The Ainu and Indigenous politics in Japan: negotiating agency, institutional stability, and change

@article{Komai2022TheAA,
  title={The Ainu and Indigenous politics in Japan: negotiating agency, institutional stability, and change},
  author={El{\'e}onore Komai},
  journal={The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics},
  year={2022},
  volume={7},
  pages={141 - 164}
}
  • Eléonore Komai
  • Published 7 July 2021
  • Political Science
  • The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics
Abstract In April 2019, the Japanese government officially legally recognized the Ainu as Indigenous people. Building on an institutionalist framework, the paper suggests that a phenomenon of institutional layering has taken place, resulting in tensions between the desire to preserve the legitimacy of old institutions and the pressure to develop more progressive policies. To explain this process, policy legacies, and institutional opportunities are relevant. First, the narrative that equality… 
View on Cambridge Press
2 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
1
Background Citations
2

2 Citations

Introduction to the special issue on indigenous politics

At its core, Indigenous politics reflects the adaptability and resilience of Native governments, people, and nations, and the failure of powerful states to assimilate Indigenous people into broader…

Toward a decolonial quantitative political science: Indigenous self-identification in the 2019 Native Hawaiian Survey

Abstract Indigenous scholars have much to teach political scientists about recognizing and addressing the ways in which power, politics, and colonialism irrevocably shape the data-generating process.…

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 73 REFERENCES

Emerging Indigenous Governance: Ainu Rights at the Intersection of Global Norms and Domestic Institutions

While indigenous peoples have made great strides to institutionalize principles supporting indigenous rights in the global arena, many of these advances will require recognition and implementation by…

Historical Institutionalism in comparative politics

This article provides an overview of recent developments in historical institutionalism. First, it reviews some distinctions that are commonly drawn between the ihistoricali and the irational choicei…

The limits to citizenship in Japan: multiculturalism, indigenous rights and the Ainu

The struggle of the indigenous Ainu for equal participation in the political, social and economic life of Japan is a direct challenge to widely held notions of Japan as ethnically homogeneous. The…

Property Law Policy for the Indigenous Ainu People and the Unresolved Issue of Reparations in Japan

Property theory plays an important role in building a multicultural society. However, all the various property theories, such as Locke’s labour theory, Bentham’s utilitarian theory, Kant’s will…

Ainu Identity and Japan's Identity: The Struggle for Subjectivity

This paper seeks to contribute to the academic debate on the contemporary identity of the Ainu. Ainu, the indigenous people of what today constitutes part of northern Japan, as well as the Russian…

Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies

Debates surrounding institutional change have become increasingly central to Political Science, Management Studies, and Sociology, opposing the role of globalization in bringing about a convergence…

The Theoretical Core of the New Institutionalism

Proclamations of a “new” institutionalism, while widespread, have met with some skepticism in the scientific community. Critics wonder what about the new institutionalism is really so new.…

Governance Structure and Administrative Corruption in Japan: An Organizational Network Approach

Traditional studies of the Japanese bureaucracy have emphasized effective governance through a close government–business nexus. Yet this network relation creates corruption, especially at a high…

A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change

Once created, institutions often change in subtle and gradual ways over time. Although less dramatic than abrupt and wholesale transformations, these slow and piecemeal changes can be equally…

Japan's post-war Ainu policy. Why the Japanese Government has not recognised Ainu indigenous rights?

ABSTRACT In 1946, the Ainu Association of Hokkaido was established by the Ainu to reclaim their lands. The 1970s and 80s saw that the association successfully put pressure on the Hokkaido Prefectural…
...