Transformation of Japan's
Civil Society Landscape
Mary Alice Haddad
Japan's civil society is being transformed as more people volunteer for advocacy
and professional nonprofit organizations. In the US context, this trend has
been accompanied by a decline in participation in traditional organizations.
Does the rise in new types of nonprofit groups herald a decline of traditional
volunteering in Japan? This article argues that while changes in civil rights, political
opportunity structure, and technology have also taken place in Japan,
they have contributed to the rise of new groups without causing traditional organizations
to decline, because Japanese attitudes about civic responsibility
have continued to support traditional volunteering.
KEYWORDS: citizenship, civil society, democracy, Japan, nonprofit organization,
volunteering
Japan's civil society has undergone a profound transformation during
the last decade. In 1995 an unprecedented 1.2 million volunteers from
around the country descended on the Kobe-Osaka area after a devastating
earthquake killed more than 6,000 people. In honor of their efforts,
the Japanese government declared 1995 the Year of the Volunteer.
Three years later, the Nonprofit Organization (NPO) Law passed the
Diet by unanimous vote, overhauling the legal foundation of Japan's
nonprofit sector by significantly easing restrictions on the incorporation
of nonprofit organizations. Building on this enthusiasm, the Japanese
government spearheaded the UN's designation of the year 2001 as
the International Year of the Volunteer. In that year, nearly 6,000 organizations
had become incorporated through the new NPO Law, and 32
million Japanese reported volunteering, up from only 4 million ten
years earlier.1
Journal of East Asian Studies 7 (2007), 413­437
413
Japanese society did not awake to the news of the earthquake on January
17, 1995, and suddenly decide to become a nation of volunteers.
They have been actively involved in supporting their communities
through volunteer activities for centuries. Contemporary neighborhood
associations and volunteer fire departments trace their history to the
Tokugawa period (1600­1868). The volunteer welfare commissioner
system began at the turn of the last century and is still very active today.
Millions of Japanese are active in their local women's and youth groups.
These traditional organizations are quite different from their more contemporary
counterparts in their missions, motivations, and relationship
with the government. In this article, I use the word "embedded" to describe
these traditional organizations, since their close relationship with
local governments is one of the key features that distinguishes them from
newer groups.
Briefly, traditional organizations tend to have memberships that are
rooted in their local (usually a walkable neighborhood) community
even if they are networked into national or even international organizations.
People tend to join these groups because it is expected of them
as members of their community; they join more out of a sense of civic
duty than because they have a particular interest or passion for a cause.
The groups are usually not very professionalized and have a small or
no professional staff.
Finally, these groups are embedded in their local governments.
Civic leaders meet regularly with local civil servants to formulate and
implement policies in a wide range of areas, such as fire protection,
elder care, and youth truancy. The scope and nature of the contact between
the groups and the government are rarely proscribed by a formal
contract; contact occurs in a regular, habitual manner established
through the long-term relationship between the government and the
civic organizations.2
Newer groups can take many different forms, but in general they
draw their memberships from a broader geographic area--a whole city,
country, or even from across the world. The motivations that bring the
members together are less about a sense of community civic responsibility
and more about a commitment to a particular cause (e.g., animal
rights) or an interest in a particular activity (e.g., reading contemporary
nonfiction). These groups can either be highly professionalized, with
members essentially writing checks and not much more, or they can be
entirely volunteer with no paid staff. Finally, newer groups may have
close links to the government (e.g., a nonprofit social service agency),
414 Japan's Civil Society Landscape
but those connections are constrained and are usually stipulated by a
formal contract. Other groups may entirely eschew any relationship
with the government or even view the government with hostility.3
In research on US civil society, many scholars have observed a
trend away from traditional ways of volunteering, such as the Knights
of Columbus and Parent Teacher Associations, toward greater participation
in professional advocacy organizations, such as Greenpeace and
Amnesty International.4
Is Japan following the US pattern? Are newer
organizations gaining at the expense of more traditional forms of participation?
Can we expect a kind of "civil society convergence" across
the advanced capitalist democracies?
In this article I argue that in Japan, newer forms of participation are
not coming at the expense of more traditional ways of getting involved.
Many traditional groups are sustaining their participation rates, and
some are even seeing an increase in participation. The most successful
of the new groups are cooperating with older ones in joint projects that
expand the missions and increase the effectiveness of both types of
groups. Therefore, while Japan's civil society is indeed in a period of
transformation, new groups are not displacing the older ones, and one
should not expect convergence onto the US model of civic participation.
I begin the article with a rough sketch of the civil society landscape
in Japan, painting a portrait of where Japanese dedicate their time as
compared with Americans. In the second section I use the causal factors
identified by Theda Skocpol (2003, 2004) as key to the change in
civic participation in the United States--the rights revolution of the
1960s and 1970s, changes in the political opportunity structure, and
technological innovation--as a window through which to examine the
changes in contemporary volunteer participation in Japan.5
In each instance,
I argue that while in the US case these factors have resulted in
a simultaneous weakening of participation in traditional organizations
even as participation in newer ones has strengthened, in the Japanese
case they have resulted in strengthening newer organizations without
weakening traditional groups, primarily because community attitudes
of civic responsibility continue to support participation in traditional
groups.
In the final section, I expand on this argument: the attitude that citizens
have of their civic duty--what they think their responsibility for
volunteering is--can help explain the patterns found in both the United
States and Japan. I conclude with some thoughts about what the transformation
of Japan's civil society might mean for its democracy.
415Mary Alice Haddad
Japan's Civil Society
Japan's civil society has a long history of community involvement.
During the Edo period (1603­1868), Japanese culture flourished in an
environment of relative peace. Mutual aid associations grew across the
country, especially in the urban centers. In Edo (Tokyo), neighborhood
associations called machikaisho were established as public-private organizations
to perform three primary functions: store rice, provide financing,
and aid the poor. Other similar self-help organizations were
organized on the village level to serve the same purposes. During the
Meiji period (1868­1912), the voluntary and nonprofit sector became
more formalized with the establishment, in 1896, of the Civil Code,
which enabled the establishment of public interest corporations.6
This
code stands largely intact today, and the first major reworking of the
legal structure surrounding nonprofit organizations did not occur until
the passage of the 1998 NPO Law.
Currently, Japanese are involved in a wide range of voluntary associations.
In contrast to the United States, they have much higher levels
of participation in embedded organizations than in newer ones.
Table 1 lists a few organizations, both traditional and more contemporary,
for which membership data are available in both countries. When
comparing the participation levels between the two countries, it is important
to keep in mind that the population of the United States is just
over twice that of Japan.
