dxt dxt

Community Volunteers in Japan

Volunteering is a recent and highly visible activity in Japan, practiced by

millions of Japanese, and covered widely in the Japanese media. This book,

based on extensive original research, explores volunteering in an urban

residential Japanese neighbourhood. It discusses the activities volunteers engage

in, their experiences and their motivations, and argues that personal decisions to

volunteer, besides being personal choices, also reflect national level discussions

of the needs and directions of Japanese society.

Lynne Y. Nakano is an Associate Professor in the Department of Japanese

Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. An anthropologist by training,

her main areas of research include self-identity, gender, mass media, and popular

culture. She is currently researching gender issues in Hong Kong and Japan.

Japan Anthropology Workshop Series

Series editor: Joy HendryOxford Brookes University

Editorial board:

Pamela Asquith, University of Alberta

Eyal Ben Ari, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hirochika Nakamaki, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka

Wendy Smith, Monash University

Jan van Bremen, University of Leiden

A Japanese View of Nature

The world of living things by Kinji Imanichi

Translated by Pamela J. Asquith, Heita Kawakatsu, Shusuke Yagi and

Hiroyuki Takasaki

Edited and introduced by Pamela J. Asquith

Japans Changing Generations

Are young people creating a new society?

Edited by Gordon Mathews and Bruce White

Community Volunteers in Japan

Everyday stories of social change

Lynne Y. Nakano

Community Volunteers inJapanEveryday stories of social change

Lynne Y. Nakano

First published 2005by RoutledgeCurzon2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby RoutledgeCurzon270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

# 2005 Lynne Y. Nakano

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproducedor utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission inwriting from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataA catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0415323169

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

ISBN 0-203-34229-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-38716-3 (Adobe eReader Format) (Print edition)

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledgescollection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

Contents

Series editors preface vi

Acknowledgments viii

1 Introduction 1

2 Volunteers stories 16

3 Gender reform 39

4 Raising children 64

5 Juvenile delinquency prevention 80

6 PTA mothers 105

7 Social welfare for the elderly 126

8 Community care brought home 145

9 Conclusion 165

Notes 172

Bibliography 180

Index 188

Series editors preface

Members of the Japan Anthropology Workshop carry out detailed and insightful

research in Japan, and meet regularly to present papers about their work, and to

exchange views on the subjects of their study. This series aims to bring the best

of their work into print, and to make it available as soon as possible. In this way

we aim to offer a deep understanding of contemporary Japanese society that

records changes as they take place as well as illuminating the underlying

continuity of Japanese ideas. Anthropologists specialize in digging beneath the

surface, in peeling off and examining layers of cultural wrapping, and in gaining

an understanding of language and communication that goes beyond the formal

presentation and informal frolicking. I hope that this series will open the eyes of

readers from many backgrounds to the work of these diligent moles in the

social life of Japan.

Our series is open to the inclusion of the translation of the work of Japanese

scholars, collections of papers around particular themes, and monographs of

ethnographic research on a range of different topics. The first book in the series

was the translation of the work of the seminal Japanese anthropologist, Imanishi

Kinji, who had profound ideas about the place of human beings in the living

world. His ideas do not confirm theories almost unquestioned in the West, and

we hoped that the book would make readers rethink one or two of their long-held

assumptions. The second book was a collection of papers about generational

change in Japan, and brought the views of young people, Japanese and foreign,

who had worked with young people. It presented a fresh picture about

possibilities for the future. The third was a rich ethnography about care of the

elderly in Japan, focusing in particular on a deep and detailed account of life in

one home where the ethnographer worked.

This present volume follows in the tradition of the last as a monograph of fine

ethnographic research, and the author has again used much participant

observation in gathering her data and produced an excellent combination of

engaging narrative and sound scholarly context. The volume tackles a subject of

great contemporary interest too, since many of the volunteering activities

described here are relatively new in Japan, really only taking off since the 1970s,

but said to have been thoroughly reinforced by the terrible Hanshin earthquake

of 1995. Nakanos focus is the community, rather than disaster relief, but the

principles are similar and her study brings into focus much more than the work

of volunteers. I am confident that this book will draw the reader into the very

heart of Japanese social life.

Joy Hendry

Series editors preface vii

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the cooperation and assistance

I received from the volunteers, recipients, and their families and friends in

Yokohama. These people, whom I do not name in the interest of protecting their

anonymity, donated many hours to tell me their stories. They also provided

encouragement and guidance. I was often surprised and moved by their openness

and generosity.

From Yale University, I would like to thank William Kelly and Helen Siu for

their support and encouragement. My colleagues at the Department of Japanese

Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong have been patient with me as

I have taken the time to write this book. I would like to thank Gordon Mathews,

also of the Chinese University, for his careful readings of more than one version

of this book. Mae Smethurst and Richard Smethurst of the University of

Pittsburgh have been extremely supportive. Their suggestions and comments

have improved my writing and thinking. Moeko Wagatsuma has been an

invaluable research assistant and collaborator. Katie Berroth has provided useful

feedback on sections of this book.

I am indebted to the institutions that have generously funded my research and

writing. My education at Yale was funded by the Yale University Graduate

School Fellowship. The College Womens Association of Japan generously

funded language training and research. The Yale University Andrew W. Mellon

Dissertation Fellowship funded dissertation writing. The Chinese University of

Hong Kong and the Northeast Asia Council for the Association of Asian Studies

have supported follow-up research trips to Yokohama that have enabled me to

report on recent developments among volunteers in Japan. I thank Ethnology for

permission to reprint portions of an article titled Volunteering as a lifestyle

choice: negotiating self-identity in Japan (2000).

I would like to thank Kevin Ming for his encouragement in the final, critical

stages of writing and whose ideas and insights have woven themselves into the

fabric of this book. I am grateful for the support of my friends and family in

Hong Kong, Honolulu, San Pedro, and Ayabe. I thank my parents and my sister

for encouraging me to grow even as it has taken me far from home.

1 Introduction

Without volunteers, Japan wouldnt run smoothly.

A 55-year old volunteer and former full-time housewife

You cant find real volunteering in Japan. People have their hands full just

making ends meet. Who has the time to volunteer?

A 40-year old university professor without volunteering experience

A retired salaryman organizes a basketball game in the school gym; a middle-

aged woman gives a talk on local history at a community center; a group of

housewives delivers meals to elderly people living alone in the neighborhood;

and mothers fold laundry at a local hospital. These people are volunteers, or

borantia in Japanese. They clean and patrol neighborhood streets, organize

cultural and social events, assist the professional staff at institutions for the

elderly and disabled, organize school functions, and help children and elderly

people in their neighborhoods. They represent a sizable social and economic

force in Japan.1

Volunteering tends to evoke strong responses among people in Japan.

Supporters argue that volunteering is creating revolutionary changes in Japanese

society. Skeptics suggest that volunteering has little or no effect on society

because people in Japan possess only a superficial understanding of volunteering

or lack the will to volunteer. Scholars are similarly divided on the issue with

some arguing that volunteering marks the start of a new civic consciousness in

which people take initiative in public projects hitherto understood to be the

province of the state. Others argue that volunteering is merely the latest means

through which the state manipulates the citizenry, and particularly women, into

accepting low-status, unpaid work that the state should be managing itself.

