Zehn Jahre NPOs in Japan : Diversifizierung des Dritten Sektors durch Recht

Ten years of NPOs in Japan – Third Sector Diversification by Law

10 years ago, in 1998 the Japanese parliament passed the NPO-law. The law was highly appreciated among the concerned citizens, since it promised an improvement for non-profit organisations in Japan, by offering them legal status.
The aim of the article is to analyse the effects that the implementation of the law has had on the structure of the developing Third sector in Japan. After giving an overview of the legal framework within which non-profit organisations had to work until 1998, and the problems which derived from their lack of public acknowledgement, the article proceeds with an introduction of the law from the first enactment in 1998, until the recent reform debate. It becomes clear that the new law creates a new public space for non-profits. However, implementation indicates crucial restrictions for the future development of the Third sector: by comparing the concept of the newly created non-profit organisations with citizen’s associations without any legal status, and semi-professionalized public non-profit corporations, NPOs resources remain scarce. In addition, public support has to be defended against citizen groups without any legal status, which are predominant at the local level, as well as the established non-profit public corporations, which used to be active as interest groups.