416 Japan's Civil Society Landscape
Table 1 Volunteer Participation in the United States and
Japan for Selected Organizations
Organization United States Japan
Traditional/embedded groups
Parent teacher associations 6 million 10 million
Red Cross 1.2 million 21.2 million
Volunteer firefighters 800,050 900,000
Newer groups
Amnesty International 300,000 5,313
Greenpeace 250,000 4,500
Scouts International (boys, girls) 6 million 195,370
Young Men's Christian
Association (YMCA) 17.5 million 114,256
Source: Compiled by the author. Full membership information is available at http://
mahaddad.web.wesleyan.edu.
Japanese participate in traditional organizations at very high rates
across the country, in both rural and urban areas. Neighborhood associations
are the most prevalent; 91 percent of all Japanese households (115
million people) are currently members of neighborhood associations.7
Other traditional groups, such as women's associations (fujinkai) and
seniors' clubs (rojinkai), also have substantial memberships--5 million
and 8.7 million, respectively.8
Other service-oriented traditional organizations,
such as volunteer fire departments and volunteer welfare commissioners,
also have high participation levels (900,000 and 220,000
people belonging to each group, respectively).9
Advocacy groups are growing in popularity across Japan. Most of
the well-known international groups, such as Greenpeace and Amnesty
International, have established offices, although membership is considerably
lower than in other advanced capitalist democracies, and they are
significantly smaller than traditional membership organizations, as indicated
in Table 1. Among the most visible and successful homegrown advocacy
organizations are the many consumer groups. While for most
members membership is akin to membership in their local supermarket,
the consumer groups have been acting as consumer advocates since the
1960s, and are now often the organizational starting point for local political
activity; they also provide a key local network for a variety of
new-style politicians, especially women. Thirty percent of Japanese
households belong to their local co-op.10
Many other new volunteer organizations that focus on particular
social welfare needs, such as the elderly, the disabled, and children, are
organized through local Social Welfare Councils. These are quasi-governmental
organizations that work in cities and towns to bring together
different organizations concerned with social welfare. The councils,
which act as an umbrella organization, have thousands of organizational
members and help link hundreds of thousands of volunteers.11
Transformation of Japan's Civil Society
Japan's civil society is vibrant, and Japanese volunteer for a wide range
of organizations. As I indicated in the previous section, although many
more Japanese are participating in advocacy-style organizations, most
volunteering still occurs in traditional organizations serving local communities.
Why is this? Why isn't the trend found in the United States
being replicated in Japan, which has faced similar social and political
pressures?
417Mary Alice Haddad
Japan's high rates of participation in traditional organizations have
usually been ignored by scholars conducting cross-national studies of
civic engagement and volunteering, leading them to describe Japanese
civil society as "underdeveloped" or "weak" when compared with
other advanced capitalist democracies.12
New work by Robert Pekkanen
explores the observed phenomenon of high levels of participation
in traditional groups and low participation in newer groups, a pattern he
terms "dual civil society."13
He posits an institutional explanation:
Japan's legal structure inhibited the formation of advocacy groups
while enabling, even encouraging, participation in traditional membership
associations. Four edited volumes on the subject of Japan's voluntary
and nonprofit sector also support this emerging consensus: compared
with other advanced democracies, Japan's civil society is weak
and underdeveloped, and the reason for this state of affairs is a history
of strong state involvement in society, which manifests itself in a restrictive
legal environment for nonprofits.14
I do not agree with this general assessment. First, I do not agree
that Japan's civil society is weak or underdeveloped when compared
with civil societies in other advanced democracies.15
Second, while the
restrictive institutional environment is clearly an important factor in
shaping Japan's nonprofit and voluntary sector, it is not a sufficient explanation
for patterns of participation. To make the latter argument,
which is the focus of this article, I utilize the factors identified by
Skocpol as underlying the changes in US participation patterns as a
way of examining Japan's civil society.16
This methodology is a useful
one because it highlights how historical factors and community attitudes,
in addition to legal institutions, have played important roles in
the evolution of Japan's civil society. Furthermore, it helps situate the
Japanese experience in a broader context--one in which the explanations
given for Japanese patterns are not unique to Japan.
Skocpol attributes the shift in civic participation in the United
States from membership organizations to advocacy organizations to
three primary causes.17
First, the rights revolution of the 1960s and
1970s delegitimized old membership associations that were often exclusive
and reinforced traditional social power structures that privileged
white, male Anglo-Saxons. In their place, groups that focused on
specific causes (e.g., environmental protection, animal rights) or specific
identities (e.g., women, blacks, Hispanics) flourished.
Second, a new political opportunity structure opened up new possibilities
for political advocacy. New tax laws created tax breaks for
nonprofits, leading to the creation of thousands of 501c3 (education
418 Japan's Civil Society Landscape
and research) and 501c4 (political action committee [PAC] and lobbying)
organizations. Larger congressional staffs enabled the expansion
of policy networks between advocates and policymakers. Expanded
federal programs that relied on contracts with private organizations to
provide services supported the proliferation of social service agencies.
Finally, the organizations themselves developed political strategies that
utilized class action lawsuits as a means to gain public attention and
promote policy changes. For participants, social prestige shifted from
being an ordinary member to being a leader or paid employee of the organization.
All these factors contributed to the professionalization of
the voluntary and nonprofit sector. Old-line membership federations reduced
the number of social services they provided as newer professionalized
nonprofit organizations and the government began to take
over.
A third factor that contributed to the shift from membership federations
to professional advocacy organizations was the introduction of
new technology. Direct mail solicitation and grants from private foundations
and the government began to replace dues-paying membership,
which had required significant face-to-face interaction to recruit members.
Once again, the result was increased professionalization of "volunteer"
staff who were increasingly required to design and distribute
computerized mailings and write and administer grants.
In the United States, these three factors have combined to support
advocacy organizations while simultaneously undermining traditional
membership organizations. Although Japan has also faced these three
factors, they have affected Japan's civil society differently. Rather than
promoting newer advocacy organizations at the expense of traditional
membership groups, the changes in Japan have supported the development
of the new groups while at the same time reinforcing support for
traditional organizations.
One of the primary reasons for the differences in the Japanese and
US patterns is citizen attitudes toward civic responsibility. In US society,
social, political, and demographic changes led to the delegitimation
of traditional forms of membership and service. In Japan, although social
attitudes have increased their support of newer types of volunteer
organizations, Japanese continue to believe that traditional organizations
serve vital roles in society and that membership in them is still socially
important. Therefore, while Japan's civil society has also undergone
a transformation, the changes have not mimicked those in the
United States, and patterns of civic participation are unlikely to converge
in the two countries.
