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

Making Japanese Citizens is an expansive history of the activists, intellectuals, and movements that played a crucial role in shaping civil society and civic thought in postwar Japan. Weaving his analysis around the concept of shimin (citizen), Simon Andrew Avenell traces the development of a new vision of citizenship based on political participation, self-reliance, popular nationalism, and commitment to daily life. This rich portrayal of activists and their ideas illuminates questions of democracy, citizenship, and political participation not only in contemporary Japan but also, more generally, in other industrialized nations.

"This provocative book provides a historically grounded, densely documented, and analytically shrewd account of the `mythology of the citizen' in postwar Japan. Simon Andrew Avenell chronicles a history of co-optation, 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 interests. 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.
Simon Andrew Avenell is Assistant Professor in the Department of Japanese Studies at the National University of Singapore.