Handbook of Civil Society in Japan
Edited by Simon Avenell and Akihiro Ogawa
Japan Documents (2025)
ISBN-13: 978-4909286604
Review by Roger Buckley
The phrase is everywhere. International organizations, governments, think tanks, pressure groups and local communities use the term “civil society” all the time.It is invoked at one level by both Japan’s International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of their good governance policies. At the other end of the spectrum, it can be linked to the volunteer fire stations, the sponsored welfare centres and the annual festivals held throughout Tokyo’s Minato-ku neighbourhoods.
Simon Avenell and Akihiro Ogawa as the co-editors of the latest Handbook put out by the Tokyo-based Japan Documents stable have had the challenging task of organizing fresh perspectives on important, vibrant but hard to define aspects of contemporary Japan. They have encouraged researchers drawn from within Japan and overseas to examine civil society (shimin shakai) as seen in the activities of NPOs (Nonprofit Organizations), anti-nuclear groups, the media, gender critics, territorial disputes and influential right-wing advocates.
The Handbook is divided into three segments: the first, and probably the one that readers will find particularly of interest, is labelled ‘Institutions’, the second is termed ‘Justice’ and the last and briefest ‘Transnationalisms’.
Part one has the most chapters and includes views on NPOs, Conservative Civil Society and one that invites comparisons with the British experience by Tobias Weiss on ‘Civil Society and Newspaper Journalism: The Nuclear Power Debate in Japan’. The twists and turns of the nuclear industry and those within the media happy to be their mouthpiece and willing to take their shilling makes for disturbing reading. Advocates for nuclear power who had fallen near silent after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake may now be back in the saddle as the Japanese government has recently announced plans to raise once again the contribution of nuclear power in the nation’s overall energy strategy.
Many contributors share approximate agreement on the post-1945 evolution of the broad concept of civil society both as phenomenon and history. Perhaps more space might have been devoted to the efforts of the American Occupation’s commitment to encouraging citizen participation, as opposed to well established top down state-directed community arrangements, but what links most case studies is an examination of the position in the early 21st century.
Given the myriad forms that civil society continues to take, it is near impossible both to provide more than a sample of the Japanese volunteer organizations claiming to stand, however loosely, between the state and the market or to reach any firm verdict on the success or failure of their efforts.
Definitions of civil society obviously vary; the co-editors, for example, have adopted the view that it should be a collective effort by participants undertaken ‘for normative and substantive purposes, relatively independent of government and the market’ (p.xix). Herein lies the rub. It would, if applied too zealously, have surely required the scrubbing out of Yoojin Koo’s illuminating piece on what in English is the Japan Conference, better known everywhere as Nippon kaigi. Given the immensely tight links today between Liberal Democratic Party Diet members and what began as a modest, pro-right, lobby effort in the 1990s, it is hard to see how Nippon kaigi can fit into the standard scheme of things. The late prime minister Abe Shinzo was far from alone in working with the organization to further what appears to be very much a shared agenda that wants, for example, the revision of school textbooks to eliminate masochistic interpretations of history, solution to the sad abduction of Japanese nationals by North Korea and maintenance of the Imperial succession only through the male line. If Nippon kaigi does indeed have close and undocumented links to many in the Japanese establishment then it can be said to have become a willing, co-opted actor with access to the mutual benefits embedded within the political-bureaucratic-industrial iron triangle. In the process it would seem to have shifted from being a neo-liberal part of civil society to semi-governmental agent.
Other groups may well prefer to keep their distance, though the sensitive issue of how to finance what are frequently small, one-issue groups is a perennial reality. Many international NPOs, for example, would find it hard to function without state support, since fund raising for those eager to despatch volunteers to Southeast Asia and beyond often depend on finance from the likes of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), subventions from sympathetic local governments and individual philanthropists.
Yet some of the Handbook’s authors are more optimistic and make arresting, if somewhat qualified, claims for the health and importance of Japan’s civil society. To give two examples. Daniel P. Aldrich and Yoshida Toshiaki begin their chapter on ‘Rethinking Civil Society-State Relations in Japan 13 Years after the Fukushima Accident’ with the statement: ‘It is no exaggeration to say that the events of March 11, 2011 changed the world’ (p.188) They counter the once generally-held view of Japanese passivity in the face of the State but admit that the mass domestic and overseas protests after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters have since faded, leaving, however, a welcome suspicion that officialdom no longer always knows best even when it does not.
Likewise, Scott Musgrave-Takeda in examining ‘Contemporary Okinawan Civil Society and Exploring Environmental Justice’ bluntly states in his opening paragraph that ‘Okinawa is a marginalized space on the Japanese national periphery and its people, recognized by the United Nations but not the central government are also one of the largest ethnic minorities in Japan’ (p.174). Given, however, the nation’s present economic problems it may well be that environmental issues involving Okinawan forestry and wider sustainable development both in Japan and across the G-7 countries may become of lesser importance as green issues risk losing out to more immediate growth priorities.
The challenges are evident yet the editors and their authors have combined to provide an immediate and highly informative analysis of current civil society Japanese style. Democratic activism lives.