ABSTRACT
Neighborhood Associations (NA) are very widely distributed through almost all Japanese communities with a high participation rate of residents and are well known as an essential part of Japanese civil society (Pekkanen 2004: 225; Pharr 2003: 326). This form of community group has had powerful effects on the style, form and operation of community organization in Japan; this is in large part why age and gender groups such as women’s associations, elderly associations, and children’s associations exist widely across the country. In order to operate, NAs usually have a long-standing tradition of decision-making based on participation of member households, thereby being able to convey the demands and concerns of residents. Local governments, therefore, routinely expect NAs to represent the opinions of member households. In the meantime, machizukuri efforts often attempt to prioritize new sets of ideas and values for local environments and intend to involve new actors in the process. Drawing on their previous relations with NAs, local governments often expect that NAs would play a central role in machizukuri. There are, however, clear signs of decline in the effectiveness of NAs as representatives of community interests. The questions this chapter addresses are: how do NAs act in machizukuri process, and what impacts do the NAs have on machizukuri processes? Before examining two case studies on machizukuri efforts to investigate answers to the above questions, I explore the organizational characteristics of NAs such as organizational structure, general activities, and their relationship with local governments. The discussion of the general characteristics of NAs will help explain why NAs took a certain form of behavior in the machizukuri processes described in the case studies.
