Making Japanese Citizens Civil Society and the Mythology of the Shimin in Postwar Japan

Reviews

“This book is a much welcome addition, one that forces us to recognize the centrality of historical ideas. It is a must-read for all who want to understand contemporary Japanese society and politics.”—Japanese Journal Of Political Science

“This book is an ambitious intellectual history of social movements in postwar Japan . . . . [A] commendable project.”—Franziska Seraphim American Historical Review

“[Avenell’s] breadth of knowledge about the pantheon of Japanese postwar intellectuals is breathtaking, and through many revealing anecdotes his text reads like a history of the people, by the people, for the people.”—Roman Rosenbaum Japanese Studies

“Avenell contributes an important piece to the historic puzzle.”—Monumenta Nipponica

“This book obviously has much to recommend it. There are scarcely any other works, even those written in Japanese, that cover the evolution of the postwar concepts of shimin and civil society in Japan in such great detail. . . . A considerable accomplishment.”—Shigeki Uno/University of Tokyo Social Science Japan Jrnl

"This provocative book provides a historically grounded, densely documented, and analytically shrewd account of the 'mythology of the citizen' in postwar Japan. Avenell chronicles a history of cooptation, revealing that the citizen myth was susceptible to ethnic-nationalist sentiment, and later to the appeal of 'spontaneous' social service that could promote convergence with state and corporate interest. Nevertheless, as Avenell clearly shows, the mythology of the citizen remains attractive and retains its potential as an instrument of critique-for the essential act of negation that is the final protector of any democratic collectivity from supervening authority."—Andrew Barshay, author of The Social Sciences in Modern Japan: The Marxian and Modernist Traditions