Japanese political economy

Institutional change

Rural Japan

Agricultural politics

Welfare regimes

Varieties of capitalism

Bio

Hanno Jentzsch holds a MA in East Asian Politics (Ruhr-University Bochum, 2011) and received his PhD from the University of Duisburg-Essen in March 2016. From October 2016 to March 2020, he held a position as a senior research fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo, and worked as a university assistant (post-doc) at the University of Vienna (April 2020 - December 2022) and as a lecturer for "Global Political Economy of Japan" at Leiden University (January 2023 - August 2024). His first monograph “Harvesting State Support” (University of Toronto Press, 2021) analyzes institutional change in Japanese agriculture. His research interests further include decentralization, the political economy of “rural revitalization” in Japan, the Japanese welfare state, and the role of informal institutions in processes of institutional change in advanced political economies. Currently he his working on a monograph that investigates the relationship between the local state and community-level self-governance organizations in rural Japan.

Current research projects

Governing decline - Changing Patterns of Local Governance in Japan's Rural Peripheries

Extemely Lonely? Subjective Loneliness and Attitudes towards Diversity in Japan (with Wolfram Manzenreiter) 

Recent publications (selected)

Jentzsch, Hanno and Kostyantin Ovsiannikov. 2025. "In decline, but not left behind? Electoral behavior in Japan's depopulating regions". Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties

Jentzsch, Hanno and Sebastian Polak-Rottmann. 2024. "Community-Based Care During COVID-19: Balancing Social Distancing and Social Care in Rural Japan – The Case of the Aso Region". The Asia-Pacific Journal - Japan Focus, 22 (3).

Jentzsch, Hanno and Sonja Ganseforth (eds.) 2021. Rethinking Locality in Japan. London and New York: Routledge 

Jentzsch, Hanno. 2021. Harvesting State Support: Institutional Change and Local Agency in Japan’s Agricultural Support and Protection Regime. Toronto: Toronto University Press.

Special Issue in Pacific Affairs: Renegotiating Social Risk Shifts in the People's Republic of China and Japan (co-edited with Alison Lamont).

Jentzsch, Hanno. 2020. "Japan's Changing Regional World of Welfare: Agricultural Reform, Hamlet-based Collective Farming, and the Local Renegotiation of Social Risks." Pacific Affairs, 93 (2): 327–351.

Jentzsch, Hanno. 2020. "Regional Revitalization as a Contested Arena: Promoting Wine Tourism in Yamanashi". In Japan's New Ruralities, ed. Wolfram Manzenreiter, Ralph Lützeler and Sebastian Polak-Rottmann. Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY: Routledge: 159–174.