Volunteering emerged in Japan in the 1970s as a government project to

address the problems of the aging society and quickly became an accepted part of

national policy, popular consciousness, and everyday vocabulary. The 17 January

1995 Hanshin-Awaji earthquake that killed over 6,000 people and destroyed

much of the city of Kobe assured borantia a central place in public culture. In

the days and weeks following the earthquake, the media in Japan relayed daily

images of volunteers preparing and serving food, distributing water and blankets,

and carrying supplies into the disaster area. An estimated 1.5 million people

volunteered in the first year following the earthquake (Asahi Shinbun

1 September 1997). In reference to these events, 1995 is often described in

the media as borantia gannen, or the first year of volunteering in Japan (Chiba

1997: 4). As time passed since the earthquake, however, many people revised

their hopes downward, and now view volunteering as largely media and state

rhetoric with little substance in everyday practice. At the same time, volunteers

today routinely participate in the operations of government, nonprofit

organizations, schools, and corporations. Libraries and bookstores are stocked

with handbooks offering advice and encouragement to would-be borantia,

national newspapers regularly feature articles on individuals who volunteer at

grassroots and international levels, and employers including the government

offer borantia leave during which employees may volunteer on company time.

What is the appeal of volunteering for the millions of Japanese who now

describe themselves as borantia? What place does volunteering have in a society

in which success has been defined primarily by achievement through education

and work? What does volunteering tell us about changes occurring in Japanese

society? As an anthropology student, I wanted to explore the meaning of

volunteering from the perspective of the volunteers themselves. Although I could

have focused on volunteers who worked in disaster relief, environmental

protection, or international assistance, I decided to focus on people who

volunteer in their communities, as community-based volunteering is the most

common yet perhaps least recognized form of volunteering in Japan. Surveys

show that the vast majority of volunteers work in the neighborhoods in which

they live. A 1997 survey by the Economic Planning Agency, for example, found

that 67.7 percent of volunteers surveyed worked within their own city (shi), ward

(ku), town (cho), or village (Keizai kikakucho kokumin seikatsu kyoku 1997:

89). Surveys of voluntary activities also suggest their grounding in community

service. According to a recent national survey, the majority of people involved in

citizen activities (shimin katsudo) are engaged in activities that occur at the

local level: 35 percent participated in activities that promote education, culture,

and sports, 15 percent participated in activities related to welfare for the

elderly and disabled, and 13 percent participated in activities related to crime

prevention, disaster preparedness, town-building, and community-building

(Keizai kikakucho 2000: 12).

Volunteers in Japan are most likely to be middle-aged housewives and men

past retirement age, two groups with relatively low labor-force participation

rates.2 A 1995 survey by the National Social Welfare Association found that

women comprise 80 percent of volunteer group membership (Zenkoku shakai

fukushi kyogikai 1996: I6). Women often begin to volunteer in the local

ParentTeacher Association (PTA) when their children enter local public

elementary schools. The PTA introduces women to local networks and often

leads to participation in other community-based voluntary activities. As women

enter middle age, the need to care for elderly family members and grandchildren

2 Introduction

draws some women away from volunteering. According to a 1996 General

Affairs Bureau survey, rates of volunteering peak among women in their thirties,

at about 35 percent, and fall gradually to about 30 percent among women in their

sixties. Mens rates of volunteering are relatively low in their twenties and

thirties when men are busiest with responsibilities at school and work. Rates of

volunteering rise steadily for men in their forties and peak in the postretirement

years. In the above-mentioned survey, rates of volunteering were highest for men

in their sixties, peaking at 31 percent (Keizai kikakucho 2000: 15).

The term borantia has been circulating in social welfare circles since the

1960s and began to appear in Japanese dictionaries in the 1970s. Dictionary

definitions usually reflect the English meaning, as in, a person who is involved,

without pay, through self-motivation, in public works (Gakken kokugo daijiten

[Japanese dictionary] 1976).3 State agencies usually assert that voluntary

activities include work that is unpaid (mukyusei, mushosei), freely chosen

( jihatsusei, jiyu ishi sei), and public spirited (koekisei, kokyosei). Many Japanese

words describe voluntary, public service activities such as kokyo fukushi [public

welfare], shakai jigyo [social work,] jizen katsudo [charitable activities], and

hoshi [service]. The word borantia, however, has come to mean activities that

are progressive, advanced, and dedicated to the improvement of society. Recent

reports add that volunteering must be imaginative [kozosei] and progressive

[senkusei] (Shin shakai fukushi gakushu sosho henshu iinkai 1998: 127). I am

not concerned with establishing a definition of volunteering. Rather, I am

interested in how people interpret volunteering in their lives and how competing

definitions of volunteering reflect different interpretations of social contribution,

and ways of imagining ones place in society and Japans place in the world.

Voluntarism is a mass popular phenomenon and an activity that is meaningful

to millions of Japanese. It emerges from state agendas, media publicity,

institutional politics, and local status relationships. This book focuses on the

experiences of people who volunteer in their communities. It tells their stories,

explores how volunteers attempt to contribute to local life, and considers the

larger question of how volunteering is shaping the directions of Japanese society.

Why community volunteering?

Community volunteering is not an obvious choice for a topic of study. Community

volunteers are often not considered to be volunteers at all, but merely people who

are fulfilling their duty (gimuteki) or taking up local posts (yakuwari). Many

middle-class friends in Japan told me that what I was observing was not

volunteering, but merely local activities (chiiki katsudo). Community

volunteering receives relatively little attention in the media compared to the

other forms of volunteering involving the environment, international assistance,

disaster relief, or volunteering by youth. I suggest that this lack of attention to and

even dismissal of community volunteering reflects the ways in which community

volunteers, as middle-aged and older women and men who are marginalized from

the workforce, tend to be devalued and ignored by society in general.

Introduction 3

Community volunteers deserve our attention for several reasons. First,

community is a powerful symbol of social order in Japan. The media and the

state frequently call upon volunteers in communities to maintain social stability

by insuring order in their neighborhoods. Stable communities are seen as the

basis of a stable national society. Following Ben-Ari (1995), I believe that

communities remain relevant to anthropological understandings of social life

because they are central to the ways the state administers and the public envisions

social order. A close examination of the rhetoric and practice of community

volunteering provides insight into the ways that social order in Japan is

negotiated and sustained.

Second, volunteering represents a movement away from the institutions of

work and family, two arenas that have dominated social life in Japan in recent

decades. The more time one spends volunteering, the less time one is able to

spend earning money or caring for ones family. Volunteers viewed themselves as

working in a third arena apart from the institutions of work and family and

understood the contradictions between volunteering and mainstream values. The

study of volunteers thus provides insight into how people maneuver within

mainstream and alternative value systems.

Third, volunteering provides an arena for discussing images of Japanese

society. In the media, volunteering is often represented as a recent Western

import. Volunteering in Japan is usually described as being behind the West, in

spite of figures that show that Japans rates of volunteering are about average

among industrialized nations. The White Paper on Peoples Lifestyles states,

Japans rates of volunteering are still significantly lower than that of the United

States and Britain (Keizai kikakucho 2000: 18) and provides a chart showing

that rates of volunteering in Japan stand at 25.3 percent, compared to 48.0 percent

in the United Kingdom and 55.5 percent in the United States. Yet the chart also

reveals that Japans rates of volunteering are higher than that of Korea at

13 percent, and equivalent to that of the Netherlands at 24 percent and France at

23.4 percent (Keizai kikakucho 2000: 18). In media and government discussion,

volunteering is used to discuss how Japan is catching up upon a more advanced

West.4

Some media and state commentators, in contrast, locate the origins of

volunteering in Japanese tradition. The 1993 White paper on peoples

lifestyles published by the Economic Planning Agency asserts that borantia can

be found in the soil of Japanese-style mutual help [nihonteki na sogo fujo no

dojo ni aru], in the traditional mutual assistance organizations of yui (ties,

bonds) and ko (clubs, associations) that still exist in many villages, and in

everyday mutual help represented by the word ninjo [human feelings]

(Keizai kikakucho 1993: 122). The document describes borantia activity as the

many moments in our daily lives when, without thinking, we act out of sympathy

[omoiyaru koi] for others (Keizai kikakucho 1993: 121). The study of

voluntarism provides insight into the ways in which people discuss Japans place

among other advanced societies, think about Japans past, and imagine the

future.

