German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo (DIJ) Podcast

The Japanese word, Ikumen which originated from Ikemen (handsome men) refers to those “cool” fathers who are actively involved in caring for their own children. This word has become well-known among the Japanese public as evidenced by it being nominated one of the top 10 words in 2010 Buzzwords-of-the-Year Contest. In this lecture, we focus on this Ikumen phenomenon by describing historical and contemporary social, economic and political factors that contributed to the increase of Japanese fathers’ participation in child care. Antecedents and consequences of fathers’ participation in child care will also be examined from sociological perspectives. Most of the findings presented in this lecture come from the data collected in two projects, “Gender Sensitive Approaches to Work-Life-Balance” and “Parenting in IT Society.” Our analyses show that workplace factors as well as family socialization are significant factors affecting paternal involvement. Implications of our research findings will also be discussed in relation to policies, education and practice.

Masako Ishii-Kuntz is a Professor in Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences at Ochanomizu University in Tokyo. Her areas of specialization include family sociology, gender studies and quantitative methods. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology from Washington State University. She has also taught at the University of California, Riverside prior to her current position. She has published three books (plus two in press) and more than 120 peer reviewed articles, book chapters, reviews and research reports. Her recent research focuses on how fathers and mothers of young children utilize IT tools and SNS (social networking service) in their child caring activities.

The Japanese word, Ikumen which originated from Ikemen (handsome men) refers to those "cool" fathers who are actively involved in caring for their own children. This word has become well-known among the Japanese public as evidenced by it being nominated one of the top 10 words in 2010 Buzzwords-of-the-Year Contest. In this lecture, we focus on this Ikumen phenomenon by describing historical and contemporary social, economic and political factors that contributed to the increase of Japanese fathers’ participation in child care. Antecedents and consequences of fathers’ participation in child care will also be examined from sociological perspectives. Most of the findings presented in this lecture come from the data collected in two projects, "Gender Sensitive Approaches to Work-Life-Balance" and "Parenting in IT Society." Our analyses show that workplace factors as well as family socialization are significant factors affecting paternal involvement. Implications of our research findings will also be discussed in relation to policies, education and practice.

Many developed countries including Japan are undergoing comprehensive demographic change, marked by a growing share of elderly people. Product and service innovation can play a role in coping with the resulting societal challenges, especially when these help to support the preservation of elderly people’s personal autonomy. The range of these age-specific innovations is enormous and includes, for example, mobility aids and household devices but also special financial products. Is Japan a lead market for such innovations?

Many developed countries including Japan are undergoing comprehensive demographic change, marked by a growing share of elderly people. Product and service innovation can play a role in coping with the resulting societal challenges, especially when these help to support the preservation of elderly people’s personal autonomy. The range of these age-specific innovations is enormous and includes, for example, mobility aids and household devices but also special financial products. Is Japan a lead market for such innovations?

Japan today faces many enormous challenges. These include a huge public debt larger than that of Greece, Italy, or the U.S.; the clean up of the triple disasters in March 2011; and with opposition to nuclear power mounting, an increasing energy crisis. Yet Japan is not the EU or the U.S. but has many other advantages that the EU and U.S. do not. Japan, however, has one major problem in which it does not have an advantage: its political leadership. Despite high expectations after Japan’s electoral and administrative reforms of the 1990s and after Prime Minister Koizumi seemed to fulfill these hopes, Japan’s political leaders have all disappointed. Why?

Japan’s politics has been the problem and not the solution. Japan has had one of the worst records for stable and effective political leadership in the democratic world. What has happened to Japan, once admired for its effective governance? Why, despite a formal cabinet government and parliamentary structure similar to the U.K.’s in many ways is Japan still often an “Un-Westminster” system? This presentation will look at the structural and political reasons for Japan’s increasingly frequent and ineffective political leaders seemingly incapable of solving Japan’s problems, including both formal institutions and “informal institutions:” short-lived prime ministers; fragmented and non-cooperative political parties; unfair and complicated electoral systems; and frequent elections and a dysfunctional bicameral parliament.; when fickle, floating voters are added to this institutional mix, the result is the ineffective political leadership Japan has had since Koizumi. Prime Minister Abe today is the first prime minister since Koizumi who may have the capability to surmount these problems. Will he? And will what he brings about be what Japan needs?

