Table Of ContentCivic Engagement in Contemporary Japan
Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies
Series Editor
Helmut Anheier
Center for Social Investment, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
For other titles published in this series, go to
www.springer.com/series/6339
Henk Vinken Yuko Nishimura
●
Bruce L. J. White Masayuki Deguchi
●
Editors
Civic Engagement in
Contemporary Japan
Established and Emerging Repertoires
Editors
Henk Vinken Yuko Nishimura
Pyrrhula BV Komazawa University
Schoolstraat 147 1-23-1 Komazawa
5038 RK Tilburg Setagaya, Tokyo
The Netherlands 154-8525 Japan
[email protected] [email protected]
Bruce L. J. White Masayuki Deguchi
Doshisha University National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku)
Kyotanabe, Kyoto 10-1 Senri Expo Park
610-0394 Japan Suita, Osaka
[email protected] 565-8511 Japan
[email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4419-1503-0 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-1504-7
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1504-7
Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009943542
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written
permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY
10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection
with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden.
The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are
not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject
to proprietary rights.
Printed on acid-free paper
Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Foreword
Civic engagement is a concept of action that has become part of common vocabulary,
not only in the West but also in many other regions of the world as well. A growing,
yet still small number of scholarly works has recently emerged showing how in
Japan citizen activism, volunteering, and social action for a public cause are devel-
oping. This present volume is another, and in my view, important addition to the
body of knowledge on civic engagement in Japan. The majority of books on related
issues in Japan take on the perspective of organized civic life, in nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) or nonprofit organizations (NPOs): we know quite a number
of things about the quantitative trends in these organizations, on their positioning,
on their difficulties, and on the institutional contexts in which they have to work.
We know relatively little – except for a small number of topical qualitative case
studies – on broad issues that relate to civic engagement in Japan, inside or outside
these formal organizations. This volume is the first to offer a wide scope of broad
variety of forms of civic engagement in contemporary Japan.
The volume is quite forceful in counterbalancing oversimplified ideas on an
“ideal” civil society in which state, market, and civil society organizations are inde-
pendent and at best take on oppositional stances. In Japan and in many European
contexts civil society is part of a complex intertwined whole, sometimes even indis-
tinguishable from state and market actors, for instance in providing public services
or taking on the role of cooperative in several types of trades. This volume continu-
ously presents us with a reality that is based on interdependencies between the
state, business, and civic worlds. This is a reality that requires actors to develop
bridging social capital in order to cooperate and construct and reconstruct their
common cause, the issues of common concern, the things that are a public affair,
and in the end, that what is making up good society in general. The volume shows
that people who attain this capital are most successful in defending their cause. In
short, a key message of this volume is that civil society in Japan is not mature only
if it consists of independently working cells, but if it accepts and strategically works
with these interdependencies.
Another one of the key messages of this book and, in my view, one of the main
reasons of why this work is a must-read for any student, scholar, and activist inter-
ested in civic engagement in Japan is that it is crucial to listen to insiders stories if
one wishes to fully understand developments in social action in general and civic
v
vi Foreword
engagement in Japan in particular. It is possible to pull together a collection of Japan
observers from wherever they reside, bring them to Japan, and have them conceive a
volume on trends in the third sector, civil society, and/or civic engagement. Such a
volume would no doubt be very insightful, but it is also likely to miss out a few things:
the insight in how things work when confronted with demanding state and market
actors; in what kind of resources and forms of human capital activists need to attain
in order to successfully reach across lines to other actors that may help them advance
their cause; in what to do when younger generations are no longer interested in
becoming members, stray from organizational life, and adopt less political strategies.
What insiders’ stories show are the day-to-day struggles, frustrations, small victories,
and, of course, future ambitions of people working on the shop floor of civil society.
The authors of this volume do not just give voice to numerous insider-activists, some
of them have themselves laid the groundwork for activism, from international coop-
eration to environmental protection, from community building to alternative cultur-
ally creative activism in media or shopping malls.
The rich and overwhelming variety of activism this volume depicts is another
argument to take note of this entry into the world of Japanese people who are civi-
cally engaged. Well-established forms of civic engagement are presented, forms
that especially relate to official community-based organizations and that work
toward institutionalization of their causes. The volume includes groups of people
who work outside the mainstream of Japanese civil society: the Japanese
ex-untouchables, the deaf, and the more radical activists of alternative citizen
media. It also depicts forms of activism that are taking shape outside formal civil
society organizations. Worldwide, we have little to no robust empirical evidence on
how this nonformal type of activism is developing. This volume is one of the first
and as regards the Japanese context, the very first to show us how and why newly
emerging forms of civic engagement are supported. Key supporters, this volume
shows, are younger people, middle-aged women, and foreigners who intentionally
aim for creating their own exclusive social and cultural space in Japanese society.