419Mary Alice Haddad
Social Movements and Demographic
Changes in the 1960s and 1970s
As in the United States, Japan faced significant social upheaval in the
1960s and 1970s. In both countries, environmental and human rights
movements took off during this period as industrial pollution threatened
urban areas and the Vietnam War challenged the fundamental
ideals and myths that the two countries held about themselves as peaceloving
nations. Mass public protests occurred in both countries; universities
were shut down, and arrests were made.
In the United States, these social movements were accompanied by
civil rights movements advocating equal rights for women and minorities.
While Japan also passed new civil rights legislation, its effects
were much more limited. Minorities represented only a very small percentage
of the general population, and the women's movements were
much less effective.18
The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision is
usually given as the starting point of the civil rights movement in the
United States. In Japan, it is difficult to point to a specific event that
sparked the social movements that dominated the 1960s. Like other international
social and civil rights movements occurring around the
world at the same time, the Japanese modeled themselves after what
they saw occurring in the United States, and social movements occurred
on multiple fronts.
Peace movements organized and hit the streets to protest the 1960
renewal of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the
United States and Japan, which would allow the US military to continue
their presence on Japanese soil. Consumer organizations became more
active, expanding their economic and political activities with the production
of co-op brand products, bulk purchase programs, and local political
organizations. Local environmental groups went national, even
international, with their causes. Perhaps the most famous case was that
of Minamata disease, but hundreds of other battles pitted citizens' and
environmental groups against large corporations and the government in
an effort to rein in environmental pollution.19
Levels of civil unrest and citizen protest in Japan were quite similar
to those found in the United States. By the late 1960s, citizens were in the
streets demanding new rights, and students were shutting down their universities
in both countries. However, while in the United States many of
the organizations behind the protests grew to become powerful, profes-
420 Japan's Civil Society Landscape
sional advocacy organizations, in Japan they did not. The experience of
the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in Japan is illustrative.
The YMCA Japan was a new-style, nongovernmental organization
at its inception in 1880, and its focus on youth organization meant that
it was in a very good position to take advantage of the youth-led, antigovernment,
prochange sentiment in the country during this time. Indeed,
its membership reached its heyday during the decade of the
1960s. It had organizations in all the major cities and universities and
in many of the high schools across the country; hundreds of thousands
of Japanese participated in its myriad programs. As with YMCAs elsewhere
around the world, youth activities, physical education and recreation,
and summer camps were its mainstay, but in the late 1950s, it expanded
its education (technical, vocational, English) and international
programs as well.
The Hi-Y's (high school YMCAs) and university-based YMCAs in
particular were intimately involved in building radical student leadership
and organizing protests across the country in the late 1960s. Leaders
and organizers often met in YMCA-sponsored dorms to plan tactics
and used the YMCA organizations to recruit members and distribute information
about activities. However, rather than being proud of the
power of their efforts, these groups were self-critical after the protests
were perceived to have gotten out of control by the end of the decade.
The 1968 summer school program gave itself the theme of "Bearing the
Cross of Universities," and in 1969, after much deliberation and selfcriticism,
the National Student Committee dissolved its national organization
and suspended the all-YMCA summer school, which had been
in operation for eighty years.20
Other YMCAs in Japan continued their activities after 1970, but
they were more subdued in their actions and smaller in their operations.
As all organizations must, Japanese YMCAs regrouped and refocused
their activities. They remain active across Japan today and are one of
the largest and oldest nongovernmental, nonprofit organizations in the
country. The purpose of their story here is to illustrate that the social
upheaval in Japan had many of the same characteristics of that in the
United States. However, while Japan's civil society could have turned
in the direction of US civil society, with the professionalization and expansion
of advocacy organizations, it did not. Not only did the social
movements of the 1960s fail to spur a huge expansion of the advocacy
and nonprofit sector, they also did not undermine the legitimacy of or
participation in traditional civic organizations.
421Mary Alice Haddad
Traditional organizations did not remain untouched by the dramatic
events of the 1960s and 1970s, however. Demographic and social
changes profoundly affected these groups, and they needed to adjust
their practices or face declining memberships. Many of the important
challenges they faced have been identified in the US context in Robert
Putnam's Bowling Alone: two-income households, longer commuting
distances, TV, and other individualized forms of entertainment have all
reduced people's ability and willingness to get together in their communities,
thereby threatening traditional membership organizations
that rely on such gatherings.21
Added to this list in the Japanese context
are delayed retirement and the aging of the general population.
Two-income households, longer commuting distances, and delayed
retirement have combined to reduce the number and have changed the
type of men available to volunteer. Traditional organizations often relied
heavily on local, self-employed, or retired men to be their leaders
and core members. With fewer able men meeting this description, traditional
organizations have had to adjust their practices and recruiting
methods to seek out more women and commuters as members.
Other organizations, such as fujinkai (women's associations), depended
on housewives for their mainstay membership. As growing percentages
of Japanese women have joined the full-time workforce,
fewer women act primarily as housewives, straining recruiting for traditional
organizations. The reduction in full-time housewives has also
put additional household burdens on men, further limiting the time
available for them to volunteer.22
TV, video games, and other forms of
individualized entertainment have given young people of both genders
many alternative ways to spend their leisure time.
