For all the obstacles that remain, civil society is burgeoning in Japan, and the idea of civil society is at the core of the current debate about how to reinvigorate the country. This book gathers the insights of American and Japanese scholars from the fields of political science, sociology, social psychology, and history to investigate the nature of associational life and the public sphere in Japan. It goes beyond assessing the condition of civil society to explore the role of the state in shaping civil society over time, and its broad, comparative framework is useful for thinking about civil society not just in Japan, but elsewhere in the contemporary world. Given its wealth of original research and the uniform strength of its individual chapters, this book will appeal to a broad audience of social scientists, practitioners, and policy-makers.

'This impressive and wide-ranging collection of essays explores the problems and potential of Japan's increasingly robust civil society … The scope and high quality of the 15 chapters make this an important and rewarding book with wide appeal.'

Source: The Japan Times

'The contributors' insistence on analyzing the interplay between the state and civil society, rather than studying the spheres in isolation, is a valuable framework … the book is a major step toward understanding the complexity of Japan's civil society, especially the interplay of society and the state.'

Source: The Asahi Shimbun