The Japanese political system is a parliamentary democracy and was the first western style government in Asia when the parliamentary system was adopted in the 1880s. It has a multiparty system, free elections, and a parliament that functions much the same way that any other democratic parliament functions, however for much of its existence the Japanese party system has been dominated by one party. This fact is crucial to understanding contemporary politics in Japan, especially since the long term ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party, is once again back in power. This book presents an up-to-date analysis of the political parties that make up the Japanese party system and their impact on Japanese politics and government. Given that the executive branch is selected as a result of the pattern of party numbers in the parliament, to understand Japanese politics and policy, one must first know the nature of the ruling and opposition parties and their leaders. Indeed, in the past decade the quality of Japan's government has been closely associated with the strengths and weaknesses of Japan's prime ministers and the dominant party in the system. This book focuses on a central question: why Japanese politics and government has been so dysfunctional in the past two decades? With this question in mind, the chapters provide key background information on Japanese politics and political parties; discuss each of the major political parties that have governed Japan since 1955; and finally, examine the December 2012 House of Representatives elections that returned the LDP to power, and the differences between the First (1955-1993) and the Second Post War Party Systems (1993- ). Party Politics in Japan provides a comprehensive analysis of the past sixty years of Japanese party politics. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Japanese politics and Asian politics, as well as to those interested in political parties and political systems more broadly.

This volume summarizes the papers presented at the second Osaka University Macromolecular Symposium OUMS '95 on "New Macromolecular Architecture and Functions" which was held at Senri Life Science Center, Osaka, Japan, on June 2 through June 5, 1995. The symposium covered the three topics, (1) Controlled Polymerizations, (2) Macromolecular Organized Systems and (3) Biomimetic Polymers, and invited leading scientists in these fields. At present, any of these topics is a hot issue in itself and frequently taken up separately on many occasions. It is noted, however, that all these topics are correlated with each other with the keyword "molecular design of new types of polymers" and their combination provides a unique feature of the present symposium in reflecting the interactions among investigators working in these important fields with the common ground expressed by the keyword "molecular design of new types of polymers." Twenty five invited lectures and twenty nine posters were presented at the Symposium, and twenty of the lectures contribute to this volume. In the first topic, preparations of sequentially of stereoregularly controlled polymers were discussed from the view points of precise design of polymer preparation on the molecular level; attention was paid to a possibility of living radical polymerization, preparations of new types of living polymers, recent advances in preparation of stereospecific living polymers, sequential control in block copolymers, and molecular design of initiators and/or catalysts for the controlled polymerizations.

This volume contains the papers selected for presentation at the Second International Conference on Parallel Image Analysis (ICPIA '92), held in Ube, Japan, December 21-23, 1992. The conference topics are data structures, parallel algorithms and architectures, neural networks, computational vision, syntactic generation and recognition, and multidimensional models. The first meeting with these topics was theInternational Colloquium on Parallel Image Processing, which took place in Paris in June 1991. The aim of the meetings is to bring together specialistsfrom various countries who are interested in the topics and to stimulatetheoretical and practical research in the field of parallel image processingand analysis. The volume contains three invited papers, a summary of a tutorial lecture, and twenty selected and refereed communications.