Transnationalism, Activism and Civil Society in Japan

This chapter examines the waves of transnationalism in postwar Japanese civil society, with specific attention to two critical phases: the 1970s watershed and the advent of global civil society in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on the concept of “waves of democratization” in modern Japan, the chapter argues that waves of transnationalism stimulated dual processes of grassroots regionalization and grassroots globalization within Japanese civil society as activists became more and more attuned to, first, issues connecting Japan to its immediate region (East Asia) and, second, issues connecting Japan to global challenges such as the environment and human rights. As the chapter shows, along with this educative role, transnationalism also fed into the structural, institutional and ideational transformation of civil society within Japan. The chapter emphasizes the bidirectional impacts of transnationalism.