Civic Engagement in Contemporary Japan

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

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2. Introductory section

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Introduction

      • Henk Vinken, Yuko Nishimura, Bruce White

      Pages 3-20

   3. Civil Society in Japan: Democracy, Voluntary Action, and Philanthropy

      • Makoto Imada

      Pages 21-40

   4. Social Frameworks for Civil Society in Japan: In Search for a Japanese Model

      • Chimaki Kurokawa

      Pages 41-64

3. Established forms of engagement

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 66-66

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   2. The Rising Voice of Japan’s Community Unions

      • Charles Weathers

      Pages 67-83

   3. Collaborative Environmentalism in Japan

      • Koichi Hasegawa

      Pages 85-99

   4. A New Epoch of Immigration for Japan: Directional Shift in Civic Organizational Support for Newcomer Settlement

      • Tetsuo Mizukami

      Pages 101-116

4. Engagement outside the mainstream

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 118-118

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   2. Civic Engagement and Community Development Among Japan’s Burakumin

      • Yuko Nishimura

      Pages 119-138

   3. “I’m Deaf. This is Sign. Get Used to It.” Sign Language in Japan: The Vision and the Struggle

      • John C. Maher

      Pages 139-152

   4. Media and Civic Engagement in Japan

      • Gabriele Hadl

      Pages 153-169

5. Emerging forms of engagement

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 172-172

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   2. The Soft Advocacy of Music Fandom: Japanese Youth and the Building of Civic Infrastructures of the Mind

      • Bruce White

      Pages 173-188

   3. Re-imagining the Relationship Between Japan and Korea: Popular Culture and Civic Engagement

      • Reiko Ogawa

      Pages 189-202

   4. Fun with Consumers: Enjoying Anticonsumerism in Japan

      • Henk Vinken

      Pages 203-224

6. Concluding section

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 226-226

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   2. Conclusions: From Politicization to Culturalization of Civic Engagement

      • Henk Vinken, Isabelle Diepstraten

      Pages 227-238

   3. Epilogue: Toward a New Legal Form for Civic Engagement

      • Masayuki Deguchi

      Pages 239-246

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 dev- 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 in- pendent and at best take on oppositional stances.

• Civil Society Studies
• International Relations
• NGO
• NGOs
• NPOs
• Nation
• Non-profit studies
• environment

• National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku), Suita, Osaka, Japan

  Henk Vinken, Masayuki Deguchi

• Komazawa University, Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan

  Yuko Nishimura

• Doshisha University, Kyotanabe, Kyoto, Japan

  Bruce L. J. White

Policies and ethics