Japanese Politicians' Rhetorical and Indirect Speech - Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Usage

This book presents a new approach to the analysis of political psychology, political culture, and communication.
Using data from Japanese political interviews and parliamentary deliberations, it reveals how Japanese politicians address their audience. In addition to analyzing the use of verbal political rhetoric, the book shows that nonverbal communication is highly relevant as well. In a context where political leaders are becoming increasingly important, identifying the techniques used by Japanese politicians - especially facial expressions, hand gestures, and other forms of body language - to gain support from the audience, leads us to consider communication practices of political leaders around the world. Politicians adopt different communication styles based on their specific electoral system. The more single-seat constituency political candidates use rhetoric, the greater their chance of appealing to voters. In addition, the use of personal experiences and others' speech quotations function as effective political rhetoric, further attracting the audience's attention. In short, this book presents a more comprehensive and holistic picture of political 'rhetoric' than usually offered by other studies of political communication.




Ken Kinoshita (Ph. D., Doshisha University, Japan) is an associate professor at the Faculty of Socio-Environmental Studies, Fukuoka Institute of Technology, Fukuoka, Japan. His research focuses on the Japanese parliament, local councils, and political communication. He has published several articles and books related to the interface of parliament and political communication, including: Bicameral theory (in Japanese, 2015), Why politicians don't answer questions? (in Japanese, 2018), How to advance regional legislative reform (in Japanese, 2020), and Rhetoric of politicians (in Japanese, 2022).