Party Ideologies and Regional Inequality: An Analysis of Party Manifestos in Japan

ABSTRACT

Regional inequality within Japan has been a key political issue in Japanese politics throughout the entire postwar period. In this analysis, we examine how Japanese parties have positioned themselves on the question of regional inequality, focusing on how the party system response has been shaped by ideas and ideologies. The article analyses two 15-year periods separated by a quarter of a century (1960–75 and 2000–15) during which regional inequalities became a particularly salient and pressing issue. We compare institutional and socioeconomic contexts, broader governing ideas, and policy responses to this issue by major parties in their election platforms (manifestos). We find that party ideology and broader paradigms continued to shape party responses to regional inequality during both periods.     

The application of forensic fire investigation techniques in the archaeological record

This paper seeks to assist in defining a role for a suite of adapted techniques of analysis and interpretation that are drawn primarily from the methods of contemporary forensic fire investigation. In so doing, the paper identifies a general paucity of literature providing detailed discussions of structural fires preserved in the archaeological record. In addition the paper provides a generalised account of the manner in which structural fires (most especially compartment fires, defined later) will tend to burn and which tools can assist in the interpretation of fire dynamics, the identification of points of origin of fire within buildings, and the response of building materials to burning. Ultimately, such an approach can improve understanding of past structures, and also provide an interpretative avenue for understanding human response to fire and the risk of structural fire in the past.     

‘A Bed of Procrustes’: The Aden Protectorate and the Forward Policy 1934–44

This article explores attempts by British colonial officials based in Aden to extend systems of political administration to the colony's tribal hinterland during the late interwar and early wartime period. Commencing initially with delicate attempts to recast faltering relations between tribal chiefs and their subjects, the policy would culminate a decade later with the despatch of British military units throughout the furthest extents of the protectorate in support of a range of direct political agreements with local rulers that would eventually set the conditions for federation. The intervening years featured a series of little-known debates among various officials on how precisely to cement British influence in the tribal areas, and the philosophy of administration to be pursued to that end. These would expose an element of confusion as to which techniques would best satisfy British policy, and reveal a preference on the part of some for the application of methods atypical of those used elsewhere under Colonial Office jurisdiction, and which drew their inspiration instead from systems of control used on India's volatile frontiers.