Brief overview of the factual and onto-epistemological developments of the idea of “civil society” in Japan

Abstract

In the context of post-industrial societies, there are few resources left to ordinary citizens to respond to the totalizing logic of systemic dynamics characterized by the expansion of economic and formal subjectivity. Likewise, the damage done to the environment and the increasing incidence of natural disasters, both driven by anthropogenic action, make a more complex response from society necessary and, in turn, pose the need to find collective answers to transnational issues. This global situation leads us to consider how civil society can generate community cohesion, leverage common interest and respond to environmental problems. After several ethnographic investigations focused on social change in Japan, we identified some things that, together with the shocking initial images spread globally after the catastrophe of March 11, 2011 in Tōhoku, have helped us take the pulse of the associative Japanese world. These images highlighted some of the fundamental characteristics of Japanese civil society, contributing to the spread throughout the world of a series of constructs that are as typical of a society socially exemplary as they are culturally totalizing. It might seem the eleven years that have elapsed since the Triple Disaster of March 2011 in Japan have provided us with a broad perspective from which to interpret the dynamics of Japanese civil society and public administration in the face of these events. However, we consider that the analysis of socio-historical developments that embody Euro-Atlantic modernity, with indigenous cultural constructs and with globalization, is essential. For this reason, in this article, from the perspective of intellectual history and historical sociology, we will analyse the adaptability of the concept of civil society in Japan and a whole series of social processes that have been gestating for decades and whose development is brought together in entities of great factual importance for the future.
 Received: 31 May 2022Accepted: 25 July 2022