4 Introduction

Volunteers did not hold a single ideological perspective, nor were their

actions universally welcomed. On the contrary, volunteering generated debates

among the volunteers and conflicts between volunteers and teachers, mothers,

and care recipients. These debates and struggles are of interest because they

represent new ways of formulating relationships among citizens, between

individuals and the state, and between individuals and society. Volunteering,

then, is critical to understanding important changes that are occurring in

Japanese society today.

Studies of volunteering in Japan

After the Hanshin-Awaji earthquake, a growing number of studies have

attempted to measure the size and content of Japans voluntary sector and

assess its role in society.5 Honma and Deguchis edited volume, Borantia

kakumei: daishinsai de no keiken o shimin katsudo e [Volunteer revolution:

toward citizen participation based on the experience of the great disaster] (1996)

examines a range of systemic and structural conditions that allow for and impede

a potential volunteer revolution in Japan based on lessons learned from the

earthquake relief effort. A number of prominent writers have theorized on the

role of the voluntary sector in society. In his influential book, Borantia: mo

hitotsu no joho shakai [Volunteers: another information society] (1994), Kaneko

Ikuyo argues that the rise of voluntarism and the spread of information conveyed

through cyberspace, together will shake the foundations of modern capitalist

society by challenging its fundamental values of scarcity and possession (1994:

202). Hotta Tsutomu, perhaps the most well-known advocate of voluntarism in

Japan, argues that voluntarism represents a turn toward satisfying the spiritual

needs of the heart and a move away from money and materialism as social

goals (1997).

Very few studies have addressed the experiences and views of the volunteers

themselves.6 A recent study by Ozawa Wataru, Borantia no bunka shakaigaku

[The cultural sociology of volunteering] (2001), explored the meanings of

volunteering for seven university students whom he interviewed four times over

a three-year period in the late 1990s. Ozawa concluded that volunteering for

young people emerges from existing features of Japanese society such as

commitment to a culture of learning, relationships to local communities, and

attempts by young people to achieve independence and establish human

relationships (2001: 209). Carolyn Stevenss book, On the Margins of Japanese

Society: Volunteers and the Welfare of the Urban Underclass (1997), in contrast,

argues that voluntary activities involving a day laborer neighborhood, or yoseba,

draws middle-class women and men away from mainstream life paths. Her book

describes the voluntary associations run by Christians, professional social

workers, housewives, students, and local residents in Yokohamas Kotobuki.

Stevens describes several types of motives for volunteers and maintains, [A]ll

volunteers found themselves separated from the mainstream to some extent after

becoming involved with Kotobuki (1997: 238).

Introduction 5

Robin LeBlancs study of womens participation in political processes, Bicycle

Citizens: The Political World of the Japanese Housewife (1999), considers

volunteering from the perspective of womens lives as housewives. She finds that

the volunteer ethic which includes values of openness, equality, flexibility,

respect for individual difference, and an emphasis on the humanity in human

relationships closely resembles the housewife identity. She argues that the two

are mutually reinforcing; each produced evidence of the value of the other

(1999: 104). LeBlanc is interested in explaining why women who were engaged

in volunteering did not become involved in political activity. She concludes that

the women viewed the volunteer ethic to be fundamentally incompatible with

politics and that the women believed that politics would corrode the important

work that housewives do (1999: 120).

Building upon these previous studies, this book considers volunteering within

the context of the pressures and contradictions of the larger society. It brings

together everyday practices of volunteering and larger public discussions about

volunteering and social contribution. As an ethnographic study, it attempts to

understand volunteering through the experiences of the volunteers and the people

around them, yet is also concerned with the effects of state policies, media

publicity, and changing popular sentiment upon these experiences. It thus moves

between peoples narratives, stories of discursive conflicts, and state and media

representations.

Methodology

Ethnographic research methods of participant-observation are well suited to

investigating the dynamics of community voluntary groups. These methods

allowed me to get to know people and establish long-term relationships and

friendships. Ethnographic research is not conducted with positivistic research

methods involving the collection of accurate or reproducible data. Rather,

I became involved in the lives of the people who appear in this study and relied

on qualitative research methods to understand peoples feelings, ideas, and

values. In the interest of allowing the reader to understand to some degree how

I came to my conclusions, I have not erased myself from the discussions I had

with people nor from the events in which I played a part.

Today voluntary groups are relatively easily accessible through volunteer

registries and volunteer coordinators located at local government offices. When

I began my research in 1993, however, I had to go into neighborhoods to find the

groups myself. A friend introduced me to people who represented neighborhood

associations ( jichikai, chonaikai) in bed (or commuter) towns that lie on the

periphery of metropolitan Yokohama. In each place, I distributed letters

introducing myself as a JapaneseAmerican from Hawaii and a Ph.D. student

conducting research on community activities. I wanted to find an area in which

I could become deeply involved in local networks. Of the places I visited, the

town that I will call Niiyama-cho seemed highly promising.7 In addition to

the usual mix of densely packed private condominiums, two-storey apartment

6 Introduction

buildings, and detached homes, it also contained a 1050-unit low-income

housing estate, or danchi. My decision to focus on Niiyama-cho was sealed, as is

often the case, by fortuitous coincidences. The first person I met in Niiyama-cho

was a woman in her seventies whom everyone called aunt (obasan). She was

from an influential local family and her brother was the vice president of the

neighborhood association. Although she did not work, she had a financial stake

in several local businesses and was at the center of local political life. A steady

stream of visitors dropped by her cramped house every day for a cup of green tea

and to hear the latest news. After I had been a regular guest at her house for

several weeks, she officially introduced me to the areas native families

(former tenant farmers who lived in the area before World War II) who ran the

neighborhood association. The neighborhood association agreed to cooperate

with my research and I eventually received the support of the junior high school

principal who then introduced me to the volunteers and voluntary groups that

became central to my research.

Once the school officials and local leaders publicly supported my research,

residents and members of voluntary groups accepted me without question.

I became known as the student from Hawaii researching community

volunteering. As the months passed, I found that my networks expanded such

that I was receiving invitations from around the city to attend events, give talks,

and teach classes. The local newspapers featured pictures of me and mentioned

my research, and government officials approached me to ask about my work.

I soon encountered the problem that the members of voluntary groups thought of

me as being an important person because of my association with local leaders.

At that point, I had to make an effort to keep myself focused on the local

networks and relationships which were most important to my research.

I spent two years over a seven-year period between 1993 and 1999 involved in

voluntary networks. I interviewed over 100 people including volunteers, PTA

mothers, teachers, principals, government officials, recipients of services, and

the spouses and family members of volunteers. My purpose, however, was not to

interview as many people as possible. Rather, I wanted to know a few local

networks and individuals intimately. I thus chose a few groups that were the most

welcoming and active, and regularly participated in their meetings and events.

Equally importantly, I spent time with the volunteers and their families at their

homes, at favorite karaoke bars, at camps and retreats with their children, on

excursions to hot spring baths and museums, and on visits to relatives in distant

parts of Japan. This allowed me to understand peoples lives beyond their

experiences of volunteering and in the context of their families and friends. I also

participated in voluntary activities in other parts of Yokohama and visited

regional and national volunteer centers. I tried to get to know local networks well

but did not limit the research to Niiyama-cho. Like the volunteers themselves,

I traveled frequently to community centers, welfare centers, and the ward office.

This allowed my contacts to expand into yoko no tsunagari, or horizontal

connections with others involved in grassroots voluntary activities around the

Yokohama metropolitan area.