Japan today faces many enormous challenges. These include a huge public debt larger than that of Greece, Italy, or the U.S.; the clean up of the triple disasters in March 2011; and with opposition to nuclear power mounting, an increasing energy crisis. Yet Japan is not the EU or the U.S. but has many other advantages that the EU and U.S. do not. Japan, however, has one major problem in which it does not have an advantage: its political leadership. Despite high expectations after Japan's electoral and administrative reforms of the 1990s and after Prime Minister Koizumi seemed to fulfil these hopes, Japan's political leaders have all disappointed. Why?

Following the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Japan has witnessed a proliferation of discourses where people are enticed by the notion, “Rise up, Japan,” to participate in national recovery and reconstruction. In it, women are mobilized as chief practitioners of “crisis management” whereby they are urged to acquire a series of techniques, technologies, as well as dispositions in order to cope with the current crisis and prepare for future emergencies. Examining disaster management discourses and practices that proliferate via websites, instructional manuals, and community fairs in post-Fukushima Japan, this presentation analyzes how the emerging culture of crisis management pursues gendered strategies as it instructs women to maintain proper bodies and orderly homes so as to ensure their own and their families’ survival in large-scale disasters and crises. Far from a top-down imposition, it is a bottom-up endeavor where women leaders, intellectuals, and crisis management advisers insist on the importance of women’s involvement in national affairs. Situating the current crisis management culture in a larger historical context, the presentation points to its similarities to the pre-1945 Japanese life improvement movement and the cold war US civil defense programs where women and home also constituted the focal sites of discipline and regulation, thereby suggesting a need to critically re-examine and re-consider the meanings of women’s mobilization to the post-disaster nation.

Following the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Japan has witnessed a proliferation of discourses where people are enticed by the notion, "Rise up, Japan," to participate in national recovery and reconstruction. In it, women are mobilized as chief practitioners of "crisis management" whereby they are urged to acquire a series of techniques, technologies, as well as dispositions in order to cope with the current crisis and prepare for future emergencies. Examining disaster management discourses and practices that proliferate via websites, instructional manuals, and community fairs in post-Fukushima Japan, this presentation analyzes how the emerging culture of crisis management pursues gendered strategies as it instructs women to maintain proper bodies and orderly homes so as to ensure their own and their families' survival in large-scale disasters and crises.

The political uncertainty of Japan’s post-Fukushima energy policy should not be surprising given the country’s energy constraints. Japan, an economic powerhouse operating within a geographically constrained landmass with virtually no independent energy sources to fuel and stabilize its economic needs, is trapped between two conflicting political problems: a growing segment of the Japanese electorate who reject essential facilities such as electric power plants and transmission wires being built in their backyards versus an equally large segment of the electorate who naturally expect a stable, environmentally safe and inexpensive flow of electric power to support their high standard of living and industrial production. That both expectations are technically and financially incompatible has led to the current political challenge.

This lecture places Japan’s post-Fukushima energy challenges and its public policy decisions into perspective by analyzing it in cross-national context. Using heretofore-unexamined archival documents, microeconomic data, and qualitative interviews with key actors in a time-series, this talk explores how and why governments in three developed democracies—Japan, Germany, and UK—pursue the reform of their electric power markets over a long period. The talk emphasizes how periods of stasis (controlled by positive feedback or self-reinforcement) in terms of “policy image” are occasionally offset by bouts of frenetic institutional change. Variations in deliberation timetables, shifting voting patterns in committees, sporadic law promulgation, increasingly negative public opinion polls, and fluctuating media attention cycles (the dependent variables) are analyzed by using the ubiquity, consistency, and strength of foreign economic ideas and events (the independent variables) to explain the transformation of both formal and informal institutions in Japan. Should a media-transmitted image shift be the principal factor behind crisis-induced agenda-setting and decision-making behavior, this talk explores the “real-world” financial, environmental and technological trade-offs of policy objectives prioritizing renewable energy over nuclear power and fossil fuels.

The political uncertainty of Japan’s post-Fukushima energy policy should not be surprising given the country’s energy constraints. Japan, an economic powerhouse operating within a geographically constrained landmass with virtually no independent energy sources to fuel and stabilize its economic needs, is trapped between two conflicting political problems: a growing segment of the Japanese electorate who reject essential facilities such as electric power plants and transmission wires being built in their backyards versus an equally large segment of the electorate who naturally expect a stable, environmentally safe and inexpensive flow of electric power to support their high standard of living and industrial production. That both expectations are technically and financially incompatible has led to the current political challenge.