Research Proposal for The University of Oxford
January 2025
Visiting Research Fellow
Yukihisa Fujita
As a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations of the University of Oxford, I would like to research the causes of the malaise known as Japan's “three lost decades“ and strategies to achieve the rebirth of Japan. In addition to conducting research and collaborating with colleagues as a member of the university community, I would like to pursue this topic through visits to Parliament, government ministries, think tanks, the media, labour unions and NGOs, both in Britain and other European countries.I also would like to research remedies for the rebirth of democracy, which I believe to be in crisis, as there have been studies on democracy conducted in various European countries.
Based on this research, I intend to write books and articles in both English and Japanese and to use YouTube to communicate my findings and conclusions. I would like to share my research with politicians, universities, think tanks and civic organizations, both in Japan and other countries.
Last year, for the first time, Japan did not appear in The Economist's “World Ahead 2024”, the publication's annual outlook on the state of the world. This omission adds to a slew of recent data points underscoring the extent to which Japan has shrunk during its three lost decades”, falling to 4th in the world by GDP and being overtaken by Germany, 32nd by size of GDP per capita and 35th in global competitiveness. Japan had 3% of the world's GDP in 1950, before soaring to 18% and second only to the US at its peak in 1994 but falling to 3% again in 2024.
The general election of October 2024 showed signs of Japan's rebirth after the nation's “three lost decades”. Japan's biggest majority in the post-World War II era, which I call “The status quo group”, was defeated. In the last year, regime change has taken place in a number of countries, including the USA with the return of President Trump, the UK, France and Germany - all demonstrating change to the status quo.
I am a member of a committee set up to examine Japan's three lost decades, consisting of many media people. We recently published a report based on interviews with 42 experts from various fields. The main viewpoint we got was that we should not consider Japan to have lost three decades, in the sense of a passive bystander or a critic, but that we should conclude “We lost three decades”. The main reason for this is that in Japan's post-World War II political realm, government and society have not been able to cope with the critical issues of the state. As a consequence, we need to seek remedies to achieve the rebirth of Japan from this viewpoint.
It became clear that “we lost three decades” not only due to economic reasons but also for political reasons, as issues involving money in politics have erupted in recent years. It was 30 years ago, in 1994 when the Political Funds Regulation Law was changed drastically. The changes were introduced because of the scandal linked to the human resources company Recruit, which led to the arrests of many politicians and businessmen. The Diet (Parliament) replaced the multiple-seat constituency system with single-seat constituencies, in line with the British system.
It became clear that “we lost three decades” not only due to economic reasons but also for political reasons, as issues involving money in politics have erupted in recent years. It was 30 years ago, in 1994 when the Political Funds Regulation Law was changed drastically. The changes were introduced because of the scandal linked to the human resources company Recruit, which led to the arrests of many politicians and businessmen. The Diet (Parliament) replaced the multiple-seat constituency system with single-seat constituencies, in line with the British system.
The Diet also abolished direct corporate donations and introduced a taxpayer-financed political party subsidy system. However, corporate donations survived in the form of political events. In 2023, it was revealed that many politicians had been taking advantage of loopholes in the system to build up undeclared and un-taxed slush funds. The ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Komeito suffered defeat in the October 2024 election, although they have managed to retain a minority government.
Japan has declined in the three decades since the nation was known for “second-rate politics but first-rate economics” and also as “Japan Inc,” describing the collaboration between the bureaucracy and corporations. It has also been three decades since the dismantling of Japan Inc. by the U.S.-Japan Structural Impediments Initiative and the Annual Reform Recommendations from the government of the United States to the government of Japan under the U.S.-Japan Regulatory Reform and Competition Policy Initiative. But the fundamental problem is that Japan itself has no “statecraft” to steer the nation. There is no system such as those that exist in major Western countries to “manage the state” from a long-term and strategic perspective, including crisis management. At the very least, Japan needs a system that identifies who is responsible for what has been done.
Another aspect of Japan's three lost decades is the parallel problem of the nation's “vanishing democracy”. The ostensible separation of powers between the parliament, government and the judiciary has become a dead letter. Under the Westminster Parliamentary cabinet system, the power of Japan's prime minister - who is not directly elected by the people - has far surpassed that of the Diet, which is defined as the highest body of national sovereignty and to which members are directly elected by the people. The prime minister's right to dissolve the Lower House at a time of his convenience has become a hot political issue. The theory that a British prime minister has the unfettered right to dissolve parliament has been pointed out to be incorrect by Japanese scholars recently. The prime minister's office has exercised substantial personel authority over government ministries, the courts, as well as supposedly independent agencies, like prosecutors and the Bank of Japan.