Introduction 7

Although at first I introduced myself to people as a JapaneseAmerican,

I found that people thought of me instead as a Japanese who had been raised

overseas, perhaps because such a classification felt more intimate and because

I was fluent in Japanese. My consistent attendance at local voluntary functions

evoked comments that I was positive [sekkyokuteki], serious [majime] and

determined and enthusiastic [nesshin] about my studies. The people I knew

best were proud of me and introduced me as our friend from America and I was

often complimented on my ability to speak English like an American. On

meeting people for the first time in areas outside of Niiyama-cho, however, I was

often mistaken for an exchange student from Taiwan or China, especially when

I started my first full-time teaching job and explained that I worked at a

university in Hong Kong. I was never sure whether to declare that I was a

JapaneseAmerican and reemphasize that I was a university professor rather

than a student, or to let the mistake pass. Being treated as a student was not

a disadvantage, however, as I was able to observe voluntary activities without

fanfare or special treatment.

Most people were eager to speak with me because I was one of the few young

people interested in their work. I was generally one of the only people under 40

who participated in the local activities. Many volunteers felt that their work was

not being recognized by society in general. People I met were hopeful that I would

be able to communicate their views to an audience that they could not otherwise

reach. Although I emphasized that I would write for an English readership to

describe a facet of life in Japan that is virtually unknown outside of Japan, many

wished that I would publish in Japanese so that other people in Japan, and the

elites in particular, might have a sense of what was happening in their own society.

The locality

This is not a study of a circumscribed community, as many of the people who

appear in this book did not live in Niiyama-cho proper. None the less, much of

the action took place in and around Niiyama-cho and most people in this book

lived in Hodogaya ward, an administrative district of approximately 200,000

people. As I mentioned earlier, Niiyama-cho is relatively typical of the residential

neighborhoods that lie on the peripheries of Japans large urban centers. The area

was inhabited by a few tenant farming families prior to World War II, and

developed rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s as a bed town to the growing industrial

areas in Tokyo and Yokohama. The public, rent-controlled danchi opened in the

early 1960s. Private detached-home housing tracts and condominium apartments

were built after the 1960s and housed primarily middle-class families in which

both husband and wife worked. Most men in the area worked in Yokohama or

Tokyo, the latter about a 90-minute commute one way, and most women held

jobs closer to home. The towns population density of 9,728 people per square

kilometer in the mid-1990s exceeded the Tokyo metropolitan average of 5,421

yet was still lower than the central parts of Yokohama that reached densities of

25,000 persons per square kilometer.

8 Introduction

Niiyama-chos population is slightly older and poorer than national averages,

in large part due to the presence of the low-income danchi. The Niiyama-cho

danchi is open to citizens with an income of 115,000 yen per month or less,

equivalent to the lowest 15 percent of income categories nationwide and at the

threshold of the official government poverty line. In the danchi in the mid-1990s,

approximately one in four residents was over the age of 65, significantly higher

than the national average of 14 percent. The young couples who had arrived in the

1960s had reached their fifties and sixties, and their children had moved out of the

neighborhood to start families of their own. About half of the original residents

had moved out and their replacements were often low-income elderly people.

Residents in this area distinguished between natives ( jimoto no hito) who

had lived in the area prior to World War II, and newcomers (atarashii hito) who

had arrived with the postwar residential development. Natives, who comprised

only about 1 percent of the population, controlled the symbols of belonging to the

area through the Shinto shrine and local festivals. Jennifer Robertson described a

similar situation in the nearby city of Kodaira in her book, Native and Newcomer:

Making and Remaking a Japanese City (1991). As in Kodaira, natives in

Niiyama-cho effectively excluded newcomers by monopolizing the rhetoric of

furusato or native place. In Niiyama-cho, newcomer residents responded by

identifying themselves as volunteers. As community volunteers, newcomers

could establish a direct relationship with the locality, and thus with the wider

society, without having to take a secondary position to the natives.

Previous ethnographies have clearly demonstrated the vitality of social life in

urban communities, refuting assumptions that such neighborhoods are devoid of

community spirit. In Neighborhood Tokyo (1989), Theodore Bestor described

the activities of the old middle class in an urban neighborhood and their claims

upon local tradition. Anne Imamuras book, Japanese Urban Housewives: At

Home and in the Community (1987), explored how women living in a bed town

on the western side of the Tokyo metropolitan area spent their time when their

husbands were at work. Imamura found that the women were engaged in a

variety of community activities, but that the impermanence of the womens

living situations was an obstacle to creating greater community spirit. Eyal Ben-

Aris ethnography of a new suburban housing estate and an older commuter

village outside of Kyoto, Changing Japanese Suburbia: A Study of Two Present-

Day Localities (1991), demonstrated that new residential communities may

successfully organize to achieve concrete ends based on shared interests. These

studies provide rich examples of the forms and possibilities of neighbourhood

activities. In contrast to these studies, however, this book is not a study of the

social life of a particular community. Rather, it is a study of the relationship

between personal experiences and the larger society that is located in specific

neighborhoods and local networks. Volunteering does not occur as a result of a

purely individual decisions made in isolation, but is a product of specific local

conditions in which people adopt the identity of a borantia in relation to other

possible choices available locally and in society. Volunteering cannot be

understood apart from the local conditions that make it possible.

Introduction 9

Volunteering and the state

In spite of the widespread assumptions that volunteering is an activity that

occurs in isolation from the state, in Japan, as in most advanced industrial

societies, the vast majority of voluntary activity occurs with the states

cooperation if not direct support.8

State agencies brought volunteering to the publics attention in the 1970s and

have insured that volunteering has remained in the public eye through constant

promotion.9 By the 1990s, volunteering had become central to the Ministry of

Health, Labor, and Welfares (formerly the Ministry of Health and Welfare)

proposed community-based welfare system that would rely on families,

volunteers, and private care rather than institutionalization and state support.

In practice, however, volunteering played a minimal role in providing social

welfare services in Japan because state rhetoric had not been accompanied by

substantive financial or organizational support, particularly before the 1995

Hanshin-Awaji earthquake.

After the earthquake, the media and the public placed enormous pressure on

the state to provide increased support for volunteering and the state responded by

making a few grand symbolic gestures toward volunteering and by attempting to

incorporate volunteers and voluntary groups into government programs at

minimal cost.10 In 1998, for example, the Japanese Diet passed the NPO Law

that enabled nonprofit groups to apply to receive recognition as legal bodies.11

The Economic Planning Agency chose voluntarism as the theme of the 2000

White Paper on peoples lifestyles (Kokumin seikatsu hakusho: borantia ga

fukameru koen), a publication known for articulating major social trends. In

addition, the Japanese government successfully proposed to the United Nations

that 2001 be declared The International Year of the Volunteer. Apart from these

symbolic efforts, many local governments set up borantia corners to help

guide would-be volunteers to appropriate organizations, volunteer coordinators

were assigned to government departments to help develop local programs, and

the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology is

attempting to establish volunteering in schools nationwide.

Volunteers I knew believed that state support was necessary but they saw

themselves as working for ideals that were independent of the state.12 When

Nitta Toshiyuki, a main character in this book,13 attended meetings to criticize

government policies and officials, he wore his government-issued blue sweat suit

provided for community childcare volunteers. The outfit symbolized his status as

a respected local volunteer and gave him the legitimacy to publicly challenge

state authority. I also inadvertently benefited from appearing to have state

support. After giving a widely advertised public speech on a topic about which

I knew little, Foreigners in Yokohama, at a conference organized by the local

government office, I found that people, none of whom had actually heard the

speech, seemed to view me with a new respect that perhaps helped me secure

interviews. The state was not a unified entity wielding power over citizens.

Rather, it was a large and diverse bureaucracy with its own internal power

10 Introduction

struggles. State policies provided the ideological terms and organizational forms

that made life intelligible but volunteers used state ideals and structures for their

own ends.

My view of volunteering has changed in the time that I have been working on

this project. At first I was attracted to the idea that the state was using the rhetoric

and institutional support of volunteering to manipulate women and retired men

into accepting unpaid work. Over time, however, I found this explanation to be

unsatisfactory and unfair to the people who volunteered. Volunteering is clearly

organized and supported by the state, yet reducing volunteering to a form of

state manipulation requires ignoring the diverse meanings it has for the people

involved and denies the possibility that some people may understand the states

intentions yet participate anyway for their own reasons. Many people I met, for

example, said that they volunteered because no one else would do it. They

knew the work was unappreciated and should perhaps have been remunerated.

