Routledge Handbook of Civil Society in Asia

Akihiro Ogawa, Akihiro Ogawa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351587341
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Routledge Handbook of Civil Society in Asia is an interdisciplinary resource, covering one of the most dynamically expanding sectors in contemporary Asia. Originally a product of Western thinking, civil society represents a particular set of relationships between the state and either society or the individual. Each culture, however, molds its own version of civil society, reflecting its most important values and traditions.

This handbook provides a comprehensive survey of the directions and nuances of civil society, featuring contributions by leading specialists on Asian society from the fields of political science, sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines. Comprising thirty-five essays on critical topics and issues, it is divided into two main sections:

Part I covers country specific reviews, including Japan, China, South Korea, India, and Singapore.

Part II offers a series of thematic chapters, such as democratization, social enterprise, civic activism, and the media.

As an analysis of Asian social, cultural, and political phenomena from the perspective of civil society in the post-World War IIera, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Asian Studies, Asian Politics, and Comparative Politics.

PART I

Country review

1
JAPAN

Simon Avenell

Japanese civil society: theories, history, and prospects

The 1990s was a watershed in the imagination and development of civil society in contemporary Japan, much in the same way the 1970s proved definitive for civil society in Latin America and Eastern Europe. It was around this time that civil society (shimin shakai) and ideas like volunteering (borantia katsudō), NGO (non- governmental organization), NPO (non- profit organization), community building (machizukuri), and citizens’ activities (shimin katsudō) became topics of broad scholarly, media, and public attention in Japan and amongst foreign observers. A major earthquake in Kobe City in 1995 combined with long- term historical transformations, international influences, and a number of immediate regulatory, political, and social developments helped to propel civil society into the limelight. This chapter examines Japanese civil society from four perspectives. First, it gives a brief overview of the composition of the sector; second, it discusses key scholarly debates on Japanese civil society; third, it briefly surveys the historical development of the sector and; fourth, it introduces a new direction in research.

the composition of civil society in Japan

If we define civil society as “the sphere of uncoerced human association between the individual and the state, in which people undertake collective action for normative and substantive purposes, relatively independent of government and the market,” then Japanese civil society qualifies strongly on all counts (Edwards 2011: 4). Similar to other advanced industrialized nations, in Japan, we find a vibrant non-profit sector, a large and diverse array of voluntary grass-roots associations, many contentious social movements addressing pressing social and political issues, a budding realm of social enterprises and social entrepreneurship, and a maturing arena of internationally active non-governmental organizations. This section considers some of these major groups in Japanese civil society.

Amongst the oldest and most widespread groups populating Japanese civil society are neighborhood associations (NHAs), which number around 300,000 nationwide. Robert Pekkanen defines NHAs as: “voluntary groups whose membership is drawn from a small, geographically delimited, and exclusive residential area (a neighborhood) and whose activities are multiple and are centered on that same area” (2006: 87). NHAs usually comprise around 100 households and engage in a variety of activities including cleaning, maintaining roads, organizing local festivals, celebrations and ceremonies, providing support for the elderly, and managing garbage collection (See Kawato, Pekkanen, and Yamamoto 2015; Pekkanen 2006: 85–129; Pekkanen, Tsujinaka, and Yamamoto 2014). Established in the Meiji period (1868–1912), NHAs have traditionally had a close relationship with the state, especially local governments. During the Pacific War, they were absorbed into the national mobilization regime only to be disbanded by the Allied Occupation (1945–1952) and then legalized and reconstituted as voluntary independent organizations in 1952. Although urbanization and generational change are impacting their significance, NHAs remain a central part of associational life in Japan today. They provide fertile material for scholars of Japanese civil society and state–society relations because of their somewhat ambiguous character, which straddles the boundaries of state and civil society (Pekkanen et al. 2014: 5–6). Indeed, NHAs are an appropriate point of entry into the study of civil society in Japan because they signpost the important role of the state in shaping associational life in the country.

