Tsutsui W.M. A Companion to japanese histоry

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Coordination and Tripartite Wage Coordination and Tripartite Dialogue in Japan,’’

in Harry Katz, Wonduck Lee, and Joohee Lee, eds., The New Structure of Labor

Relations: Tripartism and Decentralization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

2004), and the October 2002 special issue of the journal Industrial Relations on

‘‘Japanese Industrial Rel ations in the New Millennium.’’

For readers wishing to glimpse Japanese perspectives, Nimura Kazuo’s study of

mine workers, The Ashio Riot of 1907: A Social History of Mining in Japan, ed. and

trans. Andrew Gordon (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), does double

duty as an extended critique of Japanese-language studies of Meiji era labor. Import-

ant contributions have been made by scholars in works ranging well beyond labor

affairs. They include Thomas Smith on economic history, Frank Upham on litigation,

Michael Cusumano on the auto industry, Frank Schwartz on policy-making, and

Hugh Whittaker on small firms.

510 CHARLES WEATHERS

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Authority and the Individual

J. Victor Koschmann

In 1995, a flurry of news articles announced that a ‘‘volunteer revolution’’ was under

way in Japan. Ironically, the occasion was provided by the massive earthquake

that struck the Kobe–Osaka area early in the morning on January 17, 1995, killing

over 6,400 people and rende ring more than 300,000 homeless. In the wake of

the disaster, as government agencies fumbled in red tape, over a million volunteers

from all over Japan mobilized to provide emergency relief to the victims. This

outpouring of civic-spirited initiative was hailed in the press, and some scholars

soon concluded that, when added to other trends, the volunteer boom signified

the advent at long last of a modern ‘‘civil society’’ in Japan.

Of course, civil society

is defined variously, but the broadest contem porary usage draws from Alexis

de Tocqueville to locate civil society in ‘‘the social relations and structures that

lie between the state and the market.’’

Some emphasize the proliferation of organ-

izations and associations while others, especially in Japan, think primarily of the

qualities and activities of ‘‘citizens.’’ Political scientist Iokibe Makoto explains that,

‘‘When Japanese political scientists use the term ‘civil society,’ it is usually as the

abstract concept of the society of citizens in cont rast to the apparatus of the state.

The same term may remind Americans of more specific, nongovernmental private

organizations. The society of citizens and private organizations are not conflicting

concepts.’’

The recent excitement in Japan over volunteering and civil society is of immediate

interest in relation to the problematic of authority and the individual in part because

in post-World War II Japan, civil society and the ideal of the citizen have been debated

primarily with reference to political activism and protest. For example, political

scientist Matsushita Keiichi was one who paid special attention to the ‘‘citizens’

movements’’ (shimin undo

) that sprang up in the 1960s and early 1970s in oppos-

ition to war, environmental pollution, and political cor ruption. Writing in 1971, he

characterized the emerging Japanese citizen as ‘‘free, a self-respecting human being,

capable of effectively organizing and initiating political policy. He is active in polit ics

because he is concerned with the problems of daily life rather than with an abstract

sense of duty to the nation.’’ Such citizens were beginning to resist what Matsushita

called the ‘‘control model’’ of political integration that centered on ‘‘an elitist ,

bureaucratic mentality.’’ In its place they sought to institute a ‘‘citizen participation

A Companion to Japanese History

Edited by William M. Tsutsui

model’’ of political integration and policy formation from the grass roots.

Like other

left-leaning scholars who believed that Japan’s modern revol ution had been only

partial and that the project of mod ernity was ther efore woefully incomp lete, especially

in the realm of political culture and values, Matsushita expected that these new

citizens would finally build a progressive civil society.

However, in the discourse on civil society and volunteering that has emerged since

1995, these concepts have often been divested of their former association with

political dissent. Of course, this does not mean that they have no political implica-

tions, but merely that those implications now tend to be subtle and implicit. In order

to perceive them it is often necessary to depart from the usual assumptions regarding

historical agency, power, and resistance.

