Alain Faure has started a five months fieldwork project in Tokyo in December 2015 focused on studying the motivations pushing some Japanese to start a political career. This research project is a comparative study which will be put into perspective regarding other projects previously conducted in Canada and Italy about political decentralisation and the role of human emotions in political careers. This project is co financed by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) through an international mobility allowance and by other research contracts (metropilisation process and urban planning). AlainFaure will be locally integrated into the Japanese political local life of Tokyo Koto Ward and the Tokyo and Osaka urban areas through a series of interviews with major political figures (City Mayors and Governors). With the assistance of an interpreter (Alexandre Giraud) and two specialist of local politics in Japan (Yasushi Kishikawa and Ioan Trifu), Alain Faure will collect personal histories and testimonies starting during childhood, concerning the contexts (events, encounters, tragedies, emotional wounds, trophies…) that had been, a posteriori, determining in the political career choices the interviewees made.
Alain will also regularly update a blog-carnet de voyages on Tumblr (http://2016japan.tumblr.com/) which will focus on the “visual landscape” of the Japanese political world (Institutions, demonstrations, elected representatives, electoral campaigns, mass media…).
Alain Faure is a CNRS senior researcher specialised in the field of Political sciences, member of the Research Center “Laboratoire PACTE”. He presents his work on the following site: The mysteries of local policies. His current research projects are focused on the rise of the metropolitan based institutions and the first political emotions of high ranking local elected officials (France, Canada, Italy).