Faculty of Liberal Arts
Professor
Comparative Politics, Japanese Politics, and Political Theory.
B.A., University of Tokyo
B.A., University of Oxford
M.A., Ph.D., Princeton University
Email: knakano[at]sophia.ac.jp
Tel: 03-3238-4022
Office: 10-528
My research focuses on a variety of issues of contemporary Japanese politics from comparative, historical, and philosophical perspectives, including globalization and nationalism; the Yasukuni problem; language, media and politics; amakudari and administrative reform in Japan; decentralization; and the cross-national transfer of policy ideas. I also have a keen interest in the politics of Britain, France, other western European countries, and the EU. I teach a range of courses in the field of comparative politics, Japanese politics, and political theory, and as I do so, I strive to connect the normative and conceptual analyses with empirical studies of political phenomena.
Books
・Party Politics and Decentralization in Japan and France: When the Opposition Governs (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010).
・The Democratic Party of Japan: Challenges and Failures, eds. with Yoichi Funabashi (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), translated by Kate Dunlop.
・Disasters and Social Crisis in Contemporary Japan: Political, Religious, and Sociocultural Responses, eds. with Mark R. Mullins (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
・Ukeikasuru Nihon Seiji (Rightward Shift of Japanese Politics) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 2015).
・Sengo Nihon no Kokka Hoshu Shugi: Naimu Jichi Kanryō no Kiseki (State Conservatism in Postwar Japan: the Career Paths of ex-Interior Bureaucrats) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2013).
Book Chapters and Journal Articles
・“Organizational Legacies of Authoritarian Police in Postwar Japan” in Weitseng Chen and Hualing Fu (eds.), Regime Type and Beyond: The Transformation of Police in Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 214-243.
・“The rightward shift of Japanese politics: Interest, reform, and identity” in Noriko Murai et al. (eds.), Japan in the Heisei Era (1989-2019) (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022), pp. 33-43.
・“The Politics of Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment in Japan: The Case of the Pacifist Article 9” in Rehan Abeyratne and Ngoc Son Bui (eds.), The Law and Politics of Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments in Asia(Abingdon: Routledge, 2022), pp. 23-45.
・“Crisis of Constitutional Democracy and the New Civic Activism in Japan: From SEALDs to Civil Alliance” in Helen Hardacre et al. (eds.), Japanese Constitutional Revisionism and Civic Activism (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021), pp. 39-59.
・“Neoliberal Turn of State Conservatism in Japan: From Bureaucratic to Corporatist Authoritarian Legality” in Weitseng Chen and Hualing Fu (eds.), Authoritarian Legality in Asia: Formation, Development and Transition(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 337-363.
・“Cross-National Transfer of Policy Ideas: Agencification in Britain and Japan,” Governance, vol. 17, no. 2 (April 2004), pp. 169-188.
・“The Role of Ideology and Elite Networks in the Decentralisation Reforms in France of the 1980s,” West European Politics, vol. 23, no. 3 (July 2000), pp. 97-114.
・“Nationalism and Localism in Japan’s Political Debate of the 1990s,” The Pacific Review, vol. 11, no. 4 (1998), pp. 505-524.
・“The Politics of Administrative Reform in Japan, 1993-1998: Toward a More Accountable Government?” Asian Survey, vol. 38, no. 3 (March 1998), pp. 291-309.
・“Becoming a ‘Policy’ Ministry: The Organization and Amakudari of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications,” The Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 24, no. 1 (1998), pp. 95-117.
Faculty of Liberal Arts
Graduate Program in Global Studies