Civil Society and the State

The viewpoint that genuine civil society has only recently emerged in Japan is

supported by a particular way of looking at Japanese history. For example, Iokibe

proposes three prerequisites for a healthy civil society – pluralism, appreciation for the

intrinsic value of the ‘‘people’’ and the private realm, and awareness of the public

interest – and offers an historical analysis to show how these failed to develop fully in

Japan. He finds that in the early modern era (1600–1868), the regional decentral-

ization of the Tokugawa regime and the hierarchical division of society into separate

castes of samurai, merchant, artisan, and farmer created the basis for forms of cultural

diversity that could be expressed as pluralism. In regard to the dignity of the people,

however, he finds that the spiritual concept of respect for each individual as a

manifestation of the Buddha, and comparable ideas in the Confucian tradition,

were never allowed to ‘‘evolve into a theory of democratic principles’’ or to ‘‘come

into play in the realities of politics and government’’ because of the separation of the

‘‘private,’’ as partial and unworthy, from the all-powerful ‘‘public’’ authority of

power structures. The emergence of a general notion of the public interest was

prevented by the same social differentiation and compartmentat ion that gave rise to

diversity.

In the modern era, following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan’s potential for

civil society is seen as having been retarded by a new set of circumstances. These

included the Meiji state’s drive to centralize and develop Japan economically from the

top down in the manner typical of ‘‘late-developing societies,’’ the bureaucracy’s

increasing authority and dominance, and the predatory environment of imperialism

in which Japanese leaders strove both to defend Japan and to launch their own

imperial and colonial ventures. Nevertheless, the 1920s brought an ‘‘assoc iational

revolution’’ in the proliferation of a wide variety of private organizations of the sort

that suggest an active civil society. These included businessmen’s groups, labor

unions, welfare societies, and academic, cultu ral, and international groupings of all

kinds. Nevertheless, Iokibe concludes that: ‘‘The privately initiated endeavors of this

period were troubled by the inherent vulnerability of greenhouse-cultivated plants.

They had not put down the sturdy roots that were needed to endure the cruel assault

of ultranationalism and militarism that swept the country following the Manchurian

Incident.’’

512 J. VICTOR KOSCHMANN

The post-World War II American occupation ‘‘liberated’’ individuals and the

private realm in some ways, but at the same time pres erved the central bureaucracy

and, implicitly, its ethos of monopolistic domination. Moreover, the postwar govern-

ment’s extreme emphasis on economic recovery and growth not only reinforced

bureaucratic dominance and the values of ‘‘productionism,’’ but encouraged the

hierarchical loyalism that during the war had focused on the state to be redirected

toward corporations, labor unions, and other economic entities, thus continuing to

impede the formation of multiple, cross-cutting affiliations and associations. Only in

the 1980s did the private realm gain sufficient independence and freedom to allow a

true civil so ciety to emerge.

The American historian of modern Japan, Sheldon Garon, takes a different ap-

proach. He begins his historical reflections by expressing doubts about the wisdom of

importing the concept of civil society to Japan, where it did not originate. He also

attempts to avoid preconceptions regarding the degree of ‘‘success’’ civil society

might have had in the Japanese historical context. As a result, he provides a nuanced

and sober argument, looking not at the overall orientation of state policy, like

Matsushita, but rather at how representatives of the state actually interacted with a

variety of components of civil society in the prewar, wartime, and postwar eras. For

him, civil society includes ‘‘the groups and public discourses that exist in spaces

between the state and the people’’ as well as ‘‘various forms of media.’’ He adds

that, ‘‘These associations and media are usually established independently of the state,

but not always.’’ Using this definition, he finds that although government interven-

tion and domination, as well as voluntary cooperation on the part of private entities,

wax and wane in modern Japan, the net result is a civil society subject to varying

degrees of dependence on the state. Garon recognizes the many limits the Tokugawa

shogunate imposed on developments conducive to civil society. Nevertheless, he also

notes that eventually, even in the early modern period, ‘‘significant space opened up

for public discussion and associational life.’’ Noting the spread of literacy, he men-

tions especially the proliferation of publications, private and domainal academies,

merchant societies, and intellectual and cultural associations among rich peasants.

