earticle

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Established positive studies of the Japanese political culture are rare.
Four cases of them are introduced in this paper.
The first one is Conformity and Struggle studied by Ishida Takeshi in 1970. He makes an assertion that the peculiarities of Conformity and Struggle are able to explain directly the advances and changes of Japanese history. The peculiarity of Conformity was derived from
conventions of Mura Shakai with low autonomy, and Struggle was permitted within keeping the conformity in Mura Shakai. Japanese organizations are based on strict conformity inside and exclusive closing outside. These peculiarities lead to growth of informal factions in modern huge organizations such as firms, political parties, labor unions, and administrative organs.
The second one is the peculiarities of Alienation and Aspiration studied by Nakamura Kikuo. Japanese people such as highly educated, white collars, and college students are discontented with Japanese politics and are reluctant to participate to political activities. But they
have much more interest in politics than any other western country.
The Third one is Japanese Community Hypothesis suggested by Murakami Yasusuke to explain the reasons of Liberal Democratic Party(LDP) 's grasping political power for the long run. LDP has
adopted inclusive political creeds and party policies. The inclusive acceptance is a traditional cultural inheritance of Japanese society. It is claimed that it makes LDP`s great success in obtaining supports from almost social strata.
The fourth one is Japan-like Party Hypothesis suggested by Murakami Yasusuke to explain the system management methods of LDP and Social Democratic Party(SDP). This hypothesis accounts for the success of LDP and the downfall of SDP from the side of the
system management methods.
But these four established political cultural patterns of Japan fail to explain the political cultural shifts during the 1990s. What are the shifts can be obvious by analyzing why the LDP succeeded in returning to powers in 1996. That is to say that Japanese people prefer certain smaller values to uncertain larger ones.