The absence of rules regulating contact between lawmakers and bureaucrats – which exist in Britain - has weakened the neutrality of the bureaucracy. Official documents of the Finance Ministry were falsified by bureaucrats who paid flattering deference to politicians.
The absence of rules that exist in the United Kingdom and other Western countries, such as the ban on media executives treating government officials to meals and the press club system that limits the media's access to information, are said to be the reasons why Japan ranks 71st in the world in terms of media freedom. The low level of media neutrality is one reason why the “status quo” party reigns as the largest in Japan, preventing the public from receiving information they should be thinking about in order to make decisions.
We need to establish a “democracy of the people, by the people and for the people”, in which the people themselves exercise their sovereignty instead of relying only on the benefits of democracy given by the United States after the war.
Japan has not only lost its wealth but also its democratic values. Japan ranks 125th in the world in gender equality, 148th in the percentage of women in parliament, etc. There were no laws supporting LGBT people until the Hiroshima Summit of 2023. Respect for these values is also important.
I would also like to explore democracy itself, as research on the concept is being undertaken in a number of European countries.
As already mentioned, Japan imitated various British systems but has not necessarily implemented them. Japan was said to be good at “kaizen“, meaning continuous improvement, rather than a few inventions, causing the production systems of Japanese companies to be praised. However, when it comes to political systems. Japan has frequently made them worse rather than implement “kaizen”.
Since it set out to create a modern state with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan followed Britain's lead in its railway system, postal network, the Westminster parliamentary cabinet system and many other areas of national life. It built cooperative relationships with the international community, culminating in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 to 1923, before veering disastrously into militarism.
After World War II, Japan focused on economic reconstruction under the military umbrella of the U.S. and achieved economic growth. I would like to discover from European countries, such as the U.K., the reasons “We lost three decades” after Japan achieved phenomenal economic growth up to 1994.
We need a decent democracy and an unbiased media, with Diet members elected fairly by the will of the people instead of through power accrued by money or vested interests. Our elected representatives should be responsible for the national interest based on the will of the people. Now is the time for Japanese people to fight to guarantee their own democracy, rather than ride the coattails of the democracy that was given to Japan by the U.S. at the end of the war.
“Democracy by the people, for the people and of the people”. This is how Japan can emerge from the 30 years that we have lost.
Japan copied the form of the British system, but not its content. Since it set out to create a modern state with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan followed Britain's lead in the creation of its railway system, postal network, the Westminster parliamentary cabinet system and many other areas of national life. It built cooperative relationships with the international community, culminating in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 to 1923, before veering disastrously into militarism.
For the past 70 years, the Japanese Diet has been ruled by virtually one party. For the past 30 years, three out of four prime ministers have been hereditary politicians, and nearly 40% of LDP members effectively inherited safe political seats. The fact that the majority of the population belongs to the “status quo party” is the basis of hereditary politics.
This structure is partly because there are no limits on the amount of money parliamentary candidates can spend on their campaigns. There is no electoral system that makes it easy for ordinary citizens to run for office, nor is there a system that makes it easy to return to work after losing an election, as exists in the UK. I want to learn from the UK in order to create an environment that makes it easier for ordinary citizens, especially women, to run for office.
The powers of the prime minister are increasing. Most incidents of dissolution of the Diet have been carried out under Article 7 of the Constitution, which allows the prime minister to dissolve the Diet at his convenience. As a result, the actual term of office for members of the Lower House is not a full four years, but an average of about two and a half years. As I have already mentioned, the theory that “the British Prime Minister has an unfettered right to dissolve Parliament” is not accurate.
Despite the separation of powers in the Westminster parliamentary system of government, the Japanese prime minister has considerable personnel authority over government ministries, courts, public prosecutors and the Bank of Japan. We should respect the separation of powers and learn from the United Kingdom about the rules that govern relationships between politicians and bureaucrats.
