New book: Dowa Policy and Japanese Politics

Readers of these posts may be aware of recent writing by authors in Japan and across the Anglophone world on Buraku issues published in the Asia Pacific Review - Japan Forum (APJ JF) which,/ahem/, discuss the recent contributions of Mark Ramseyer on the topic.

These complement the better publicised commentaries on his work on the '/ianfu/' issue also covered in the APJ JF.
If you have not read them they can be found at apjf.org
Vol 19 5 March 1 2021 Edward Vickers and Mark Frost(ed) The Comfort Women as Public History, and
Vol 19 9 May 1, 2021 Japan's Burakumin (Outcastes) Reconsidered

Today I would like to draw readers attention to the publication earlier this month of my study:

Dowa Policy and Japanese Politics Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies, 2022

This uses publicly available data and official reports to build an evidence based account of the evolution of Dowa policy from the 1950s up to the twenty first century as 'an example of human rights protection and promotion and affirmative action in a non-western society.' (editors' introduction).

Table of Contents

1. Dowa policy projects and the problems for which they were a solution
2. Approaches to the problem
3. A brief review of modern Buraku history and the formation of Yuwa policy
4. From the Occupation to the new Ten-Year Plan: Dowa policy and the reconstruction of Japanese politics, 1945-60
5. From the/Shingikai/to the Special Measures Law - the formation of Dowa policy in the 1960s
6. Implementation I: the Dowa policy process at the national level
7. Implementation II: spending on Dowa policy by the main ministries
8. Implementation III: how Dowa policy was implemented locally: examples from Osaka, Nara and Fukuoka prefectures
9. Corrupt Practices? A comment on/yakuza/involvement
10. Conclusions

Ian Neary
Nissan Institute and St Antony's College
Oxford University