STATE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN JAPAN

STATE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN JAPAN

This is a report about the development and the current state of Japanese civil society. Japan is the only non-Western nation or non-Western industrialized democracy and the Japanese perhaps place the development of their civil society groups in the same league with those of other industrialized nations. However, it seems that there are huge gaps between the civil society groups of Japan and those selected few.
Japan has more than enough number of small local groups. The voluntary or non-legal civil society groups formed by citizen activists are abundant engaged in variety of activities including social welfare, environmental protection, women’s rights and community problems. They are called ‘Neighborhood Associations’ (NA) and these NAs get active support from local Governments. The local governments support the NAs through grants that are small but the reason the government supports these NAs is that they are limited to small geographic areas, each consumed with particular problems and issues, and can not actually seriously challenge the state in terms of policy proposals and policy analysis. The local governments in Japan find NAs to be very beneficial in running the state affairs in the particular area and try to use them as much as possible.
However, such small local groups sometimes do create miracles, especially in matters such as environmental problem. For example, a group of 200 something villagers gathered together, decided to protest against the Oita Governor on his decision to establish certain factories along the fishing offshore, which ultimately they won. In fact, few days after finishing my report, I was surfing the internet and came across a Japanese web-site that wrote about very influential local groups, who have indeed led to establishment of a system of local ombudsman charged with investigation of matters related to local administration. The system was set up by the concerned authorities first in 1990 in the city of Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture to respond to the complaints raised by group of local residents. This actually shows that although the NAs are small and unprofessional, they can bring about changes. Perhaps, that is why local governments try to maintain good and working relations with neighborhood associations both involving them in their affairs and themselves being involved in their affairs.
On the other hand, how about overall picture of the Japanese civil society? Overall, the Japanese civil society is apparently very weak. Gender equality, environmental pollution problems, whaling and human rights issues were all taken up and integrated into policy documents by the bureacrats, who used to be widely respected in Japan. Let’s refer to the same Oita example of protesting villagers. They were all very enthusiastic in the beginning of their undertaking, but they were nervous and this nervousness was obvious. They were anxious, because, the Governor was a graduate of Tokyo University, the incubator of central government officials and now he was the most prestigious person in the entire prefecture. How would they face him with demands not to set up some factories, which would destroy their fishing ground? This was, first of all, something cultural, secondly, it, I believe, is related to Japanese group mentality orientation.
Obviously, I am not saying that the Japanese civil soicety has apparently always been stagnant all these years. Even though loud advocacy voices were mostly not heard, the above mentioned small NAs have always been alive with new ideas and proposals, actively exerting their labor at the grassroots level. However, does a civil society organization with advocacy roles, who echoes the people’s voices to the central government, who make the policy, exist at all in Japan? Unfortunately, in Japan, it seems, there are very few large professionalized civil society groups, who can actually stand out to exert impact for substantial change in Japan’s democracy.
Why is it so? The Meiji Civil Code of 1896 profoundly affected the evolution of Japanese civil society. The Meiji Civil Code of Japan was written with intent of hurdling the creation and organization of civil groups. Of course, only Japan did not do this.　Regulation of civil society has always been part of any country’s political process. But the core provisions of the Civil Code in Japan seldom change and it is of course very difficult to alter somewhat ‘dark’ legacy left behind by the Meiji era, well-known for its splendid role in Japanese history for bringing an end to Japan’s seclusion, creation of an education system, ending feudal land holdings and adopting a cabinet system of government.
Also, in Japan, the legal provisions are often very strict and complicated and therefore, it seems to be rather troublesome to set up, run and maintain large advocacy civil society groups. Many civil society groups face pressures from the state in terms of institutional factors including legal regulations and bureaucratic practices. There are even cases of some government agencies directly pressuring the civil society group to appoint the retired bureaucrats in important posts within the group itself.
Also, very often, the fate of the civil society group is in the hands of a single bureaucrat. The institutional arrangements has made so that the bureaucrat is in charge of monitoring and sanctioning powers of the respective civil society group and if the group fails to obey whatever the bureaucrat tells them, it is the end for them: the group is dissolved at the worst. It could be done without any effective legal challenge. Nonetheless, a very high-profile official of Sasakawa Foundation acknowedged that even they have to go through all the bureacratic arrangements for permission and licenses suffering like the rest of other civil society groups in Japan.
The above are the few of the obstacles the civil society groups aspiring to have legal status (apparently, in Japan the CSOs are divided into those with legal status and without legal status) face on the way and eventually finish with orders for dissolution. It is not surprising why there are not many advocacy civil society groups in Japan. The reasons are abundant.
In this case, are advocacy groups are effective? Yes, they are very effective in understanding and practices of all other democratic countries. The advocacy groups are very important in conducting well-grounded research on policy matters, presenting them to the public through mass media, influencing the public discourse, initiating public debate, providing the necessary testimony before the policy-makers and achieving what they were aspiring for.
There is a common perspective that the civil society both fosters and hinders any political processes including democracy. In the case of Japan, even though the huge number of small civil society groups have definitely enhanced the overall democratic performance at the local level and produced more social capital, it is not enough to influence on the performance of bureacrats, demand greater transparency and accountability from the state, and therefore, does not obviously strenghten the democracy in Japan.

REFERENCE:

1. Japan: Social Capital without Advocacy by R.Pekkanen, p223. Civil Society and Political Change in Asia; Stanford University Press, 2004.
2. Environmental politics in Japan, J.Broadbent, pp1-2. Cambridge University Press, 1999
3. http://web-japan.org/factsheet/local/awarenes.html