Their engagement is lacking serious impacts on the course of state policies or mar-
ket strategies, which in part is due to their deliberate separation and choice to
refrain from being “too political.” In part, this is also a rationalization for their
marginalized position in the Japanese polity to begin with. In all cases, these forms
of civic engagement as well as the more established one are used by younger gen-
erations to help them to define their identities and carve out their path through life,
including civic life.
The result is that civic engagement in Japan after a period of politicization is now
subject to a process of culturalization: among many groups and individuals alike
culture plays a dominant role, from TV-shows, deaf manga to ethnic food, in all
cases cultural values, symbols, and artifacts are successfully used to win public
recognition and support, especially when they have easily recognizable roots in
Japanese cultural traditions. At the same time the array of cultural elements helps
contemporary Japanese people to escape from the one-dimensional identity of the
social activist, or worse, the politician. Being able to escape to cultural contexts and
engage in identity-hopping (activist one moment, a consumer/producer culture the
Foreword vii
other) also helps to avoid stigmatization and ultimately marginalization in contexts
outside activist circles, e.g., in working life. The final chapter of this volume specu-
lates that Japan is perhaps not per se suffering from a dual civil society (many small
groups, few large high-impact ones) but from Japanese people with dual civil identi-
ties, from people who do not fully engage in the identity of the civic activist alone.
The volume grew out of a major project initiated by Masayuki Deguchi, also one
of the editors of this volume. The project is titled Civic Engagement and Globalism
In the Postmodern Era (CEGIPE). CEGIPE builds on mobilizing a large network
of activists and scholars from various disciplines and various walks of life, all
working and living in Japan (see also the next, first chapter). In the Epilogue,
Deguchi argues that increasing interactions between these people from different
sectors, disciplines and languages necessitates a conscious choice of the transac-
tional language, English in the case of CEGIPE, a choice which is unusual in the
Japanese academic context but which helped to debate psychologically sensitive
and socially controversial issues among participants of the CEGIPE meetings. The
project was a laboratory of what Deguchi calls “linguapolitics.” There is an impor-
tant lesson to be learnt for following international projects that include participants
from different national and linguistic backgrounds: all those involved should be
aware of and reflect on the scholarly consequences of the choice to give one trans-
actional language guiding power.
In the first, introductory chapter the support by Minpaku for CEGIPE and this
resulting volume is acknowledged. The large number of activists and cultural cre-
atives that joined the numerous CEGIPE meetings around Japan to tell their insid-
ers stories of civic engagement gave the authors of this volume truly invaluable
insight. The first chapter also expresses the gratitude for their contributions. Finally,
on behalf of the authors of this volume, I would like to pass on the deepest apprecia-
tion of the help the editors received from two anonymous reviewers when they
pulled together this book project as well as the warmest thanks to Teresa Krauss
and Katherine Chabalko at Springer New York for their continuous support of the
book project.
Helmut Anheier
Contents
Part I Introductory Section
1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 3
Henk Vinken, Yuko Nishimura, and Bruce White
2 Civil Society in Japan: Democracy, Voluntary Action,
and Philanthropy ...................................................................................... 21
Makoto Imada
3 Social Frameworks for Civil Society in Japan:
In Search for a Japanese Model ............................................................... 41
Chimaki Kurokawa
Part II Established Forms of Engagement
4 The Rising Voice of Japan’s Community Unions ................................... 67
Charles Weathers
5 Collaborative Environmentalism in Japan ............................................. 85
Koichi Hasegawa
6 A New Epoch of Immigration for Japan: Directional Shift
in Civic Organizational Support for Newcomer Settlement ................. 101
Tetsuo Mizukami
Part III Engagement Outside the Mainstream
7 Civic Engagement and Community Development
Among Japan’s Burakumin ..................................................................... 119
Yuko Nishimura
ix
x Contents
8 “I’m Deaf. This is Sign. Get Used to It.” Sign
Language in Japan: The Vision and the Struggle ................................ 139
John C. Maher
9 Media and Civic Engagement in Japan ................................................ 153
Gabriele Hadl
Part IV Emerging Forms of Engagement
10 The Soft Advocacy of Music Fandom: Japanese Youth
and the Building of Civic Infrastructures of the Mind ........................ 173
Bruce White
11 Re-imagining the Relationship Between Japan and Korea:
Popular Culture and Civic Engagement ............................................... 189
Reiko Ogawa
12 Fun with Consumers: Enjoying Anticonsumerism in Japan .............. 203
Henk Vinken
Part V Concluding Section
13 Conclusions: From Politicization to Culturalization
of Civic Engagement ............................................................................... 227
Henk Vinken and Isabelle Diepstraten
14 Epilogue: Toward a New Legal Form for Civic Engagement ............. 239
Masayuki Deguchi
Index ................................................................................................................. 247
