ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how civic participation in machizukuri in Zushi, a small town in the Tokyo metropolitan region, has sought to preserve and promote Zushi's cityscape through the pursuit of fudo – the place where nature, manmade environment and human activities interact. Genfukei is also comprised of tangible clues, such as natural and manmade physical assets and events that revive the memories of fudo. Subsequently, five sub-groups – natural environment, urban landscape, transport systems, culture and community – were created to facilitate intimate and substantial discussion among all 130 members on subject matters identified by the task force. As yet in its infancy, with a history of barely 150 years, contemporary Japanese civil society is growing through an experimental process involving trial and error in the operation of local communities as well as at the scale of a nation state.