However, rather than threatening the existing order, these activities ‘‘generally served

to manage the populace and stabilize the rule of higher authorities.’’

Garon is also

impressed by the relative ‘‘autonomy’’ and ‘‘spirited resistance to the government’’

that are evid ent in the late nineteenth century, following the Meiji Restoration, when

newspapers mushroomed, a new middle class began to be active in the cities, wealthy

peasants as well as urban intellectuals formed study groups, the Freedom and People’s

Rights Movement (jiyu

minken undo

) spread, and Christians inspired by the social

gospel ‘‘founded private charities, orphanages and reformatories.’’

From the turn of the twentieth century, however, the state intervened with in-

creasing vigor, passing a variety of laws that gradually reorganized and regulated a

variety of rural agricultural, trade, and social organizations under the state: ‘‘In each

case, the regime provided associations and cooperatives with subsidies and other

benefits. In exchange, the associations sur rendered their autonomy, becoming part

of hierarchical organizations intended to further official policies.’’

This pattern

would be repeated frequently in the decades to come. Although Garon notes the

strong resurgence in the 1920s of civil society in the form of associations, mass media,

women’s groups, and religio us sects, he cautions against exaggeration: ‘‘Despite its

AUTHORITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 513

vitality, civil society did not develop as autonomously from the state as historians

commonly portray in their accounts of interwar Japan.’’ Private organizations often

eagerly cooperated with state bureaucracies, trading autonomy for varying combin-

ations of legitimacy, power, and financial support. The result is ambiguous:

On balance, the interwar alliances between societal activists and bureaucrats served to

enmesh popular groups, making it difficult for civil society to challenge the state. At the

same time, these associations could be quite assertive, and the state was forced eventually

to include many societal actors in the apparatus of governance. In this sense, the interwar

expansion of civil society altered and, ironically, ‘‘popularized’’ the state’s management

of society.

Garon’s account is especially persuasive in relation to the wartime and postwar periods,

from the early 1930s down to the 1990s. In the case of wartime, he finds that the state

did, indeed, attempt to ‘‘obliterate civil society.’’ Nevertheless, it either could not, or

decided not to, transform entirely the patterns of interaction among state institutions,

private organizations, and individuals that had developed in the preceding decades.

Many private media were allowed to continue because of their potential usefulness in

mobilizing the populace. Moreover, many local and other associations were left more or

less intact but incorporated into newly established, hierarchical frameworks. The new

‘‘totalitarian designs’’ for society had paradoxical effect, in that ‘‘authoritarian incorp-

oration often had the unintended effect of relocating civil society’s spirited debates and

competition within the state itself.’’ Thus, ‘‘officials were compelled to ‘democratize’

their managerial apparatus, deputizing previously powerless elements.’’

Garon’s organizational analysis can be supplemented with an intellectual history of

the 1930s and early 1940s, and such a history would likely suggest that the devolu-

tion of a certain amount of autonomy to organizations and individuals, even within

an explicitly ‘‘tot alistic’’ framework, was not ent irely unintended. For example, in a

1940 report prepared under the auspices of a think tank that advised the prime

minister, philosopher Miki Kiyoshi and economist Ryu

Shintaro

rationalized the

controlled economy through an ideology of ‘‘cooperativism’’ that emphasized ‘‘the

individuality, spontaneity, and creativity of each person, thereby encouragi ng free

competition to secure a higher level of functionality.’’ People had to be persuaded of

the practicality of the economic plan so they could ‘‘participate in it spontaneously

and actively.’’