Some traditional organizations have been more successful than others
in altering their practices to adjust for the new social reality. One
group that has been very successful has been the minsei'in (volunteer
welfare commissioners). The volunteer welfare commissioner system
began in the late nineteenth century as a method of coping with the rising
problems of poverty in rapidly growing urban areas.23
Originally, the
volunteer welfare commissioners were elite members of society (e.g.,
rice dealers, policemen, teachers) who had contact with the poor, and
they would determine and distribute public assistance directly to the
needy. In the postwar period, the system adjusted for the changing social
reality in two important ways. First, the target aid population shifted
from the poor and indigent, whose numbers declined as Japan became
more affluent, to the elderly and handicapped, along with youth.24
Second,
while originally the overwhelming majority of volunteer welfare
422 Japan's Civil Society Landscape
commissioners were men, women now represent more than half the vol-
unteers.25
These two changes, along with legitimation, funding, and organizational
support provided by the government and communities,
have helped the volunteer welfare commissioners double their numbers
in the postwar period.26
Neighborhood associations, another traditional membership organization,
have also maintained high membership rates. As mentioned
earlier, an estimated 90 percent of all Japanese households are currently
members of their neighborhood associations.27
These groups, which
trace their origins to the go-nin-gumi, or Five Family Unit System, of
the Tokugawa period, were important during the war for organizing and
enforcing conservation campaigns and recruitment efforts. Participation
was voluntary in the sense that it was unpaid, but a strong sense of
duty for families to shoulder their responsibilities as part of the community
combined with powerful local tax collection bodies to make
nonparticipation difficult.28
Neighborhood associations have evolved over time, but they continue
to serve residents in a plethora of ways, primarily by facilitating
mutual aid and information exchange. They are often responsible for
the maintenance and upkeep of the neighborhood. These responsibilities
can range from the most basic, such as making sure that lights in
an apartment complex work and the grass in the common areas is kept
trimmed, to much more involved activities, such as holding the original
deeds on the transfer of property (the local government receiving a
photocopy) and determining the irrigation paths and setting the amount
of water that can be extracted from a community well or stream.29
Although based in traditional Japanese society, these groups are
among the first social organizations to form in new communities. They
have adjusted their roles for the communities they serve--large urban
apartment complexes have neighborhood safety patrols while rural areas
have committees to monitor the burning of farm debris. Most neighborhood
associations still use the old system of counting membership by
households rather than individuals, but this is shifting in the more urban
areas where there has been a dramatic rise of single-person house-
holds.30
As with volunteer welfare commissioners, neighborhood associations
have shifted their active membership to include more commuters
and their leadership to include more women.
One traditional group that has been less successful in the postwar
period has been volunteer fire departments. They have seen a gradual reduction
in their members, losing members at a rate of approximately 0.5
percent a year for the past thirty years (although the number of women
423Mary Alice Haddad
has increased--by 720 percent in the last fifteen years--women still
represent only 1.5 percent of all volunteer firefighters).31
While some individual
departments have found ways to thrive by expanding their missions
to include fire prevention education and earthquake safety and including
women in their departments, many are struggling to recruit new
members.32
It is important to note that while Japanese volunteer fire departments
are struggling when compared with the volunteer welfare
commissioners and neighborhood associations, they are thriving when
compared with US volunteer fire departments--on a per capita basis,
there are almost three times as many volunteer firefighters in Japan as in
the United States (see Table 1).
There has been tremendous social change in Japan during the last
half century. The social movements of the 1960s and 1970s spawned the
development of many new advocacy organizations, but they did not undermine
traditional membership organizations. Demographic and social
changes occurring simultaneously put strain on the traditional supporters
of membership organizations, and while some groups, such as volunteer
fire departments, have had difficulty adjusting, others, like the volunteer
welfare commissioners and neighborhood associations, have found ways
to stay relevant and to maintain or expand their memberships.
New Political Opportunity Structures
Japan's political structure has experienced a profound change in recent
years. The so-called 1955 System, in which politics was dominated by
a triumvirate of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), big business, and
the bureaucracy, crumbled in 1993 when the LDP lost its majority in
the lower house and Morihiro Hosokawa, from the Japan New Party,
became prime minister. The unwinding of the old political structure has
created many new opportunities for social organizations to influence
politics. However, although the changes have created an opening for
newer groups, traditional organizations that have connections to bureaucrats
still have more political influence than advocacy groups that
target politicians.
While the ministries are not as powerful as they once were, Japanese
politicians have not significantly increased their ability to research
and develop public policies. In the Japanese Diet, each house has only
seventy-five staff members designated to help members of Parliament
(MPs) formulate policy. Since there are about 750 members of the Japanese
Diet, approximately five Diet members need to share one staff
person.33
In contrast, the Congressional Research Service, which pro-
424 Japan's Civil Society Landscape
vides the same kind of nonpartisan services to US legislators, has a
staff of 729, or 1.7 staff per legislator. Weak staff support significantly
reduces the capacity of Japanese politicians to create policy or to form
the kind of policy networks so important for advocates in the United
States.
Three of the other aspects identified by Skocpol as related to political
opportunity structure--class action lawsuits, tax laws, and contracting
out--have also undergone some changes in Japan, creating
openings for new types of organizations. But again, these have not necessarily
undermined established groups. While class action lawsuits are
not common, taxpayer lawsuits in which citizens sue the government
for misuse of public funds became more common as freedom of information
laws changed in the late 1980s and legal mobilization became a
more acceptable and effective political strategy. Groups such as the Citizen
Ombudsman Network are linking together small watchdog groups
across the country, helping them become more effective in identifying
and following up on official wrongdoing, using the taxpayer lawsuit as
a method to make government more accountable.34
The 1998 NPO Law rewrote the regulations concerning nonprofit
organizations, significantly easing the legal restrictions involved in incorporation.
As a result of the changes, it has become much easier for
smaller organizations to gain legal status. In the nine years following
the law, 30,438 organizations have incorporated.35
As in the United
States, these organizations enjoy tax breaks, paying lower or no taxes
on their revenue and property. However, unlike the US law that allows
donors to deduct contributions to NPOs from their income taxes, most
donations to Japanese NPOs are not tax deductible.36
Since there are no
tax incentives for individuals to contribute, private philanthropy is low
in Japan, funding less than 3 percent of the nonprofit sector.37
Like its counterparts across the advanced capitalist democracies,
the Japanese government has been facing a financial crisis with respect
to the ballooning costs of maintaining its welfare services, especially
those serving the elderly. Of all the aspects of the welfare state, it is
care for the elderly in which contracting out and privatization have
gone the furthest. The NPO Law was specifically designed to allow for
the formation of private nonprofit organizations that could serve the
elderly and take advantage of the national elder care insurance plan put
into effect a year later. Many of the new nonprofits have been formed
to serve this population. In this service area, there appears to be a trend
toward professionalization similar to that found in the United States.
More Japanese are obtaining graduate degrees in social work and are
425Mary Alice Haddad
obtaining national certification; the number of certified social workers
nearly doubled--from 10,000 to 17,000--between 2000 and 2004.38
While advocacy nonprofits serving the elderly have expanded, they
have not done so at the expense of membership organizations. The Silver
Network in Kashihara is a perfect example of an innovative new volunteer
organization that resembles small, advocacy nonprofits found in the
United States. It was created in 1994 through the initiative of an energetic
individual, Dr. Yashima Yutaka. A medical doctor near retirement and a
longtime Lions Club member, Dr. Yashima was determined to create a
citywide network that would help the elderly in Kashihara. He did not
like the way the government would give the elderly the runaround, forcing
them to see multiple government employees to solve their problems.
So he lobbied for, and the municipal government adopted, a "One-Door
Policy" in which the elderly had a single contact person in the government
to whom they could address all their problems.
