Zur Entwicklung einer partizipatorischen Zivilgesellschaft in Japan

The Development of a Participatorial Society in Japan

A critical look at the current political, societal and cultural debates in Japan shows that Japanese society is confronted nowadays by a double set of tensions between globalisation vs. renationalisation on the one hand, and individualisation vs. commonality on the other. There is hardly a process that evinces this position of Japan more distinctly and more instructively than the origin and the implementation of the 1999 law for creating a »framework for the establishment of a society with equal participation for women and men« (danjo kyōdō sankaku shakai kihonhō, in the following: »participation law«; the local English technical term is »The Basic Law for a Gender-Equal Society«). It is a salient feature of the process initiated by this movement that it is characterised by the intimate connection of democratisation and the women’s movement with a global human rights and anti-discrimination movements. At the same time, it causes insecurity and anxiety on the side of conservative critics, who see the strong links between the Japanese nation state and a societal structure deeply influenced by nationally oriented cultural, gender and family ideals imperilled. The violent debates surrounding the participation law therefore point to the confrontation of two tendencies characterising present Japanese society: the development of Japan towards a globally oriented, transcultural, and participatory civil society, geared towards a gender-free orientation, is pitched against a counter movement towards the restitution and strengthening of the nation-based state. The latter wants to prevent what they see as the »destruction of Japanese culture«, aiming at re-establishing traditional gender and family structure. It is in this fundamental debate that the future development of Japanese society will be decided.