Similarly, in June 1942 social policy expert O

chi Kazuo hailed the

appearance of a new worker who had ‘‘the knowledge and insight necessary to grasp

the objective facts of wartime economic controls, and an active, spontaneous desire to

size up the situation and determine what kind of economic activity is required’’; and

in 1944, the famous economic historian O

tsuka Hisao promoted a new economic

ethic that would combine intense ‘‘inner originality’’ with ‘‘instrumental rational-

ity.’’

In other words, a number of wartime intellectuals who advised gover nment

agencies recognized that if economic and social mobilization for total war were to

succeed, it would require not just passive obedience but active, constr uctive partici-

pation by all segments of the population. They also believed that such high motiv-

ation would emerge only as the counterpar t to a modicum of freedo m and autonomy.

In other words, certain elements of civil society had to be enhanced, even in the

context of a highly integrated, controlled system.

514 J. VICTOR KOSCHMANN

Following Japan’s surrender, the occupation forces set about dismantling social

structures that had supported Japan’s version of fascism, and had a great deal of

success. However, as Garon points out, especially at the level of organizational

networks and dynamics, significant continuity survived the transition from wartime

to postwar: ‘‘A more assertive civil society unquestionably emerged during the early

postwar years. At the same time, many seemingly autonomous groups remained

intertwined with the state.’’

At the local level, organizations reconstituted them-

selves along wartime lines, and at the regional and national level organizations of

women, youth, unionists, and businessmen again showed their willingness to cooper-

ate with, and to some extent be dom inated by, state bureaucracies. For its part, the

postwar state continued its practice of subsidizing, and thereby both strengthening

and sapping the independence of, a wide range of associations. Garon admits that the

rise of oppositional citizens ’ movements in the 1960s and 1970s ‘‘straine d’’ relations

between civil society and the state, but ‘‘of ficials soon found ways of harnessing

popular energy to achieve national goals.’’ Apropos of the volunteer boom, he

observes that:

To address the problem of Japan’s rapidly aging society, the Ministry of Health and

Welfare spearheaded efforts to muster ever-increasing numbers of community ‘‘volun-

teers’’ to assist the elderly and others during the 1980s and 1990s. . . . Of course, many

of these people have decided on their own to help out. Still, we should not forget that

the core of these so-called volunteers are members of existing local associations that have

long cooperated with the authorities.

As Garon suggests, the ‘‘volunteer revolution’’ post-1995 combined spontaneous

activism by indiv iduals with vigorous encouragement from government and the

media.

Volunteer Boom

Partly in response to the public discourse on volunteering and civil society that

expanded so rapidly in the 1990s, in 1998 the National Diet passed the so-called

Nonprofit Organization (NPO) Law, or Law to Promote Specified Nonprofit Activ-

ities. The law, which was intended to facilitate citizen participation in activities that

‘‘benefit society’’ and ‘‘contribute to the advancement of public welfare,’’ led to

significant increases in the number of officially recognized NPOs. By one reckoning

the number of authorized NPOs reached about 5,000 by mid-2002, 10,000 by

2003, and over 15,000 by 2004. Most are in health and social welfare, adult

education, community development, youth affairs, and international cooperation.

The volunteers who staff them are from various walks of life, and identify themselves

as housewives (31 percent), retirees (18 percent), businesspeople (14 percent), or

self-employed persons (10 percent). Overall, substantially more women than men

volunteer, although executives of NPOs tend to be male.

Even such a rough breakdown of participants raises the question of motivation.

The fact that women and retirees tend to be the most numerous suggests that a

depressed labor market that discriminates against women and recently generates

AUTHORITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 515

increased numbers of relatively young retirees might be a factor in the volunteer

boom. According to Lynne Nakano,

Statistics show that the rates of volunteering peak among women in the thirties and men

in the sixties, ages when workforce participation rates for men and women are at their

lowest. In this way, volunteering is partly a product of institutional structures that

privilege young women’s and middle-aged and younger men’s participation in the

workforce, and leave the lowest paying and the least desirable jobs to middle-aged and

older women and older men.

