Abstract
How does the contemporary Japanese prime minister lead other actors autonomously in policy processes? It is often pointed out that one of the current features is the leadership of the prime ministerial office or the “strong” premiership. The author depends on the original dataset of the prime minister's meeting records to analyze the transformation of the Japanese premiership in the last thirty-seven years since the Ohira Administration. A major finding of the analysis is that the prime minister has depended more on the narrow network of the core executives and less on other actors when involving policy processes. It implies the tendency towards autonomous and leading roles of the prime minister more in the contemporary Japanese politics than in the past, based on significant institutional changes including the electoral and administrative reforms. It is also noticed that this tendency is fundamentally maintained despite of political turnovers.