Silver Network Kashihara sponsors a wide range of programs for
the elderly, from neighborhood "friendship salons" and visiting lunch
programs to caretaker field trips and annual symposiums on elder care.
Dr. Yashima's dream is to have every senior resident involved in one or
more of the programs, so if they need help, they are already integrated
into a system that can offer assistance. It is an ambitious goal, and he
has made great progress toward achieving it through cooperation with
many traditional organizations, including volunteer welfare commissioners,
neighborhood associations, senior clubs, and others. In its first
six years, the organization grew to include a network of more than
eleven volunteer organizations, with a combined total of 13,459 volunteers.
Dr. Yashima attributes this growth to his own persistence and
close cooperation with traditional organizations as well as with the
local government.39
Although the new NPO Law has created greater opportunities for
nonprofits by changing the legal environment at the national level,
changes in the political opportunity structure at the local level have been
one of the most important sources for innovation in the nonprofit and voluntary
sector in Japan. As the national government has increased local
governments' share of the responsibility for social service delivery and
funding, many governments have created innovative programs to promote
the provision of services by nonprofit organizations. In most
cases--and in all three of the cities I studied in depth--local governments
are attempting to promote the development of new-style advocacy
and professionalized nonprofit organizations while at the same time supporting
service delivery by traditional membership organizations.
426 Japan's Civil Society Landscape
To give one example, in 1998, the city of Sakata created the Volunteer
Promotion Council to help support newer-style volunteer groups engaged
in service missions, such as serving the elderly and handicapped.
The same year, they developed an innovative grant program that distributed
28 million yen (about $215,000) to area nonprofit organizations to
support onetime improvements. The program was designed especially to
give new NPOs the seed money to start their operations or to make expensive,
onetime investments to enable them to expand their services,
such as renovating a building for handicapped accessibility.
The new grants were not given to traditional-style organizations
such as neighborhood associations, volunteer welfare commissioners, or
seniors' clubs. However, the city did not ignore these groups. Instead,
they were made the cornerstone of a new initiative called the Grassroots
Welfare Network, which began in 1991 to help the elderly living alone.
In this program, every senior over the age of 65 who was living alone
and signed up for the program was assigned a group of three or four people
who watched over him or her and offered basic assistance, such as
shoveling the walk in the winter or providing meals when needed. The
program has been very successful and is serving most of the seniors in
Sakata.40
This network demonstrates that even while local governments
are finding ways to expand and encourage the professionalized nonprofit
sector, they are also committed to finding new ways to support
traditional membership organizations.
Finally, although the new political opportunity structure has created
openings for political influence by advocacy organizations, it still
privileges traditional membership organizations that have embedded
relationships with the government. Paradoxically, it is their close relationship
with the government that gives them more power when negotiating
with the government for policies that they want. Although these
volunteer groups often rely on government funding and support, the
government is equally dependent on the public services these groups
provide and is therefore inclined to do what is necessary to keep them
happy. Furthermore, both sides have relied on the other to provide valuable
feedback about the effectiveness of their service provision. They
have cooperated in identifying potential problems and have assisted
one another in developing solutions to those problems.41
New Technology
The last factor that Skocpol argues has contributed to the rise of professionalized
advocacy nonprofits is new technology, especially computer-
427Mary Alice Haddad
ized mass mailings that enable direct solicitation for donations. Although
the technology to compile and distribute these mailings exists in Japan,
the Japanese postal system does not have a bulk mail rate that allows
nonprofits to save money on postage. Indeed, one NPO activist told me
that it was cheaper for Japanese organizations to pay for someone to go
to Korea and mail flyers from there than to do a mass mailing from inside
Japan.
As in every other technologically advanced country, access to the
Internet has spread rapidly in Japan; 83 percent of households now
have access to the Internet, up from 25 percent only five years ago.42
New advocacy organizations are taking advantage of the new technology
at much greater rates than the older membership organizations, although
it not yet clear how the new technology will affect volunteer
participation.
Thus far, websites seem aimed primarily at providing information to
members rather than serving as a method for recruiting new members or
donors. For example, while the United States has several websites where
individuals seeking volunteer opportunities can type in the kinds of organizations
that interest them and by providing a zip code find a listing of
nearby organizations seeking volunteers (e.g., www.volunteermatch
.org, www.servenet.org, www.networkforgood.org, www.unitedway.org),
Japan has no such search mechanism. Most of the cross-organization
websites, such as the NPO Center (www.jnpoc.ne.jp), are aimed at helping
volunteer organizations coordinate their projects rather than helping
them recruit individual members or promote their cause. The closest resource
for volunteers is the Volunteer Web (www.npo-homepage
.go.jp/volunteer.html), which has a listing of a large number of organizations
seeking volunteers but does not allow for easy geographical
searches.
Citizen Attitudes Toward Civic Duty
One of the most important reasons for the shift in US volunteering patterns
is the change in people's attitudes about what kind of civic participation
receives social prestige. At the end of World War II, social
prestige was granted to those who were members of organizations such
as Knights of Columbus, Daughters of the American Revolution, PTA,
and the like. The leadership of these organizations often rotated
through the membership, and while there were some members who
were more active than others, social status was granted to everyone
who was a member in good standing, who came to meetings, and who
428 Japan's Civil Society Landscape
served on the appropriate number of committees. As the social, political,
and technological landscape shifted, status was granted not for
membership alone but for leadership. Individuals could not do their
part simply by showing up at meetings; they had to occupy a leadership
role or contribute some kind of specialized skill. Often this meant that
they became paid employees of the organization and were no longer
volunteers.
In addition to Skocpol, other authors have described how shifts in
citizen attitudes about civic responsibility have altered volunteer participation
patterns in the United States. In her study of the displacement of
volunteers by professionals in urban fire departments in the United
States during the late nineteenth century, Amy Greenberg argues that a
change in citizen attitudes was largely responsible.43
She documents
how an ethic of republican liberalism that valued civic sacrifice and
virtue gave way to one of Christian capitalism that put greater value on
property and professionalism, contributing to the delegitimation of volunteer
firefighting and the rise of the professional fire service.
Observing the contemporary environment, Robert Wuthnow has
also argued that US conceptualizations of what constitutes a "good citizen"
have changed.44
He has suggested that the old scripts of good citizens--the
organization man, the club woman, the good neighbor--
have been supplanted by the scripts of the nonprofit professional, the
volunteer, the soul mate. Volunteering and service are important to both
kinds of citizens, but the former emphasize a civic obligation to one's
community, while the latter emphasize common interests, leading them
to donate their time to different kinds of organizations. Participation in
traditional membership organizations has given way to volunteering for
newer advocacy groups in many communities, especially in the suburbs
and in the inner cities.