In 2002, over 60 percent of female Japanese workers were part-t ime and/or held

‘‘permanently temporary status’’ in the workforce. Moreover, so-called part-time

workers often have to work virtually the same hours as full-time workers.

When

these working conditions are combined with tax laws that penalize wives who make

more than one million yen per year, it is not surprising that many married women

volunteer instead, especially since many volunteers in NPOs are actually paid a small

amount.

However, several studies suggest that materi al conditions alone provide an inad-

equate account of volunteers’ motivation. Apparently, it is nece ssary to take into

account values and, more broadly, issues related to personal identity and meaning. In

her study of ‘‘housewife’’ volunteers, for example, Robin LeBlanc observed that they

were motivated in part by the values of ‘‘openness, equality, flexibility, and respect for

individual difference with a general emphasis on ‘humanity’ in relations (as opposed

to rank, custom, or prestige).’’ Even more interestingly, she finds that local volun-

teering – in a neighbo rhood center for the handicapped, in this case – reinforces and

overlaps with the encompassing identity of ‘‘housewife.’’ That is, volunteering not

only requires many of the same skills as hom emaking but it functions as a counterpart

to, and even a means to realizing, the fundamental identity of a housewife.

At the

same time, it generates the knowledge and power that put housewives in contact with

local bureaucrats and power-brokers, thereby in some cases complicating and even

threatening the egalitarian, humanitarian values they espouse. To be sure, according

to LeBlanc, the housewife-volunteer identity is inherently political because it provides

a way of situating oneself in relation to public expectatio ns.

It is a public persona

that is recognized and provides a locus for self-expression and a certain authority. Yet

it is also subjectively ‘‘anti-political’’ in that the women consider neighborly, house-

wifely values to be fundamentally opposed to those informing the political world.

Identity, in the sense of a personal life strategy that provides meaning, satisfaction,

and public respect, was also important in the cases investigated by Lynne Nakano. In

Japan’s affluent society, individuals are conscious of making choices among alterna-

tive lifestyles and identities, and volunteering is one choice.

Similarly, in comment-

ing on a publication by a grou p of young people volunteering in the day-laborer

slums of Tokyo, Carolyn Stevens reports that, for the authors, volunteering has to do

primarily with ‘‘one’s own will and desire.’’ Their approach to volunteering ‘‘does

not necessarily focus on the cause or the object of the work, but focuses on the actors

themselves. In other words, volunteering has just as much to do with the volunteers

themselves as the services they perform.’’

Such observations are borne out in

Akihiro Ogawa’s ethnographic study of an educational NPO in which the volunteers

516 J. VICTOR KOSCHMANN

‘‘were just looking for ‘something’ to satisfy their own individual needs.’’ As one

volunteer remarked, ‘‘We primarily try to enhance ourselves through volunteer-

ing.’’

Apparently, many contemporary Japanese are attracted to volunteering fo r

personal reasons involving identity and lifestyle quite apart from any sense of duty or

desire to contribute to society and the world. At the same time, by its very nature,

volunteering through the media of NGOs, NPOs, or local, unofficial groups and

associations is tightly imbricated in the sociopolitical world.

To what degree is the recent increase in volunteer-type civil association and activism

actually new and unprecedented? Some, including Iokibe and Matsushita, mention

the ‘‘citizens’ movements’’ of 1960 and after as manifestations of a postwar ethos of

activism in civil society. It is true that recent manifestations of volunteerism seem to

differ from the 1960s in their relatively low level of overt pol iticality. On the other

hand, the various forms of social organization that fed into the political demonstra-

tions of the 1960s and fueled the environmental and other movements of the early

1970s wer e not necessarily political from the beginning. In his eye-opening study of

the origins of citi zen participation in the massive movement against the US–Japan

Security Treaty in 1960, Wesley Sasaki-Uemura shows that ‘‘the groundwork for

grassroots activism had already been laid by various circle movements that had formed

in the 1950s. These were small, informal, voluntary organizations whose face-to-face

contact may be have been their most salient characteristic.’’ In the 1950s, such

groups were usually focused on cultural activities such as singing, dancing, poetry,

hiking, or nature appreciation. Members were very often women, and ‘‘what distin-

guished circles from other social relations was that people created and maintained

them on the basis of common personal interests’’ rather than in response to govern-

ment or other organizations’ mobilization efforts. Even those initiated by the Com-

munist Party retained considerable independence and spurned party directives.