Yet they also knew that their work did some good and would not have been

accomplished otherwise. The question that I address in this book is not how the

Japanese state manipulates volunteers but how people respond to the rhetoric of

volunteering, generated by both the media and the state, and how they use it for

their own ends given the institutional, social and financial situations in which

they find themselves.

Research on volunteering

Studies of volunteering have developed in two general directions. One type of

study has examined the practical aspects of volunteering and has provided advice

and guidance to volunteers and voluntary groups. Another type of study has

explored the contours of the voluntary sector and theorizes on the relationship

between the voluntary sector in relation to the private sector and the state. The

civil society debates that emerged in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and in

regard to China in the 1990s, for example, asked whether a healthy civil society

independent of the state would form the basis of democratic reforms and a free

market economy.14 Most studies have analyzed volunteering with specific

agendas such as promoting volunteering or determining whether particular

voluntary sectors reflect an independent civic sector and a politically mature

citizenry. Few studies have attempted to analyze volunteering in its cultural and

social context.

Studies that have examined the experiences of volunteers have focused on the

meanings that volunteering generates in relation to the rest of society. Robert

Wuthnows study of volunteering in the United States, Acts of Compassion:

Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves (1991a) explored why some people

help others in a society that values the individual. Following de Tocqueville,

Wuthnow suggests that volunteering is important to the public sphere because it

symbolizes the antithesis of impersonality, bureaucracy, materialism, utilitar-

ianism, and many of the other dominant cultural trends we worry about in our

society (1991c: 302). In contrast to Wuthnows positive evaluation of

Introduction 11

volunteering, Arlene Kaplan Daniels considers volunteering among middle- and

upper-middle-class women in a US city as an activity shaped by the

contradictions of womens privileged class position and subordinated gendered

position in society. In her book, Invisible Careers: Women Civic Leaders from

the Volunteer World (1988), Daniels explores the ways in which volunteering

offers women opportunities to develop their abilities and suggests that womens

subordinated gender position renders their careers invisible in comparison to

paid work.

I share Wuthnows appreciation for the potential for volunteers to question

mainstream values of accumulation and individualism. Yet, like Daniels, I also

understand volunteering to be embedded in the hierarchies of meaning and

power of the wider society. I suggest that we need not view volunteering as

either an oppositional discourse or as way of reproducing social and economic

inequalities. As a complex social activity, volunteering emerges from and

generates multiple and contradictory social values. In his classic work, The Gift

(1990 [1950]) Marcel Mauss points out that giving is not an isolated act, but a

total social fact with social, moral, economic, jural, religious, and political

implications. He argued that there is no such thing as a pure gift, 15 as all

gifts are bound in systems of obligation. Similarly, my analysis of volunteering

has been driven by an interest in the social contexts of the volunteers actions,

the ways in which the state shaped meanings and possibilities, the role of the

media in articulating competing perspectives about volunteering, the shape of

local status politics, and the relationships between volunteers and the people

whose lives they touched. This book thus does not focus narrowly on

volunteering. Rather, I have made my choices about what to include in this

book based on the theme of how the rise of volunteering shapes lives and how

people in turn use volunteering to improve their lives, their communities, and

their society.

I have made eclectic use of theoretical approaches as they applied to what

I observed and I have chosen theories that reflected the opinions of the people

I interviewed. Throughout this project, I have struggled with the question of how

the everyday activities of volunteers might contribute to creating changes in

society, as this is how volunteers talked about their actions. In answering this

question, I have drawn on recent developments in social theory that locate

cultural change and creativity in everyday events. The idea that community

volunteers are capable of changing society seems absurd if we consider change

in terms of evolutionary progress or as the result of large-scale transformations

in the economy or polity. Social movement theorists have recently turned away

from such approaches to allow for the possibility that everyday events may also

contribute to processes of social change. In the introduction to their book,

The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy and

Democracy, Escobar and Alvarez argue that we need not view society as an

entity composed of more or less immutable structures and class relations that

only great changes (large-scale development schemes or revolutionary

upheavals) could significantly alter (1992a: 3). Rather, they suggest that we

12 Introduction

should pay attention to minor movements that have less visible effects at the

levels of culture and everyday life (1992a: 7).

Studies of change in Japan have focused primarily on state policies, the

bureaucracy, the economy, and globalization. A number of studies have explored

postwar social and political movements and have attempted to measure their

success and their effects upon the wider society (Koschman 1978; McKean

1981; Apter and Sawa 1984; Sasaki-Uemura 2001). These studies provide

valuable insight into the conflicts that emerge on the margins of society and they

depict an aspect of postwar life in Japan that is often ignored in favor of images

of a homogeneous, orderly society. Most of these studies, however, have been

written by political scientists and historians. As a result, they have largely

focused on chronicling the strategies of these movements and measuring their

political impact. This study, by contrast, explores volunteering from an

anthropological perspective and thus attempts to address the personal and social

meanings of volunteering. This approach allows a consideration of mass social

actions that may or may not immediately result in quantifiable political change.

It also allows for a more flexible interpretation of social movements as

widespread, idea-driven social activities that occur within government structures

and in everyday practice, and not only in the form of political movements that

position themselves against the state.

Theories developed in anthropology and cultural studies on creativity have

also focused on everyday activities. Paul Willis argues that cultural creativity

lies not only in the realm of artists or the cultural elite but that there is a vibrant

symbolic life and symbolic creativity in everyday life, everyday activity and

expression even if it is sometimes invisible, looked down on or spurned

(Willis with Jones, Canaan and Hurd 1990: 1). The focus on creativity in

responding to mass culture usefully counters earlier portrayals of consumers as

passive, mindless recipients of market forces. Referring to Stuart Hall (1981),

Mankekar argues that by examining peoples interaction with the media, such as

television, we can envision popular culture as a site of struggle and resistance

(Mankekar 1993: 544). That is, we can learn about society by paying attention to

the ways in which people contest and reinterpret state and mass media images

and ideas. Although I have not recorded volunteers responses to specific mass

media outputs, I discuss how public images and assumptions about volunteering

shaped the ways in which people talked about their lives and their actions, and

how volunteers in turn shaped the larger public meanings of social contribution,

gender, and human value in their everyday activities.

Scholarship on mass culture and consumption have often focused on youth

consumption cultures, fashion, and reception of TV soap operas (see Mankekar

1993; Willis 1990; and Yang 1997, for example), perhaps because they are seen

as having little to lose in challenging the adult world. Recent popular and

academic discussion about social change in Japan similarly focuses on the

choices of young people in careers, education, marriage, and fashion (Mathews

and White 2004; White 1993). I suggest, however, that older people, particularly

those who have become marginal to the workforce during nearly a decade and a

Introduction 13

half of economic recession, are an overlooked source of social change in Japan.

Older people have lived through the decades of rapid economic growth when a

mans worth was defined by work and a womans worth was defined by domestic

care giving. These same people are currently facing redundancy in the work

force and marginalization at home. The ideals of work for men and family for

women that have formed the basis of postwar society no longer apply to many

older people, and they are in the process of reinterpreting gender ideals,

personal worth, and their value in society. Older people are also confronted with

negative images of the elderly as a social burden in Japans aging society. These

images challenge older people to assert positive interpretations of their place in

society.