Nor does the Diet serve as an adequate check on the government, even though it is constitutionally designated as the supreme organ of state power. When the British Parliament concluded in 2017 that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction and rejected the rationale for Britain's military invasion of Iraq, former Prime Minister Tony Blair accepted the decision. The Japanese Diet has no such authority, and the Japanese government has yet to officially acknowledge that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. The lack of clarity in assigning responsibility is also a practice of the Japanese house, while statecraft requires the Diet to exercise stronger power.
Japan does not have think tanks affiliated with the Diet or political parties that make policy recommendations independently of the government, such as the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), the Westminster Foundation, or similar institutions in many other European countries. In addition, independent watchdogs, such as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in the U.S. Congress, can independently assess a government's performance. The GAO even went so far as reducing the Pentagon's request for 750 F-22 stealth fighter planes to just 193 aircraft! Most OECD countries also have Independent Fiscal Institutions (IFIs) that review national debt and fiscal discipline. The Diet does not have a working body to effectively assess bills submitted by government ministries or to formulate long-term, strategic policies.
The head of Japan's biggest music talent agency sexually abused hundreds of boys over several decades, but the Japanese media largely ignored the issue. Although this fact was reported by the Guardian and others in the 2000s, the Japanese media systematically overlooked it and it was only after the BBC produced a TV documentary on the scandal in 2023 that Japanese politicians and the media could no longer turn a blind eye.
The cozy relationship between politicians, corporations, the media and the entertainment industry allowed this problem to go unchecked for decades. Similarly, there are no regulations in Japan covering meetings involving wining and dining between government officials and media executives, as there are in the United Kingdom and other countries. This relationship has helped to create a wall of silence on issues related to the rights of women, refugees, immigrants, minorities, LGBT and others.
After Brexit, the United Kingdom has continued to pursue a global diplomacy strategy that puts national interests first with Commonwealth countries and other countries with which it has built alliances and partnerships over many years. Japan can learn from this wisdom.
While Britain has lost a great deal of its manufacturing industries, it has still managed to maintain its global influence. This has remained true even after Brexit. The City of London exchanges twice as much currency as Wall Street, including interest rate swaps and derivatives, and five times as much as Japan. Britain's engineering industries lead large projects worldwide, including the construction of ports and energy plants, and the nation is recognised as a leader in city planning, as seen when London hosted the Olympic Games in 2012.
Similarly, Japan, whose manufacturing industries such as textiles, shipbuilding and semiconductors have declined, can learn from Britain. Japan, where the food self-sufficiency rate has fallen to about 39%, needs to learn from European countries about functional agriculture. Low food and energy self-sufficiency are extremely serious security issues, as the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown.
At a Japanese university, students can only study one subject. They cannot study a wide range of subjects at the same time, such as philosophy, politics and religion, as is the case in the United Kingdom. This broad education produces leaders who have high moral standards, can think globally and are flexible in formulating long-term strategic policies. This is the kind of person that Japan needs to engage in statecraft, including crisis management.
Democracy in Japan was actually granted by the United States after the war. The Japanese people never fought for democracy. Therefore, the Japanese people have little sense of national sovereignty and individual autonomy. The strong tendency to follow the status quo without expressing one's own opinion has become a breeding ground for the “status quo party”. It is time to relearn democracy of the people, by the people and for the people.
I do not wish to be one-sided in my praise of the United Kingdom or Europe. I have heard from my European friends that the continent has many problems. However, I would like to study how these nations identify their problems, address them and govern their states. In addition, I would like to find out the reasons why the real foreign situation is not accurately communicated to the people of Japan.
For example, the implied Japanese translation of “accountability” is more akin to “responsibility for self-certification”, rather than “responsibility for results”, the original meaning of “a situation in which someone is responsible for things that happen and can give a satisfactory reason for them”.
The implied meaning of “accountability” is used as an excuse to make it sound as if the parties involved have explained their actions, hiding the original meaning of “to hold someone responsible and to give a satisfactory answer.”
It should be recognized that “transparency” is often used as a “corruption index” rather than just “visible”. The actual meaning is, “A situation in which political and business activities are conducted openly, without secrets, so that people can trust them to be fair”.Transparency International, a non-governmental organization, publishes an annual corruption index by country. Japan ranks 16th on the index, which is low among developed countries, perhaps because the meaning of transparency is not used accurately.
I would like to examine these gaps by visiting European countries. I then hope to use that knowledge and understanding to revitalize Japan.
I would be grateful for your support and cooperation.