JAPAN'S "CULTURE OF GIVING" AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS, by Akira Matsubara and Hiroko Todoroki, translated by Richard Forrest. Tokyo: Coalition for Legislation to Support Citizen's Organizations, 2003, 45 pp., free (paper).

Japan's transformation is proceeding quietly, slipping beneath media radar screens because the policy, institutional and legal innovations being introduced on a piecemeal basis will not solve today's problems tomorrow. There is no "big bang," but that does not mean that there are not many thoughtful and innovative responses to Japan's malaise that are propelling various reforms.

As the familiar landscape fades away, what were once considered ineradicable verities have been jettisoned. The reinvention of Japan may be proceeding too slowly for some and involve far too much compromise and dithering, but such is the nature of social change -- fitful, cumulative and gradual.

Nonprofit Organizations, or NPOs, are at the vanguard of change in Japan, benefiting from the crisis in the government's credibility. The endless deluge of scandals involving the nation's mandarins and the government's bungled relief efforts in the wake of the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995, which killed 6,433 people, have undermined public faith in the "best and the brightest."