Finally, this study is interested in the ways people negotiate categories of

gender, generation, and class in their activities as volunteers. In addressing these

negotiations, I have drawn on performance theorists who have been interested in

the way that social order is constructed through repetitive practices in everyday

life.16 I am particularly interested in social changes as the negotiation of

categories and priorities in personal values and the ways that these discursive

realignments are related to social actions. I explore how volunteers manipulate

the public symbols of gender, social role, class, and age to create meaning for

themselves. Although small in scale, I suggest that volunteers personal decisions

and everyday acts are capable of generating changes in Japanese society and are

deserving of our attention.

Outline of the chapters

My focus on everyday acts and decisions has allowed me to consider how people

use volunteering to explain their life choices and how these choices shape

changes in society. Chapter 2 introduces the stories of four volunteers, considers

their reasons for volunteering, and explores how they view their place in their

families, communities, and society. Chapter 3 explores gender crossover

experiences in which former housewives take public roles and former salarymen

adopt care-giving roles as borantia. The Chapter considers how volunteers reflect

upon their new roles in the context of their previous experiences in the family

and at work, and in view of gender expectations.

The next five chapters tell stories of peoples experiences of volunteering.

Chapter 4 looks at volunteers efforts to create programs for children. Focusing

on specific incidents of conflict, this chapter considers how women and men

attempted to assert different kinds of authority within a childcare volunteer

group. Chapter 5 examines juvenile delinquency prevention campaigns organized

by the local junior high school. This chapter focuses on the struggle between

local leaders to assert authority in local affairs and the failure of these leaders to

win the mothers respect. Chapter 6 expands on this theme in its exploration of

conflict between the volunteers, the PTA and the school. Although many people

in Japan would not consider PTA women to be volunteers, the PTA women

I knew were beginning to see themselves in this way. The chapter explores how

14 Introduction

participation in the PTA allowed women to participate in public life and attempt

collective action.

The next two chapters focus on eldercare volunteering. Chapter 7 explores

social services for the healthy elderly that became popular in neighborhoods

across Japan in the 1990s. The chapter considers how public discussions of aging

shape the experience of being the recipient of voluntary services. Chapter 8

considers the difficulties volunteers faced in establishing home-care services for

the elderly. It introduces the views of recipients who relied on the help of local

volunteers and suggests that recipients also have a strong interest in reshaping

meanings of social contribution and human worth.

Community volunteering provides an ideal forum for understanding how

society is changing, bringing together state concerns for social order, mass

media interpretations of social problems, actions of local schools and

governments, and the experiences of people who feel that they have been

marginalized from societys mainstream institutions. The volunteers reflections

upon their lives and stories of their activities tell us much about how people in

Japan are attempting to find meaningful ways of living and contributing to their

communities, and in the process, how they are reshaping their society.

Introduction 15

2 Volunteers stories

In reviewing their stories, I found that volunteers commonly discussed the

conflicts they experienced between volunteering and mainstream expectations

that they work to earn money and care for their families. In their narratives,

volunteers also justified past decisions, articulated their sense of self within

society, reflected on opportunities lost, and considered the personal priorities that

would guide their future decisions. I suggest that the stories of their struggles can

be thought of as a site through which people negotiated competing social

priorities.

In taking this approach, I draw on recent social theories that assert that selves

and societies are inextricably linked.1 These theories suggest that societies do

not imprint a master pattern upon selves. Rather, the self is constantly changing

and recreating itself through the ideas, values and institutions of society

(Battaglia 1995: 3; Bruner 1986: 12; Giddens 1991: 52; Plath 1980).

Convincingly, anthropologist Nancy Abelmann has argued that personalities

are not public representations of private worlds, but . . . productive of the social

world (1997: 790) (see also Abu-Lughod and Lutz 1990 on emotion). Similarly,

I suggest that peoples explanations of their lives are not isolated collections of

purely personal considerations. Instead, life narratives composed of competing

values and priorities reflect and generate shifts in larger social ideals. Because

selves continually refashion themselves through values and ideals available in

their societies, the ways in which selves narrate their life choices speak to larger

transformations in society.

How did people explain their decision to volunteer? How did they discuss the

competing priorities in their lives? What do these discursive struggles tell us

about the nature of Japanese society? This chapter examines these questions by

considering the struggles over personal values and choices in the lives of four

people who took volunteering seriously. I focus on mature adults over the age of

40, as people in this age group comprise the majority of community volunteers

locally and nationally, as discussed in the Introduction. The people I met referred

to the mainstream themes of family, work, and social achievement in explaining

their life choices, but they also referenced alternative values and life priorities.

I focus on their narratives, not as representatives of Japanese volunteers but as

illustrations of the dynamic processes in which people negotiate life choices

grounded in an awareness of their position in their life course, their sense of

responsibility to the people around them, and in the context of other choices

available in society.

Changing postwar values

The stories that I tell in this chapter cannot be understood in isolation from the

dramatic changes in social life that have occurred in the past five decades (the

period in which most of these people have been adults) in Japan. I briefly outline

the major historical shifts that people would commonly identify as relevant in

shaping their decisions and values as adults.

The first decade following Japans defeat in World War II was characterized

by social confusion and dislocation. The war had disrupted educational hopes,

careers, and relationships for young adults. Everyday life involved struggle to

relocate to the cities, find jobs and housing, and restart ones life. By the 1960s,

Japans economy was improving but social life in many ways remained unstable.

Work was available but salaries were low and housing was expensive and of poor

quality. Social unrest and ideological debate over the directions of society

resulted in mass street protests, workplace disruptions over union membership,

and divisive political infighting in residence-based organizations. In spite of the

economic downturn following the 1973 oil shock, many of the social debates

of the 1960s lost urgency in the following decade as living standards improved

and consumer culture offered a growing array of material and social

possibilities. As William Kelly has pointed out, the model of a middle-class

family with a full-time housewife and a salaryman husband, paired with the idea

of an open meritocracy through education, emerged as widely held national

ideals even as they remained accessible to only a minority of Japanese (1993:

203).

The growth of the so-called bubble economy of the 1980s saw both the

celebration of materialism and conspicuous consumption in popular culture, as

well as growing criticism of this same trend. Adults remember the 1970s and

1980s as a time when jobs were available and money could be made by

accumulating overtime pay or by working at several jobs. For children, these

decades brought increased pressures and competition to succeed through narrow

educational channels. Many remember the wealth of the 1980s as bringing

corrupting moral influences that threatened children, families, schools, and

communities. The spiraling land prices of the 1980s also created new class

divisions, as increasing numbers of people, particularly the young and the old,

abandoned hopes of owning their own homes.

The 1990s is widely seen as a decade of social unraveling. The salaryman, the

symbol of mainstream success of the 1970s and 1980s, was depicted in the 1990s

as a figure lacking in imagination and energy in an expanding global economy.

With the bursting of the economic bubble in the early 1990s, the salaryman ideal

was further undermined; he no longer even represented security in an era of

corporate layoffs (risutora). Bankruptcy and government mismanagement raised

Volunteers stories 17

doubts over the merit of a mans commitment to company and a womans

commitment to being the wife of a salaryman. With womens rising levels of

education and workforce participation and the opening of global opportunities

for women and men, the salaryman-housewife model no longer represented the

only form of social success. In spite of widespread criticism of this model,

however, no obvious replacement has emerged. In this context of social

uncertainty, ideal life paths and personal values seem increasingly open to

interpretation.

The story behind the stories

The four short narratives of peoples lives in this chapter are a product of formal

interviews and many hours of informal conversations. I met people at their

homes, at welfare centers, neighborhood association halls, municipal ward

buildings, coffee shops, restaurants, and local bars. I chose these four people

from the dozens that I interviewed because of their openness in discussing their

experiences, their willingness to meet me repeatedly over several months, and

because of their differences from one another.

The stories that people told me about their lives were in response to

questions that I asked, as they knew that I was writing a book about volunteers

in Japan. The conversations we had were also shaped by peoples perceptions of

me. As previously mentioned, I was generally known as a student from Hawaii

doing research on community voluntarism. My status as a student was

complicated, however, because some people knew that I was working as a part-

time lecturer at Keio University, a prestigious private university in Japan. This

seemed to be more impressive than the fact that I was a Ph.D. student at Yale

University, perhaps because Yale was less well known than Keio to many of the

volunteers.