Along with NHAs, Public Interest Legal Persons (PILPs) comprise another significant slice of the civil society sector in Japan.¹ PILPs are incorporated and regulated under Article 34 of the Japanese Civil Code and include, for example, foundations, medical legal persons, social welfare legal persons, school legal persons, and religious legal persons. PILPs, like NHAs, straddle the boundaries of state and society. Thanks to subcontracting, subsidies, and staffing, some PILPs are almost indistinguishable from government agencies. PILPs have also been subjected to strict oversight from state authorities. Qualifying for and maintaining the PILP status entails meeting the standards of “public interest” defined by the relevant bureaucratic authorities. In effect, officials have been able to use this “public interest” requirement to hand pick the groups that conform to their needs and preferences. Only with the passing of the Law for the Promotion of Specified Nonprofit Activities (NPO Law) in 1998 did it become much easier for many civic groups to become incorporated as NPOs without having to meet the stringent and arguably subjective requirements for PILPs under the Civil Code.

NPOs incorporated under the new 1998 law arguably epitomize the movement away from bureaucratic oversight toward greater autonomy in Japanese civil society over the past two decades or so. As of September 2016, 51,260 organizations had attained NPO status and a further 972 qualified as so-called “approved” (nintei) NPOs whose donors receive tax concessions for donations (Cabinet Office of Japan, 2016a). NPOs can engage in one or more of the twenty activities set out under the new law, such as disaster relief, international cooperation, community building, tourism, environmental protection, consumer protection, peace and human rights, and gender equality (Cabinet Office of Japan, 2016b). Groups involved in health and welfare, education, children’s well-being, community building, and NPO support are the most numerous. According to Akihiro Ogawa (2014: 54), NPOs can be grouped into two distinct categories. The most prevalent are those providing services or acting as subcontractors for local governments while smaller groups can be categorized as “social enterprises” that are formulating their own creative solutions to pressing issues, such as childcare, food safety, and the environment (Ogawa 2014: 54–55). Even amongst this newest category of civil society organizations (CSOs), the tension between state influence and organizational autonomy persists.

Apart from the above entities, Japanese civil society is home to a plethora of other groups including consumer advocacy groups, consumer cooperatives, environmental preservation and anti-industrial pollution groups, women’s organizations, minority advocacy groups (Ainu, resident Koreans, Burakumin), anti-military base movements (especially in Okinawa), pacifist and anti-war groups, anti-nuclear power and anti-atomic weapons groups, self-help groups, and alternative movements (e.g., organic farming, recycling), internationally active non-governmental organizations, disaster response and recovery groups, and more recently, self-advocacy groups of homeless persons and so-called “freeters.” Recent years have also witnessed the rise of anti-foreigner and xenophobic movements, as well as groups demanding the return of the Japanese abducted by North Korea. Although sometimes not included in civil society, religious organizations, labor unions, business organizations, and agricultural cooperatives also contribute to associational life through engagement in issues beyond belief, work, and the market. I discuss some of these groups in detail below.

Overall, the number of civil society organizations in Japan has increased steadily in the post-World War II era (Kawato et al. 2015: 1259; Tsujinaka 2003). Moreover, the types of groups that are emerging appear to be different from before, with self-consciously independent (from the state) groups becoming more prominent. As Yutaka Tsujinaka (2003: 99, 114) points out, although Japanese civil society has been traditionally dominated by groups building social capital or providing services, recently, we see more groups actively trying to influence policy making and implementation.

Approaches to the study of civil society in Japan

Research on civil society in Japan can be usefully categorized in terms of the emphasis it gives to the state. At one end of this spectrum is research evidencing how the state and its regulatory instruments have powerfully shaped civil society in Japan; at the other end is research that, while recognizing this powerful institutional factor, points to long-term structural transformations, the agency of civil society actors, and international factors. For clarity, I suggest three broad approaches in research to date: state–institutional, historical, evolutionary, and civil society advocacy. In practice, most researchers, while stressing one factor, also recognize the multiplicity of variables shaping the sector.

