Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Activism
Providing comparisons to the United States and Britain, this book examines Japan's postwar consumer protection movement. Organized largely by and for housewives and spurred by major cases of price gouging and product contamination, the movement led to the passage of basic consumer protection legislation in 1968. Although much of the story concerns the famous "iron triangle" of big business, national bureaucrats, and conservative party politics, Maclachlan takes a broader perspective. She...
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This book examines Japan's postwar consumer protection movement, which, organized largely by housewives, led to the passage of basic consumer protection legislation in 1968. Macmillan points to the importance of activity at the local level, the role of minority parties, the limited utility of the courts, and the place of lawyers and academics in providing access to power. Sheldon Garon Superbly researched...Maclachlan offers a compelling portriat of a Japanese consumer movement that rests on very different assumptions than those underlying its American counterpart...The result is one of the most thought-provoking accounts of Japanese politics in recent years.
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1Pt. 1Japanese Consumer Advocacy from Theoretical, Comparative, and Historical Perspectives111Toward a Framework for the Study of Consumer Advocacy132Consumer Advocacy in the United States and Britain313The Politics of an Emerging Consumer Movement: The Occupation Period584Consumer Politics Under Early One-Party Dominance: 1955 to the Late 1960s855The Post-1968 Consumer Protection Policymaking System and the Consumer Movement's Response111Pt. 2Case Studies: The Impact of Japanese Consumer Advocacy on Policymaking1416The Right to Choose: The Movement to Amend the Antimonopoly Law1437The Right to Safety: The Movement to Oppose the Deregulation of Food Additives1758The Right to Redress: The Movement to Enact a Product Liability Law2019The Right to Be Heard: The Past, Present, and Future of the Japanese Consumer Movement233Notes255Bibliography277Index305
\ Sheldon GaronSuperbly researched...Maclachlan offers a compelling portriat of a Japanese consumer movement that rests on very different assumptions than those underlying its American counterpart...The result is one of the most thought-provoking accounts of Japanese politics in recent years.\ \