When people told me, Yappari, chigaimasu ne [Of course, youre different

from us], they were referring to my experience of having grown up in the

United States and to a perception that I was destined to become a professional of

some sort, while they saw themselves as ordinary people. This emerged in

comments that I was yushu [of a superior quality], on an erto kosu [elite

course], that I was like the female newscasters one sees on TV, and rumors that

I had both a law degree and a doctorate when I had neither.

In other words, I was a symbol of youth and social mobility for people who

were not particularly socially mobile themselves. This evoked a number of

contradictory responses. A few people whose children had attended university

and enjoyed career success felt that they had something in common with me.

My anticipated success became a source of pride for the groups and individuals

who helped and befriended me. To my embarrassment, in the weeks before my

departure to the United States, I began to receive cash parting gifts (senbetsu)

from people who should not have been giving their money to me. These gifts

could not be refused or returned without offending the givers. They represented

encouragement for me to succeed in my studies away from Japan.

18 Volunteers stories

For some who were serious about volunteering, however, I represented the

ambition and self-centered orientation required for middle-class success.

Kawamoto, a man without whom I could not have done my research, told me:

Few young people in Japan have your positive drive. Then, he added,

Although its for your own studies. His point was that although we both worked

as local volunteers, in the end I would receive a degree and become a

professional while he would experience a relative loss in material wealth and

middle-class status for the same work. I also felt that Kawamoto and other

volunteer leaders with whom I was close wanted me to succeed and were proud

of me. Their mixed feelings toward me reflect the contradictions involved in

committing oneself to voluntary work in a society that does not truly value such

work.

Nagata Toshinao

Nagata Toshinao, a 72-year old retiree, worked as a volunteer every weekday

from nine in the morning to five in the evening in the day-care program for the

elderly at a city-funded welfare center. Energetic and cheerful, he joked with the

staff and care recipients as he darted about the welfare center making his daily

rounds. He pushed people in wheel chairs, helped day-care participants to eat,

exercise and participate in games, and helped the staff to serve meals and clean

trays and tables. All the interviews with Nagata took place in the conference

room of the welfare center during his lunch breaks, the only time of the day

when he was free. Nagata took our interviews seriously he spoke earnestly and

intensely which surprised me a little because he was constantly laughing and

joking with the staff and elderly care recipients when he worked as a volunteer.

I realized over the course of the interviews that he saw his light bantering as part

of his job as a volunteer.

Nagata arrived in Tokyo with his wife and young family in the mid-1960s

when he was transferred from Kyushu by his employer, a glass manufacturer.

While working, he had not believed in the corporate ideology that one should

work for ones company, but neither had he accepted the competing union

ideology that one should fight management to reduce working hours. He

explained:

The [people on the left] thought we should work as little as possible. My

idea was that we should work hard and share the money that we make.

I never believed that we should work for the company. I told this to the

others. After we retire, thats the end. We really should be thinking of our

families and working for them.

After his retirement at age 55 he took a postretirement job at another company,

expecting that he would work for as long as he was healthy. At age 66, however,

he developed stomach cancer and after 50 days in the hospital, he returned home

where he lay around, depressed, for several months:

Volunteers stories 19

I didnt know what to do with myself. Psychologically and spiritually I was

not well. I lacked direction and spirit. I decided that I would in any case

begin moving in a positive direction. I thought about what kind of hobby

I could develop. I went to the Board of Education and the ward office,

asking about what sorts of programs they had. I knew I should change my

life but I didnt know how.

Nagata attended seminars on volunteering at the ward office and at the welfare

center but came away dissatisfied. He explained:

They were talking about volunteering from a manual. In practice everyone

is different. Its a matter of how you treat people and this you have to learn

from experience. As Ive gotten older I treat people differently than I did

when I was younger. Now I try to see what I can do to make them happy; to

cheer them up.

Contrary to the official view that volunteering involves helping others, Nagata

felt that volunteering should ultimately be for oneself:

What I want most is to be healthy and vigorous right up until death. Every

day I look at people who are disabled or sick and I learn something from

this. Everyone has a different way of living, but in my case, Im an

energetic person. I dont want to say that its my way of taking care of

them, but Ill say that my way of giving to them is to give them some

enjoyment.

Volunteering is all about the process of thinking for oneself: What can

I do? What can I give? Its not about the work itself. To me volunteering is

like playing catch. When you give someone something, when you throw the

ball, it comes back to you. I learn something every time I do the volunteer

work. As Im learning, Im also enjoying. I think that this is the real

meaning of volunteering; you do it because its what you want. I dont think

its for other people, for the community, or for society. I think that its about

finding meaning in my own life.

Of course when I come here and someone says to me, Nagata, Im glad

you came today, or, Where were you last time? I wanted to see you; when

people support me and I feel that they depend on me, I feel happy. For

example, I learned how to give haircuts. Im just a beginner. I saw someone

giving a haircut and I wanted to try myself. Its a good skill to have because

its expensive to get a haircut on the outside.

Because I am healthy [genki], I try my best to share this with other

people by talking to them and through the activities. This kind of happiness

is something that you cant buy, right?

Nagata resisted the idea that he was superior to those he helped, although as a

homeowner with a family, he was much better off financially than the day-care

20 Volunteers stories

participants who were primarily low-income danchi residents without family

members. He preferred to think of the care recipients as his equals with whom he

was engaged in a reciprocal relationship.

Nagata said that he volunteered because of the benefits to his health. Since

recovering from cancer, he and his wife adopted a natural medicine diet

promoted by a popular Japanese health guru. Nagata showed me the lunch that

his wife had made for him and explained the significance of each of the

ingredients. He asked me whether I knew the story of a Toyota employee who

was told that he had cancer and only a few months to live. The man quit his job

and turned his life around by following a healthy diet and stress-free lifestyle. As

a result, Nagata, explained, his cancer was cured. Nagata said of his own

recovery: I dont know whether its the volunteering or the diet, but the cancer

hasnt returned so I must be doing something right. Although Nagatas diet

regimen is extreme (he tries to chew his food one hundred times before

swallowing), like many other people, he believes that the salaryman lifestyle is

essentially unhealthy because it creates high levels of stress and results in poor

eating habits.

Nagata realized that his decision to volunteer every day rather than take a

paid job contradicts most peoples expectations of what one should do with ones

time:

Some people would see me coming here. In the beginning, they said, Are

you getting a free lunch over there? or Are you getting paid? Thats the

way people think. I think that having a hobby and deriving happiness from it

is a truly wonderful thing.

Nagata said that his wife is extremely happy that he is volunteering. We can

imagine that she is relieved that he has found something to keep him occupied,

leaving her free to return to the activities she had pursued prior to his illness.

Although I did not meet his wife, my sense was that they got along well. Their

four children had moved out of their house and had families of their own. After

Nagatas illness, she was patient when he became a sodai gomi (literally large

size trash referring to a man who burdens his wife with his presence in the

home) and the couple attended seminars together on health and diet. Nagata

seemed almost moved to tears when explaining his wifes attention to preparing

his lunch and he was proud that his wife supported him in his unconventional

decision to become a full-time volunteer.

Nagata was not completely satisfied with volunteering at the welfare center.

Lowering his voice, he said he had not yet found his true reason for living

(ikigai).

I say complimentary things to the staff here, but the truth is that I havent

really found my true meaning in life. This is the first time that Ive said these

words to anyone. When you start to volunteer, you form a group, and then

you can participate. This is a good thing, but once you do this, you become

Volunteers stories 21

part of an organization and it becomes difficult to truly do things in your

own way [ jibun rashii ikikata].