Although some of the same attitudinal shifts found in the United
States are also occurring in Japan as more women work, as young people
seek to express themselves through advocacy organizations, and as
people have more difficulty connecting in urban settings, the commitment
to traditional attitudes of civic obligation remain strong in Japan.
Japanese continue to support their traditional membership organizations
at very high rates, and these organizations continue to be viewed as vital
parts of Japan's social and political landscape. In contrast to the US view
that these types of organizations are outdated or obsolete, an astonishing
98.3 percent of Japanese think that neighborhood organizations, the
most pervasive of traditional membership organizations, are necessary
in contemporary Japan.45
One scholar has found that Japanese often feel
429Mary Alice Haddad
that their relations to their neighbors are more critical than their relations
with their own family, and the significance of neighbors is rising rather
than declining with modernization; as families spread out, neighbors become
increasingly important.46
While ideas of citizenship may be changing somewhat, people continue
to believe that they need to participate in traditional organizations
in order to be upstanding members of their communities. For older generations,
peer pressure to participate was quite severe. One sixty-year-old
retired volunteer firefighter told me that in his day a man who wasn't a
member of the volunteer fire department wouldn't be able to find a
woman who would marry him. Men who didn't participate were viewed
as not fulfilling their responsibility to their community, as being not quite
real men.47
While the social constraints are not nearly so strict these days,
volunteers for traditional membership organizations still cite obligation
to their communities as their primary reason for joining.48
Furthermore, participation in traditional membership organizations
continues to be a source of social status for members, and these organizations
make sure that the rituals and symbols associated with the status
remain in place for members. For some groups, such as volunteer fire departments,
there are powerful symbols of their status, such as the traditional
happi coats that they wear as a uniform. Only volunteer firefighters
may wear the coats, and retired members must turn their coats in
when they leave the department to become an OB ("old boy") member.
In many towns and cities facing declining memberships in their volunteer
fire departments, one of their most effective recruiting techniques
has been to make these status symbols more visible through parades and
public events that celebrate the skill and contributions of their volunteer
fire departments. The events often include public safety demonstrations
and clinics that teach citizens how to use a fire extinguisher properly,
how to put out a stove fire, how to perform basic first aid, and other simple
safety techniques. Universally, however, the highlight of the event is
always an acrobatic show by volunteer firefighters performing stylized
versions of traditional firefighting methods atop tall wooden ladders,
simulating firefighting in the Edo period.Although the annual events are
orchestrated to hark back to the old days and evoke the feeling of a traditional
festival that has occurred for centuries, many of them have been
introduced only in the last decade as an attempt to increase the visibility
of the volunteer fire departments to boost recruits.
For other groups, such as the volunteer welfare commissioners, the
symbols of social status are subtler. The volunteer welfare commissioners
have a special notebook and stamp that are their official symbols of
430 Japan's Civil Society Landscape
their office. However, volunteer welfare commissioners'most important
source of status is not their notebook, but the long selection process that
leads to appointment. An individual cannot just decide to become a volunteer
welfare commissioner and become one. There is a lengthy and involved
selection process that requires nomination by a nominating committee
and approval at several different levels of selection committees
before the volunteer is offered the post. The work of the volunteer welfare
commissioners requires public respect, influence, and--above all--
discretion, so the post cannot be filled by just anyone. The public knows
that the nomination process is deliberative and selective, so the volunteer
welfare commissioners retain high social status even in contemporary
society when volunteer welfare commissioners' membership and
roles have changed dramatically from their origins.
In addition to maintaining high status for volunteers in traditional
organizations, the activities that these organizations engage in continue
to receive public support. Both traditional volunteer organizations and
newer NPOs continue to focus their efforts on serving the local community.
Most organizations concentrate their activities on community
safety and development, with only a small number of groups working
on "newer" issues such as peace, human rights, and international
development.49
Many of the issue areas, such as public safety, that traditional volunteer
organizations address are also part of the government's responsibility.
However, in Japan, government responsibility and the responsibility
of community organizations are not viewed as mutually exclusive;
rather, both groups are seen as serving the interests of the citizens, and
they often work together on joint projects. Frequently, volunteer organizations
support government initiatives by disseminating public information
to their members and by helping gather feedback and citizen ideas
about public policy. The government, especially local government,
helps volunteer groups by providing funding for projects, organizing forums
that promote cross-organization cooperation, and enhancing the legitimacy
of volunteers and their organizations through a variety of legal
and extralegal means.50
Therefore, while Japanese attitudes about civic obligation are shifting,
providing greater support for newer-style advocacy organizations,
this change has not seriously undermined the legitimacy of or commitment
to more traditional membership organizations. Attitudes about
civic responsibility continue to include participation in community
groups such as neighborhood associations, volunteer fire departments,
and PTAs.
431Mary Alice Haddad
Conclusion
Japan's civil society landscape has been transformed in the last decade,
and more and more Japanese are becoming involved in political advocacy
organizations and professionalized nonprofit organizations. However,
while new groups are on the rise, traditional membership organizations,
such as neighborhood associations, women's groups, volunteer
fire departments, and volunteer welfare commissioners, continue to be
supported at very high rates.
Factors identified as being responsible for the rise of professional advocacy
organizations and the decline of federated membership organizations
in the US context have also influenced Japan's civil society. The social
movements of the 1960s and 1970s, changes in the political and legal
structure, and new technology have all made it easier for advocacy organizations
to gather supporters and for social service­oriented nonprofits
to acquire legal status and therefore legitimacy, funding, and volunteer
support. In the United States, these movements changed citizens' attitudes
about their civic responsibility, delegitimizing membership in and
the activities of traditional membership federations. In contrast, Japanese
attitudes have continued to support participation in traditional organizations
even as they have expanded their ideas about civic responsibility to
include activism in advocacy and social service nonprofit organizations.
These developments have profound repercussions for Japan's democracy.
Traditional organizations tend to rely on long-standing, embedded
relationships with their local governments in order to influence
policy, and they are deeply integrated into the policymaking and implementation
processes. These organizations continue to be the mainstay
of Japan's civil society.
Traditional organizations have political limitations, however. Although
their close relationship with the government--which gives them
privileged access to policymakers--is one of their greatest strengths, it
is also a weakness, making it difficult for them to act in ways that go
against government policy. Furthermore, their focus on a wide range of
local issues makes it more difficult for them to be effective political
agents when it comes to issues of national or international concern, or
when specialized knowledge is required. Now, growing numbers of advocacy
organizations and specialized nonprofits are filling this gap.
