent decades enduring discrimination and prejudice on top of their heartache 

Matsushima was addressing two dozen international scholars and policymakers at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, including a delegation from Stanford University collaborating with the city in its efforts to become an international symbol of peace.

“Seeing the Hiroshima museum and meeting with a hibakusha was a moving reminder of the importance of moving as far and as fast as we safely can toward a world without nuclear weapons,” said Scott Sagan, a Stanford political science professor and a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and its umbrella organization, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Matsushima sat in a classroom in the basement of the museum, seated before a map that laid out the hypocenter of the explosion. He was stoic in his narrative about events that day and often referred to himself as a “lucky boy.”

“It was a very bad war,” he said. “We didn’t know that at the time, and it continued on, a very long war. It just got worse and worse.”

Born in Hiroshima in 1929, Matsushima saw the militarization of his native city as he grew up. He remembers hearing optimistic statements about the grand Japanese success at Pearl Harbor, the surprise attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, which resulted in the U.S. declaration of war on the Empire of Japan.

The pressure on Japanese civilians mounted as the war prolonged; rationing of food, water and electricity took its toll on morale. By 1944, the U.S. had conquered several strategic Pacific islands, built airbases and began bombing Japanese cities.

As the Manhattan Project progressed, meetings of the Military Targeting Committee in 1945 designated certain Japanese cities as likely targets to test the new atomic device, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Enola Gay dropped the 4-ton atomic bomb on Hiroshima and half the city vanished, along with 70,000 to 80,000 lives, or a third of the populace.

Though Matsushima was in a classroom of 70 middle-school pupils, he remembers absolute silence after the “big noise.” He was relatively lucky; his school was on the outskirts of the blast radius, several kilometers from the hypocenter.

Though lacerated by glass and rubble, his bones were unbroken and he was able to walk. He helped a wounded classmate to a rescue truck – a young boy whom he would later learn had also survived.

“I think I should have tried rescuing others, but I was a 16-year-old, selfish young boy and I just wanted to leave the city as soon as possible,” Matsushima said with regret.

His mother had left Hiroshima a few months earlier to stay with her in-laws in the surrounding hills. Matsushima walked across the burning city, where tens of thousands of people lay wounded and pleading for help, for water, or for their gods. He walked all night until he arrived at his grandparents’ home.

The atomic bombings in Hiroshima and three days later in Nagasaki claimed between 150,000 and 240,000 lives. The bombs – dubbed Little Boy and Fat Man – would leave thousands more suffering from severe burns, radiation sickness and cancer.

Few cities in history are as closely associated with single, punctuating event than Hiroshima is with the bomb. The metropolis of 1.7 million people has been rebuilt in the last 68 years, its homes refurbished and its port revitalized.

Yet for generations, the city has been known as ground zero. Local leaders are trying to reinvent the city’s image as a beacon for global zero – the elimination of nuclear weapons.

“Policymakers of the world, how long will you remain imprisoned by distrust and animosity?”  Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui, himself the son of a hibakusha, asked in his annual peace declaration on Tuesday. “Do you honestly believe you can continue to maintain national security by rattling your sabers? Please come to Hiroshima. Encounter the spirit of the hibakusha. Look squarely at the future of the human family without being trapped in the past, and make the decision to shift to a system of security based on trust and dialogue.”

Sagan, one of the nation’s leading scholars on nuclear proliferation and safety, advocates for global nuclear disarmament as a member of the Hiroshima for Global Peace Task Force. He has worked closely for years with Hiroshima Prefecture Gov. Hidehiko Yuzaki in an effort to reach global zero.

“Our hope is that by hosting international conferences and research workshops, Hiroshima can turn from being the memorial site of the deadly ground zero to being the catalyst for moving to a world without nuclear weapons,” Sagan said.

In this photo on August 10, 1945, a mother and her son received a boiled rice ball from an emergency relief party. One mile southeast of Ground Zero, Nagasaki, August 10, 1945. Photo Credit: National Archives and Records Administration

 The visit to Hiroshima in late June by the Stanford delegation also included Francesca Giovannini, a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC; Michael May, a CISAC faculty member and director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and Edward Blandford, an assistant professor of nuclear engineering at the University of New Mexico and a former nuclear fellow at CISAC.

They were attending the conference, Learning from Fukushima, sponsored by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, CISAC, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Hiroshima for Global Peace Project.

It brought together American and Japanese nuclear power and nonproliferation specialists as well as nuclear experts from Southeast Asia. They examined the regional implications of nuclear safety and regional security after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.

A devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in March 2011, prompting a nuclear meltdown and the release of radioactive materials from the plant.

Conference delegates listened to Matsushima’s story and met with Mayor Matsui and other city officials to discuss the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Global Nuclear Future Initiative, which Sagan co-chairs with Steven Miller from Harvard. It offers technical and safety advice to countries that are developing nuclear power programs, while examining the regional and global implications.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the region’s most binding economic and political force, has long been proud of Southeast Asia’s status as a nuclear weapons-free zone. Vietnam, however, is changing that dynamic as it has commissioned several reactors from Russia, the first of which is expected to go online in 2020.

Scholars from Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia attended a panel to discuss proliferation, security and competition in the region and whether a nuclear-powered Vietnam would change the delicate balance of ASEAN.

Giovannini, who is also the program coordinator of the Global Nuclear Future Initiative, said her first visit to Hiroshima was spellbinding. The contrast between the vibrant, modern city and the heavy sorrow of its history was palpable. She said the narrative by Matsushima brought the 30-member delegation to silence.

“He was able to bring to life his memory, his past, and the history of the bombing through personal details that allowed us to picture vividly that little boy as he moved through what he called a ghost town,” Giovannini said.

She recalled someone asked Matsushima if he harbored enmity toward the United States.

“No,” he replied, and then smiled. “To move forward – one must forgive.”

Reed Jobs is a Stanford senior majoring in history and a CISAC honors student who traveled with the Stanford delegation to Hiroshima. His honors thesis will focus on the historical study of preventive warfare.