ABSTRACT
Neighborhood associations (NHAs) are found in many countries throughout the world, but Japan distinguishes itself through its nationwide blanketing by the organizations (about 300,000 across Japan) and by the high rates at which citizens participate in the groups. By any measure, NHAs as a group are the biggest civil society organization in Japan: they have the most organizations, the most members, and attract the greatest participation. In addition to their size, Japanese NHAs have drawn attention from scholars because of their “ambiguous” nature that “straddles” the boundary of state and society (Pekkanen and Read, 2003; Read and Pekkanen, 2009; Read, 2012). Besides the interest from students of civil society, we argue here that NHAs should command attention from anyone interested in governance at the local level. Indeed, much of this book makes the argument that NHAs contribute to local governance in five specific ways. Unfortunately, our understanding of NHAs has been limited, because scholars lacked detailed nation-wide information about the groups. In this book, we are able to draw from the first ever detailed nationwide survey of NHAs in order to shed light on many aspects of NHAs.
