Professor Ian Neary

I worked at Oxford University between 2004-2019 before which I spent 15 years as a professor of Japanese studies at the University of Essex. My research has mainly been focused on Japanese political and social history in the twentieth century particularly the experience of Buraku communities in the process of industrialization and modernization. However, I also worked on industrial policy, in particular the pharmaceutical industry and on broader issues relating to human rights in East Asian and contemporary Japanese politics.

I am currently completing a monograph based on my research on the formation, development and implementation of the Dōwa Project policies.

Previous Posts Held

Lecturer, Department of History and Politics, Huddersfield Polytechnic 1979-84

Lecturer, Department of Politics, Newcastle University 1984-9

Sanwa Professor of Japanese studies, Department of Government, Essex University, 1989-2004

Media Expertise

Japanese politics

Recent publications include

Monographs

The Buraku Issue in Modern Japan: the career of Matsumoto Jiichiro, Routledge, 2010  (published in Japanese translation 2016)

Human Rights in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, Routledge, 2002

State and Politics in Japan (second edition), Polity 2019.

Chapters in Edited Collections

‘Dōwa Policy Projects as Unfinished Human Rights Business from Dōtaishin to Ikengushin’ in Civil and Political Rights in Japan ed. S J Takahashi, Routledge 2019, pp 84-96.

Human Rights, in The Oxford Handbook on IR in Asia ed. S M Pekkanen, R Foot and J Ravenhill, OUP, 2014.

‘Democracy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War East Asia’ in Chung-Si Ahn and Bertrand Fort (eds.) Democracy in Asia Europe and the World –towards a universal definition, Marshall Cavendish 2006, pp 167-179.

‘Status and Class’ A Companion to Japanese History, ed. W M Tsutsui Blackwell 2007, pp 389-406.

Journal Articles

‘From the (end of) Dōwa Policies to (the start of) an Anti-discrimination Policy?’, Japan Forum, December 2019.

“Human Rights in the Discourse of Buraku Liberation: from the 1920s to the 1990s,’ Development and Society 39, No. 2 (2010): 285-298.

‘Matsumoto Jiichiro and the making of democracy in postwar Japan,’ Japan Forum 19, No. 2 (July 2007).

‘Parliamentary Democracy in Japan’ Parliamentary Affairs 57, No. 3 (July 2004): 666-681.

'Japan's Human Security Agenda and its Domestic Human Rights Policies', Japan Forum 15, No. 2 (2003): 267-286

'Burakumin at the end of history', Social Research 70, No 1 (Spring 2003): 269-294

Translation

A History of Discriminated Buraku communities in Japan,  Teraki Nobuaki & Kurokawa Midori, Renaissance Books 2019.

Contact Information

Email: ian.neary@nissan.ox.ac.uk