Mr. Aoshima's Administration of Tokyo

Research Project

Project/Area Number	11610214
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	社会学(含社会福祉関係)
Research Institution	Waseda University
Principal Investigator	MORI Mototaka Waseda University, School of Literature, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (50182209)
Project Period (FY)	1999 – 2000
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 2001)
Budget Amount *help	¥1,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,100,000) Fiscal Year 2000: ¥100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥100,000) Fiscal Year 1999: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Keywords	public sphere / local autonomy / gubernatorial election / democracy / 石原都政 / 都知事
Research Abstract	This report describes a new tendency of political situation in today's Japan with some empirical research data about the voting behavior at the gubernatorial election of Tokyo, and proposes newly a theoretical concept of 'representative public sphere (representative Offentlichkeit)'. For a long time, and so far, the famous concept of 'civil public sphere (Zivile Offentlichkeit)' has been emphasized to analyze the local political situations, and then so as to normatively describe an ideal model from such the empirical facts. But we have to distinguish between two levels : the first one of the relatively small-sized fundamental local government or community and the second of the large-sized local government like Tokyo. Historically the governors in Japan have had always some bureaucratic traits. It means, their positions had always been set between the central and local governments. Particularly in Tokyo its position had been always supported by some very characteristic complex in the me … More aning of new-corporatism after World War II : we can find it out not only from the waterfront development in the 1990s but also from a big construction project like the 18^<th> Olympic Games and its city planning. Any of these projects had not been planed and carried out without the various supports of the central government. If we know this historically structured meaning, we understand that the birth of the Governor Yukio Aoshima in 1995 and the appearance of the following and new Governor Shintaroh Ishihara in 1999 should mean a very big social change from a traditional characteristic political complex to a new tendency. People selected them as some typical symbols of the social change and their personal expectations, which could open a phase of new epoch. Now, if we intend to inquire into some possibilities of public sphere, we have to observe not the possibilities of civil public sphere like a type of grassroots democracy but that of the symbolic relation of a governors succession, particularly the characteristics of resources, which should constitute the newly typed symbolic public sphere. Less