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J apan's Regional Inequality in Hard Times
Author(s) -
Song Jiyeoun
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
pacific focus
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.172
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1976-5118
pISSN - 1225-4657
DOI - 10.1111/pafo.12043
Subject(s) - redress , inequality , cabinet (room) , politics , decentralization , order (exchange) , economics , political science , development economics , political economy , geography , market economy , mathematical analysis , mathematics , archaeology , law , finance
The widening economic gap between J apan's major urban centers and its rural regions has been regarded as one of the country's most serious political and social concerns since the early 2000s. This article examines the politics of regional inequality in J apan over the past decade, focusing on the driving force of the growing divide between the urban and rural economies and the strategies of political parties to redress the problem. In this article, I argue that the K oizumi cabinet's fiscal decentralization and neoliberal economic reform contributed to the rapid rise of regional inequality. While the L iberal D emocratic P arty of J apan attempted to respond to this problem in the post‐ K oizumi period, the urban‐based D emocratic P arty of J apan strategically made people's growing concern over regional economic disparity a key part of its electoral agenda in order to court the rural vote.