For example, the women who comprised the Grass Seeds (Kusa no Mi Kai) circle

‘‘had come together to study and discuss problems that women faced in everyday

life.’’ Accordingly, they sought to remain non-partisan, even though many members

eventually participated in the 1960 anti-Treaty demonstrations. According to Sasaki-

Uemura, ‘‘The model of informal, egalitarian gatherings that also had a public

character suited the Grass Seeds and other such citizen movements that organized

themselves on the prin ciples of local autonomy and voluntary, individual participa-

tion.’’

In other words, groups such as the Grass Seeds should be considered typical

elements of modern civil society. While oriented primarily to civil rather than political

matters, they are quite aware of the political relevance of their concerns and are ready

to act politically if it serves their purposes. In this regard, such associat ions are not

unlike the contemporary volun teer groups studied by LeBlanc.

On the other hand, some argue convincingly that contemporary Japanese volun-

teerism depends heavily on technological and cultural conditions specific to the

cybernetic age. The explanation offered by historian of social thought Nakano Toshio

emphasizes the choices among the wide range of alternative identities made available

to young people via the Internet . He postulates that, ‘‘the weakening of social bonds

as a result of the hyper-informationalization of society leads to expansion and diver-

sification of information impacting on individuals, and exposes them to the influence

of pluralistic social forces.’’ By hyper-informationalization he refers primarily to

individuals’ constant access to electronic media:

AUTHORITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 517

Children who once learned established customs and skills . . . through ‘‘helping’’ their

parents are now seated in front of television and computer screens and, through anima-

tion and role-playing games as well as e-mail and telephone interactions with others,

learn multiple ‘‘realities’’ and ‘‘lifestyles’’ in abstraction from both temporal frame and

national and class connections; as a result, they absorb a wide range of emotional

expressions and ways of communicating. . . . [T]hese individuals are like terminals in

which multifarious knowledges (powers) intersect, or like nodes of information process-

ing and selection.

The various identit ies they encounter are ‘‘abstract,’’ in that they are not embedded

in real life contexts; nevertheless they provide an unprecedented degree of what

Alberto Melucci calls ‘‘potential for individualization.’’ That is, individuals are con-

fronted with many alternatives, and from them can eclectically piece together their

own identity. However, this set of possibilities – in other words, ‘‘freedom’’ – is

always ambivalent:

On the one hand, individuals at the intersection of plural social forces are confronted

with many behavioral alternatives, and to that extent their ability to reflect and adapt

is heightened ...; on the other hand, in order to gain access to objects of desire and

the codes through which they can be obtained and understood, the individual

must depend on various interventionist social forces that manipulate symbols,

and these forces are capable in some cases of thoroughly subjecting the individual to

control.

Therefore, the ‘‘potential for individualization’’ is ambivalently situated as the pre-

condition both for freedom and unf reedom.

Forces for national solidarity and social order respond in dif ferent ways to

the individual’s potential for freedom. On the one hand, they can negate that

potential by coercing or cajoling the individual into established roles and responsi-

bilities; on the other, they may seek to guide the individual’s ‘‘free’’ and ‘‘spontan-

eous’’ search for self-identity in such a way that it supports a nd merges with the

established so cial system. When successful, either response can narrow the individ-

ual’s range of choice and reduce his experience of difference, but it is the latter

response that is consistent with ‘‘glorification of ‘volun teering as a way of life’,’’

and mobilization of ‘‘abstract volunteer subjects.’’ By abstract, here Nakano means

they are committed for personal reasons to volunteering as such rather than merely

employing it as a me ans. Moreover, precisely because this spontaneous subject is

abstract, it has a ‘‘built-in affinity for the dominant discursive mod e in the contem-

porary ‘public’ realm (and, therefore, an affinity for nationalism in the broad sense,

which incorporates us as a ‘we’).’’

