Introduction

Prevalent and complementary are interpretations of Japanese policy formation that assert the alleged uniqueness of a process peculiar to Japan. Individual case studies, though providing important contributions to the study of Japanese policymaking as well as they have elsewhere, all too frequently rely extensively on sui generis explanations, making them of little more value for systematic understanding of complex realities than the oversimplifications and often tautological models they seek to correct. In the study of Japanese politics, as more generally throughout the discipline of political science, attention has all too frequently been devoted to political processes at the expense of analyzing political outcomes. Public policy is more than simply the residual of the process whereby it is formulated, and increasingly there has been a recognition of the need to undertake empirical studies of the policies of various states as well as of their policymaking processes.