ABSTRACT
Chapter 11 has offered an extensive overview of the many ways that Japan’s civil society shapes and is shaped by its interactions with the state. This chapter is intended to give readers more of a feel for how specific volunteer groups have been working to transform Japan’s democracy. With the promulgation of its constitution in 1947 and the dramatic legal reforms of the Occupation, Japan became an institutional democracy. However, making democracy real at the grassroots level has been a much lengthier process involving millions of individual Japanese working hard in their communities to improve life for themselves, their neighbors, their country, and their world.