In other words, so long as people seek oppor-

tunities to volunteer merely in pursuit of personal goals, such as identity formation,

meaning in life, self-respect, etc., while making minimal value judgments in selecting

one opportunity over another, they are likely to end up in volunteer programs that

ratify the status quo. This tendency toward ‘‘abstract’’ volunteering is likely to be

intensified by recent publications extolling volunteerism, which dwell not on the

social usefulness or significance to the state of volunteer activity but rather on its

intrinsic value to the volunteer, that is, the supposedly salutary effect of the ‘‘volun-

teer lifestyle.’’

518 J. VICTOR KOSCHMANN

Civil Society and Neo-Liberal Governance

Among the recent developments often mentioned as preconditions for the volunteer

boom are Japan’s trade surpluses of the 1980s, which created the conditions

for remarkable increases in foreign aid, including the Japan Overseas Cooperation

Volunteer program which sent young people abroad for people-to-people aid.

Such programs contributed to the attractiveness of volunteering as at least a tempor-

ary alternative to corporate life. The same surpluses also generated pressure for

an expansion of corporate philanthropy, exemplified in the One Percent Club formed

in Keidanren (Japan Federation of Economic Organizations) in 1989 to urge mem-

ber corporations to donate 1 percent of their pre-tax revenues to charity. Environ-

mental pollution and the expansion of research regarding such issues as global

warming raised consciousness regarding international environmental issues and

the uses of activism. Moreover, the cold war ended, whi ch lowered barriers among

nations and created a more pluralistic global environment for transnational

civil society.

Popular consciousness of and interest in non-profit organizations

was stimulat ed by the national press. According to one study, articles on NGOs

and NPOs in the three major dailies numbered 178 in 1990, 850 in 1992,

and 1,455 in 1994. After the quake they jumped to 2,151 in 1995 and 2,868

in 1997.

The most important factor mentioned, however, was the turn in the 1980s toward

the ‘‘politics of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and [Japanese Prime Minister]

Nakasone Yasuhiro,’’ who ‘‘advocated private-sector participation in public projects

and privatization of public enterprises, stressing the market economy and small

government.’’ According to Iokibe, ‘‘the determination in the 1980s to invigorate

the private sector without relying on the government provided important conditions

for the development of c ivil society.’’

This ‘‘determination’’ was manifested in part

in the Ad Hoc Commission on Administrative Reform, an advisory organ to the

prime minister. Among the results was the establishm ent of ‘‘government-private

burden-sharing’’ as the guiding principle of reform. Government policy, therefore, is

centrally involved in the ‘‘volunteer boom.’’ This is evident from a number of angles.

The Central Council for Education, which advises the Ministry of Education, Cul-

ture, Sports, Science, and Technology, recently issued a draft revision of the Funda-

mental Law of Education that promoted the principle of ‘‘civic responsibility for

proactively participating in public affairs.’’ Ogawa quotes the draft revision:

It is the responsibility of people living in a democratic country to be proactively involved

in matters of the state and society. . . . However, so far we Japanese are liable to depend

on somebody else’s action regarding these issues. We believe it is someone else’s

responsibility. That is not acceptable. Instead, we need to cultivate a sense of public

awareness.

It is striking that here the conservative Education Ministry is criticizing political and

social passivity and promoting participa tory activism by appealing to the same devel-

opmental model of Japanese backwardness that has been a staple of left-wing

discourse. More specifically, the Ministry has begun promoting volunteerism as a

way of life:

AUTHORITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 519