Politics and the Capitalist State in Japan Since 2008:

A brief analysis from the Fujita / Jessop perspective

Abstract

The global economic crisis since 2008 Autumn, which led to the growing of unemployment and poverty and the people's protests against existing political system, makes communist ideas revive, in the fields of performing arts and social thoughts. However, in politics, especially in Japanese one, we haven't found political crises that caused successful political changes. Is the key to be explored the powers and forms of capitalist states ?
  At first, we review the classical work on the capitalist state and political struggles- Karl Marx's “December 18th :Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” (1851) (Section 1). Then, we introduce two major Marxian state-theorists, Isamu Fujita in Japan and Bob Jessop in Britain, to collaborate an approach of contemporary capitalist state / political analysis (Section 2). Under the approach's guidance, we sketch political conjunctures in Japan since 2008 Autumn (Section 3), which saw the surge of anti-poverty movements, leading to the historical governmental change at the general election in 2009 Summer, founded fruitlessly to break down by 2012 Winter, in spite of the national wide anti-nuclear protests after the third Fukushima crisis (2011 March 11), with result in establishing the neo-conservative one-party-dominant political structure in 2013 Summer.