While many scholars are concerned with diminished, disaffected,
and discontented democracies, developments in Japan give us some
reason to hope that at least one of the advanced capitalist democracies
is improving. Although Japanese still don't trust their politicians very
432 Japan's Civil Society Landscape
much and are losing faith in their bureaucrats, they are not turning a
deaf ear to society's problems. Instead, they are increasing their involvement
in civil society by founding a plethora of new organizations
and by continuing to support traditional organizations that perform
vital roles in their communities. These developments can only be good
news for the condition and future of Japan's democracy.
Mary Alice Haddad is a Harvard Academy Scholar and assistant professor of
government and East Asian studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. She
is author of Politics and Volunteering in Japan: A Global Perspective (2007).
She has also published articles in Comparative Political Studies and Nonprofit
and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.
Notes
1. For the number of NPOs, see 2000 Whitepaper on the National
Lifestyle, www5.cao.go.jp/seikatsu/whitepaper/h16/01_zu/zu301090.html (in
Japanese; accessed June 25, 2007); for the numbers of volunteers see www
.stat.go.jp/data/shakai/2001/kodo/zenkoku/zuhyou/a075.xls (in Japanese; accessed
June 25, 2007).
2. Please note that several scholars, perhaps most famously Sheldon
Garon, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1997), argue that the embedded relationship between
these organizations and the government makes it questionable whether
they should "count" as democratic civil society.
3. For more about the distinction between these two types of groups and
the importance of the distinction, see Mary Alice Haddad, Politics and Volunteering
in Japan: A Global Perspective (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2007).
4. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); Theda Skocpol, Diminished
Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic
Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003); Robert Wuthow, Loose
Connections: Joining Together in America's Fragmented Communities (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1998).
5. Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy; Theda Skocpol, "Voice and
Inequality: The Transformation of American Civic Democracy," Perspectives
on Politics 2, no. 1 (2004): 3­20.
6. Yoshinori Yamaoka, "On the History of the Nonprofit Sector in Japan."
In T. Yamamoto, ed., The Nonprofit Sector in Japan (New York: Manchester
University Press, 1998), pp. 21­24. See also T. Shoumura, Chiiki fukushishi
josetsu [Introductory history of community social welfare] (Tokyo: Taiyo Publishing,
1993).
433Mary Alice Haddad
7. See chart 3-1-7 at www5.cao.go.jp/seikatsu/whitepaper/h16/01_zu/
zu301070.html (in Japanese, accessed June 25, 2007).
8. Chifuren [National federation of regional women's organizations],
www.chifuren.gr.jp/aisatu.htm (in Japanese; accessed January 22, 2003);
Zenkoku rojin kurubu rengokai [Japan federation of senior citizens clubs],
www4.ocn.ne.jp/~zenrou (in Japanese; accessed August 22, 2005).
9. Volunteer Fire Department, www.fdma.go.jp/syobodan/whats/data.html;
www2.shakyo.or.jp/zenminjiren/outline/index.html (in Japanese, accessed August
24, 2005).
10. Co-op, "For a Better Tomorrow 2004," English version, p. 4. www
.co-op.or.jp/jccu/English_here/publications/pdf/better_2004.pdf. For more on
the consumer movement, see Robin M. LeBlanc, Bicycle Citizens: The Political
World of the Japanese Housewife (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1999), and Patricia L. Maclachlan, Consumer Politics in Postwar
Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Activism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2002).
11. Japan National Council of Social Welfare, www.shakyo.or.jp (in Japanese;
accessed August 22, 2005).
12. James E. Curtis, Edward G. Grabb, and Douglas E. Baer, "Voluntary
Association Membership in Fifteen Countries: A Comparative Analysis,"
American Sociological Review 57 (April 1992): 139­152; Lester M. Salamon,
Helmut K. Anheier, Regina List, Stefan Toepler, and S. Wojciech Skolowski,
eds., Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, 1999); Wilhelm Vosse, "The
Emergence of a Civil Society in Japan," Japan Studien, no. 11 (1999): 31­53;
Tadashi Yamamoto, ed., Deciding the Public Good: Governance and Civil Society
in Japan (New York: Japan Center for International Exchange, 1999).
13. Robert Pekkanen, "After the Developmental State: Civil Society in
Japan," Journal of East Asian Studies 4, no. 3 (2004).
14. Stephen Osborne, ed., The Voluntary and Non-Profit Sector in Japan,
Nissan Institute/RoutledgeCurzon Japanese Studies Series (New York: RoutledgeCurzon,
2003); Frank Schwartz and Susan Pharr, eds., The State of Civil
Society in Japan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Yamamoto,
Deciding the Public Good.
15. Mary Alice Haddad, "Civic Responsibility and Patterns of Voluntary
Participation Around the World," Comparative Political Studies 39, no. 10
(2006): 1230­1242; Haddad, Politics and Volunteering in Japan.
16. Skocpol, Diminished Democracy; Skocpol, "Voice and Inequality."
17. Ibid.
18. See Ellis S. Krauss, Thomas P. Rohlen, and Patricia G. Steinhoff, eds.,
Conflict in Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984); LeBlanc, Bicycle
Citizens; and Frank K. Upham, Law and Social Change in Postwar
Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).
19. Jeffrey Broadbent, Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of
Power and Protest (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Makoto
Iokibe, "Japan's Civil Society: An Historical Overview." In Yamamoto, Decid-
434 Japan's Civil Society Landscape
ing the Public Good; Frank Schwartz, "Civil Society in Japan Reconsidered,"
Japanese Journal of Political Science 3, no. 2 (2002): 195­215; Maclachlan,
Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan.
20. Author interview with Kohei Yamada, general secretary of the National
Council of YMCAs Japan in June 2006. See also Nihon YMCA Domei, Shinben
nihon YMCA shi: Nihon YMCA domeikessei 100 shunen kinen shuppan
[New edition of Japan YMCA history: Japan YMCA organization's 100 anniversary
edition] (Tokyo: Zaidan houjin nihon kristo kyou seinen kyoudoumei
[Young Men's Christian Association Japan], 2003); an English translation is
forthcoming from YMCA Press.
21. Putnam's book is concerned with social capital rather than civil society.
However, the items he mentions as contributing to a declining social capital
in the United States are precisely the ones that leaders in traditional civic
organizations in Japan identify as challenges to their own membership. This is
largely because, as Wuthnow, Loose Connections, points out, the ways in
which people participate in the two types of organizations differ. Traditional
groups tend to require more frequent face-to-face interactions (usually through
weekly meetings), while newer groups can often conduct their business virtually
by e-mail or telephone or at infrequent in-person meetings.
