This impressive and wide-ranging collection of essays explores the problems and potential of Japan's increasingly robust civil society. In analyzing institutional and regulatory developments in the context of powerful historical legacies, the writers examine how the state is powerfully shaping the evolution of civil society and vice versa.
The scope and high quality of the 15 chapters make this an important and rewarding book with wide appeal. Interestingly, the editors seem more optimistic about the prospects for civil society in Japan than many of the contributors.
Sheldon Garon surveys the nature of state control of civil society in modern Japan and the abiding distrust of autonomous associations by those who govern. Sobered by the lessons of history, he sensibly asks, "Has civil society finally reined in the managerial Japanese state, or has that state once again enmeshed a new generation of popular associations?"