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  A.J. Sutter

  星5つ中3つ

  No longer a good value -- read a library copy

  2014年4月4日に日本でレビュー済み

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  This book unfortunately suffers from bad timing, excessive brevity and bad pricing. After looking it over closely for an evening, I decided to return it.

  The book was published about two weeks before the 2011 March 11 earthquake and tsunami, so obviously it is silent about that event. The bigger timing problem, though, is that it was published midway through the Democratic Party of Japan's fleeting hold on power, when no one could foresee the party's implosion before the end of the following year. As a result, too many contributors credit the 1994 election reforms with bringing 2-party rule and alternations of power into Japanese politics, overestimating (as we know now) both the Liberal Democratic Party's failures and the DPJ's durability.

  The book might nonetheless have been useful as a sort of compilation of information about Japanese politics between 1945 and 2009 (and BTW, this book is *only* about postwar politics), but for the fact that the contributions are rather short, typically 10-12 pages. Although the selection of topics is good, and some of the articles provide interesting perspectives (such as an article about hierarchies of citizenship in Japan), their brevity makes it difficult for many of them to survey the relevant literature. As a result, this is more like a conventional edited volume of articles emphasizing their respective authors' points of view, rather than a "handbook" providing a bird's-eye view of a topic. Even as to the facts it does present, it doesn't always succeed in serving its advertised function as reference material. E.g., an article about money and politics compares campaign costs for LDP and DPJ candidates in various elections, but only up to 2005. Another article downplays the practical importance of improperly apportioned election districts as giving the LDP only a small advantage, but lacks a table or chart that might have provided more quantitative support for this proposition. I couldn't find any discussion of the algorithm used for proportional representation (d'Hondt), much less of the reasons for its adoption and retention in Japan. The Supreme Court of Japan merits less than a page of discussion. There is a unified bibliography at the back of the book, making it difficult to see what sources a particular author relies on or ignores.

  Still, if the price had been closer to $40 or so (not exactly cheap), I might have kept it for the facts and figures it does contain and its several interesting bits of more robust analysis. But the price is prohibitive. While neither Oxford nor Elgar publish any direct competitor to this book, their handbooks are typically between 2x-3x as long (with Elgar's being especially text-dense), at a comparable or lower price. Simply put, today this is nowhere near a US$200/JPY20,000 value, especially if it's coming out of your own pocket or research expense allowance. For that price, you could buy several monographs, or more focused edited volumes, about the topics that interest you most. I hope the publisher will recognize that the book is already dated, and issue a paperback edition in the lowish two figures (USD), or perhaps reduce the e-book price to the low end of that ballpark. Until then, read your library's copy, or rely on other sources.

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  ありがとうございます。数日中に調査いたします。

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