22. For a fascinating account of the involvement of women (both housewives
and working women) in volunteer organizations, see LeBlanc, Bicycle
Citizens.
23. For an easy time line of minsei'in history, see www2.shakyo.or.jp/
zenminjiren/map/index.html (in Japanese; accessed August 10, 2005). For
more in-depth history, see Shoumura, Chiiki fukushishi josetsu; and Mutsuko
Takahashi and Raija Hashimoto, "Minsei i'in--Between Public and Private: A
Local Network for Community Care in Japan," International Social Work 40,
no. 3 (1997): 303­313.
24. For an easy time line, see www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/saikin/hw/gyousei/
03/kekka6.html (in Japanese; accessed August 10, 2005).
25. Ibid.; see also www2.shakyo.or.jp/zenminjiren/map/index.html (8/10/05)
(in Japanese; accessedAugust 10, 2005). Data from the Ministry of Health, Labor
and Welfare.
26. For more on the importance of legitimizing, funding, and organizing
support for community rates of volunteering, see Mary Alice Haddad, "Community
Determinants of Volunteer Participation and the Promotion of Civic
Health: The Case of Japan," Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 33 (supplement),
no. 3 (2004): 8S­31S.
27. See chart 3-1-7 at www5.cao.go.jp/seikatsu/whitepaper/h16/01_zu/
zu301070.html (in Japanese; accessed February 10, 2006).
28. Theodore C. Bestor, Neighborhood Tokyo (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1989), p. 52; R. P. Dore, City Life in Japan: A Study of a Tokyo Ward
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958), pp. 63­64.
29. Interviews, 2002.
30. See www5.cao.go.jp/seikatsu/whitepaper/h16/01_zu/zu301070.html
(in Japanese; accessed August 20, 2005). See also www5.cao.go.jp/seikatsu/
435Mary Alice Haddad
whitepaper/h16/01_zu/zu301070.html (in Japanese; accessed February 10,
2006).
31. Volunteer Fire Department, www.fdma.go.jp/syobodan/whats/data
.html (in Japanese; accessed August 30, 2006).
32. Kashihara in Nara prefecture is one such department. It increased the
size of its department by 79 percent between 1990 and 2000. National Public
Safety Information, Fire Bureau, National Directory of Fire Chiefs and EMS
Administrators, 9th ed. (Stevens Point, WI: SPAN Publishing, 2000); see
Kindai shoubou [Modern firefighting bureau], "Hanshin-awaji daishinsai no
kyoukun kara: Teiinzo de chiiki bousai wo ninau" [Shouldering local disaster
prevention with more volunteer firefighters because of lessons from the great
Hanshin-Awaji earthquake] 38, no. 6 (2000): 46­54.
33. For Japanese Diet staff, see www.shugiin.go.jp/index.nsf/html/
index_e_guide.htm (House of Representatives, official website, in English; accessed
August 22, 2005). For CRS staff, see CRS Annual Report FY2003,
www.loc.gov/crsinfo/CRS03_AnnRpt.pdf (accessed August 22, 2005).
34. Jonathan Marshall, "Freedom of Information, Legal Mobilization, and
the Taxpayer Suit Boom in Japan," Harvard Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
Occasional Paper 04-06 (2004).
35. See http://www.npo-homepage.go.jp/portalsite.html; search for NPOs
formed between January 1, 1998, and April 1, 2007 (in Japanese; accessed
June 12, 2007).
36. In 2001, the NPO Law was amended to allow tax deductions to certain
nonprofits. However, in the last six years, only sixty-three organizations
have reached that status; see www.nta.go.jp/category/npo/04/01.htm (in Japanese;
accessed June 25, 2007).
37. John Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, www.jhu.edu/
~cnp/pdf/table401.pdf (accessed August 11, 2005).
38. Japan Association of Certified Social Workers, www.jacsw.or.jp (in
Japanese; accessed August 11, 2005).
39. Interview, 2002; Silver Network Kashihara, Yuukyuu mizukara kangae
kyou ni ikiru akarui choujyu shakai 5 nen ayumi [Eternity: Individual thought,
living cooperatively in a bright longevity society--a five-year history]
(Kashihara, Japan: Silver Network Kashihara, 1999).
40. Interview, 2002.
41. This finding is supported by Margarita Estevez-Abe, "State-Society
Partnerships in the Japanese Welfare State." In Schwartz and Pharr, The State
of Civil Society in Japan; Roger Goodman, "The `Japanese-style Welfare
State' and the Delivery of Personal Social Services." In R. Goodman, G.
White, and H.-j. Kwong, eds., The East Asian Welfare Model: Welfare Orientalism
and the State (New York: Routledge, 1998); Takahashi and Hashimoto,
"Minsei i'in--Between Public and Private."
42. See chart 1-1-5, www.impressholdings.com/release/2005/025/
20050607_d.pdf (in Japanese; accessed August 11, 2005).
43. Amy S. Greenberg, Cause for Alarm: The Volunteer Fire Department
in the Nineteenth-Century City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
436 Japan's Civil Society Landscape
44. Wuthnow, Loose Connections.
45. See chart 3-1-5, www5.cao.go.jp/seikatsu/whitepaper/h16/02_fuzuhyo/
fz301050.html (in Japanese; accessed August 16, 2005).
46. In a seminal study of Japan, one anthropologist emphasized the importance
of daily contact among neighbors as being more important than blood
ties; see Chie Nakane, Japanese Society (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1970). This perception was substantiated by several of my interviewees,
who expressed the importance of neighborhood associations when they got
old, since their families were far off and unable (or unwilling) to care for them.
47. Interview, 2002.
48. Thirty of the thirty-six volunteers in traditional membership organizations
I interviewed in 2001­2002 gave obligation to the community and/or
community members as the main reason they joined; this was in contrast to
reasons related to individual interests or personal fulfillment, which topped the
list of reasons given by volunteers in newer groups.
49. See chart 3-2-2, www5.cao.go.jp/seikatsu/whitepaper/h16/01_zu/
zu302020.html (accessed August 16, 2005); and chart 3-2-17, www5.cao.go
.jp/seikatsu/whitepaper/h16/01_zu/zu302170.html (accessed August 15, 2005)
for the activities of volunteer associations and NPOs.
50. See Haddad, "Community Determinants," for more on how these
sources of support encourage (or discourage) community participation.
437Mary Alice Haddad