Statist–institutional approach: The dominant approach in research on Japanese civil society to date has been the statist–institutional approach that, in a nutshell, argues that the state—more than any other factor—has deeply shaped the historical development of civil society in Japan. Political scientist Susan Pharr delineated this perspective most lucidly in a seminal volume, The State of Civil Society in Japan, stating that the “most striking feature of Japan’s civil society over the past century” is “the degree to which the state has taken an activist stance toward civic life, monitoring it, penetrating it, and seeking to steer it with a wide range of distinct policy tools targeted by group or sector” (2003: 325). Concretely, groundbreaking work by Pekkanen has shown how the Japanese state’s use of legal instruments such as the Civil Code has resulted in a civil society “with many small groups offering rich forms of ‘social capital’ but few large professionalized advocacy groups capable of influencing policy making” (2006: 7). This Pekkanen (2006) calls Japan’s “dual civil society,” characterized by countless “members” but few “advocates.” Working from an anthropological perspective, Akihiro Ogawa (2004, 2009) argues that the Japanese state nurtures volunteer subjectivity as part of its neoliberal agenda. Ogawa is critical of the 1998 NPO Law, suggesting that it has partially become a “tool” for the state to “pursue a policy of welfare service retrenchment by empowering the nonprofit sector” (2004: 93). The government is arguably “taking advantage” of the recent popularity of volunteering to “streamline” the “framework of public administration” (Ogawa 2004: 93).

Such entanglement between the state and civic groups is not new. The historian Sheldon Garon (1997, 2003) has convincingly shown how, through partnerships (albeit unequal) with civic groups, the Japanese state has avoided costly social programs and nurtured values with respect to saving, hygiene, morals, and social welfare. For example, Garon (1997) shows how women’s groups supported state initiatives to promote saving and religious organizations assisted in welfare relief to the poor, orphans, and wayward youth. Garon speaks of the “intertwining of civil society and state” and stresses that the capacity of the Japanese state to manage society depended a great deal on “the active participation of groups in civil society” (2003: 48). Indeed, “had Japan possessed a less vigorous civil society, its state would have remained an ineffective autocratic regime, unable to manufacture consent” (Garon 2003: 61).

This is not to say that the Japanese state has absolutely dominated civil society. Research also reveals how civic groups have shaped the state’s responses and how some groups even subverted state institutions. Daniel Aldrich (2008: 10), for instance, convincingly shows how state officials tailored strategies to placate civil society groups that threatened to veto public works projects such as airports and nuclear power plants. As he explains, “there is a strong correlation between sustained, intense opposition and the use of preference-altering policy instruments that seek to capture the hearts of local citizens” (Aldrich 2008: 10). On top of this, Aldrich also notes how officials deliberately chose sites for nuclear power plants with low population density, high rates of depopulation, and weak local organizations (Aldrich 2008: 11). Aldrich shows that areas with low social capital were less likely to mount a successful resistance.

From a different angle, Karen Nakamura shows how a civic group, the Japanese Federation of the Deaf (JFD), managed to reap the “rewards of cooperating with the state while avoiding the pitfalls of cooptation and loss of autonomy” (Nakamura 2002: 33). In the case of the JFD, this strategy involved “leaving the national organization politically independent,” yet “financially constrained,” while allowing “prefectural associations to incorporate” as PILPs, giving them access to “government funds” but tying “their hands politically” (Nakamura 2002: 18). As Nakamura observes, “the relationship between power and resistance is complex and intertwined” (2002: 33).

Before moving on from the statist–institutional approach, one more perspective warrants mention for the interesting question it raises about state influence over civil society in Japan. Based on her work on volunteering, Mary Alice Haddad (2007) argues that the “embedded” and cooperative relationship many civic groups have with the state may actually be related to a norm in Japan that the government must take responsibility for handling social issues. This norm arguably “encourage[s] involvement in volunteer organizations that have close, embedded relationships with the government” (Haddad 2007: 6). From this perspective, state involvement in civil society happens partially because citizens expect it.

Historical evolutionary approach: The path-breaking empirical and theoretical work of the political scientist Yutaka Tsujinaka (2002, 2003) shifts attention from the state to the longer-term historical transformations in civil society in Japan. Surveying modern Japanese history, Tsujinaka identifies “waves of democratization,” which were accompanied by relatively more intensive formation of associations. “The path to modernization has not been completely linear: there have been several booms and waves of vitalization among civil society organizations in Japan” (Tsujinaka 2003: 84). Tsujinaka (2003: 98–99) notes a shift in the types of groups that are formed in each cycle or wave, with a transition from the producer sector to the social service sector, and finally, most recently, the advocacy sector. In the pre-war era, Tsujinaka (2010) identifies two associational waves: one after the Meiji Restoration in the 1870s and 1880s, which was marked by the formation of around 2,000 associations and another in the interwar period (1918–1937). After the wartime co-opt...