At the welfare center he had no power to decide how things should be run but

had to follow the instructions of the nurses. Still, he said that volunteering is

better than paid work because at work One always feels competition but [at the

welfare center] one feels that one is among friends.

Thinking about his future, Nagata had not given up on the idea of moving

back to his hometown in Kyushu where his three brothers and four sisters still

live:

As one grows old, somewhere in ones heart, one thinks about the place

where one grew up and where ones family lives. Even though in your mind

you realize that even if you go back, it might not be as you imagine. Still,

I wonder what it would be like if I went back.

Nagata at times regretted that he had purchased a home because it has made it

difficult for him to return to Kyushu. Like many salaried employees, Nagata had

not developed close ties with the people in his neighborhood and it would be

difficult for him to return to Kyushu after a 30-year absence. He worried about

getting along with his family, particularly a brother who lived in a boarding

house, and whether his memories of the place would conform to the reality of

living there now.

Analysis

Nagata expressed mixed feelings toward the salaryman lifestyle. Working as a

salaryman enabled him to earn enough money to buy a house and gave him the

financial stability to allow him to volunteer, yet he interpreted the years of

commitment as the precursor to his developing cancer. Following company

instructions, he moved to Tokyo and purchased a home, but these decisions

made him feel profoundly dislocated from his family and his past.

Volunteering was the solution to the despair he experienced after recovering

from cancer, yet it was a compromise. Volunteering was a form of postcancer

therapy that allowed him to maintain his physical and spiritual health. It

provided daily activity, introduced Nagata into networks of people close to his

home, and allowed him to feel useful in society. After years of working in an

institution, Nagata chose another institution, the welfare center, at which to

volunteer. Volunteering at the welfare center brought familiar frustrations of

being unable to change the rules of the organization yet it provided structured

daily activities in a recognized position as a borantia.

Nagata has had an ambivalent relationship with the main ideological

narratives of his time. He had never fully accepted the idea that a man should

work for his company but believed in sharing the profits with fellow workers and

making family a priority. Although not the official corporate view, his approach

22 Volunteers stories

lies within the range of choices available in public culture. The mai homu

movement of the 1970s, for example, celebrated the enjoyment of private, family

time among salaried workers. After recovering from cancer, he did not accept

the Western medical perspective that his cancer was cured but adopted an

alternative medicine approach that sought to insure that cancer would not recur.

He also did not accept the official view of volunteering as helping others, but

chose to see volunteering as helping oneself, a view supported by outspoken

proponents of voluntarism in Japan such as Hotta Tsutomu (1995, 1997, 2000)

and Tanaka Naoki (1994). Nagata survived in mainstream institutions without

fully accepting the ideals of those institutions.

In spite of his criticism of mainstream ideals, he worked hard for his company

and as a volunteer. At the public facility where he volunteered, his labor was

equivalent to that of a full-time employee. Paid staff and elderly service

recipients relied on him for his ability to lift spirits in the daily round of eating,

entertainment, and bathing. He believed in mainstream ideals of self-

improvement working hard, trying ones best, and knowing ones abilities in

relation to others in both his salaryman and volunteer careers. After becoming

a sodai gomi following his hospitalization, he vowed to avoid burdening his

family in the future. In this sense, he conformed to state policies encouraging

retirees to contribute to society and take responsibility for their own health.

From inside mainstream institutions, Nagata had been a participant and a

critic of these institutions and the values of postwar society. He was involved in

the building of Tokyo as an industrial center, contributed to the growth of

homeownership in the suburbs, and helped build the states version of a

Japanese-style welfare society based on self-help and voluntarism. Yet he has

also been involved in undermining mainstream ideals and institutions by refusing

to conform to the corporate, union, and state ideologies that have attempted to

direct his commitments.

Kotani Toshie

When I first met Kotani Toshie, 45, she spent nearly every day working as a

volunteer for a community-based group that organized activities for local

children and in the PTA of her sons public junior high school. She lived in a

small two-bedroom apartment that she and her husband bought in the early

1970s. Her husband worked for a company that imported sporting goods. He

arrived home around midnight every night and was away on most weekends

fishing with his friends. With her husband largely absent, Kotani was left in

complete charge of the home, raising the children, and participating in

community activities. She felt she was fortunate, as she was one of the few

women she knew who did not need to work. When I first met her in 1994, her

20-year old daughter was attending a professional golfing school and her 14-year

old son was in his second year at the local junior high school.

Kotani was quiet and serious when I met her at PTA or voluntary group

meetings but had a mischievous sense of humor that emerged around her friends.

Volunteers stories 23

I was surprised by her friends casualness with one another and with me. There

was none of the hesitation, pretense and isolation sometimes associated with

housewives living in apartments in urban areas. Her best friend, a woman who

lived in the same apartment complex, did not even bother to ring the doorbell,

she merely called out loudly while entering the unlocked apartment. They talked

about their children, the local schools, the teachers, and hobbies. The relaxed

comfort and good humor that emerged while in one anothers company made me

feel at ease as well, and interviews often extended into hours of chatting, eating,

and drinking at Kotanis apartment.

Kotanis first few years of marriage were rocky. She explained: Neither of us

knew what we were doing. [My husband] didnt have a father when he was

growing up so he didnt know what it meant to be part of a family. Her husband

spent long hours away from home and Kotani adapted to his absence by throwing

herself into caring for her children. For three years, she served as the president of

the elementary school PTA, a position normally held by a man (usually the only

man who participates in the PTA). Kotani was proud of serving in this leadership

position, as she explained, For three years, I stood at the top, but there were

problems being a woman president:

If a man was the president and he gave an order, the other mothers would

say, Mr. President said we should do this and they would do it. But if a

woman says the same thing, they are more likely to question her ability and

judgment.

Womens work in the PTA is usually not considered to be a voluntary activity but

a maternal duty. Kotani and her friends disagreed with this definition, as I discuss

in Chapter 6, as they were aware that participating in the PTA meant that they

were sacrificing opportunities to engage in paid work. Kotani felt that her

decision to participate in the PTA set her apart from other women, particularly

those of the younger generation:

You cant expect mothers these days to participate in the PTA. In the past it

was something mothers wanted to do or felt they had to do, but now there

are other things that women can do. They can work since most women are

educated at least to the junior-college level.

Because Kotani had been out of the workforce for more than 20 years and did

not have a university education, it would be difficult for her to find a satisfying

job if she tried to find paid work.

Kotani had become increasingly disenchanted with volunteering. As a

seishonen shidoin (commissioned childcare worker), she was responsible for

helping to organize local activities for children, but after serving in this post for

a year, Kotani found that she did not agree with the other volunteers

philosophies about how to care for children. The others thought that they should

create a sense of community for local children who lacked proper instruction at

24 Volunteers stories

home. Kotani, however, felt that local children did not need help. As a borantia

she wanted to help those in society who were truly needy.

I dont agree with the way they do social welfare activities here [in Niiyama-

cho]. I dont know how things are done in America, but I think there must be

a better way. . . . We should spend the money on people who really need it,

on the people who are really in trouble.

Theyre always saying that they want to form a bond between children

and the community. If parents raised their children properly, that should

come naturally.

More to the point, however, Kotani did not get along with the community

volunteers who were a generation older than she and were critical of young

women of her generation. At meetings with the community volunteers she

preferred to speak with me instead of mingle with the other volunteers.

After a little over a year in the post, Kotani decided to decline a second term as

seishonen shidoin. In addition to her discontent with the program, she felt that

her volunteer work was taking time away from her son during his critical exam

period that would determine his success in entering high school. Kotani was

concerned not to become an education mother [kyoiku mama], a common

stereotype of a woman committed to the point of obsession to her childrens

educational success, yet she wanted her son to at least gain acceptance into a

decent school. She and her friends often complained about the education system

because of the pressure it placed on their children. Kotani explained:

I told my children and myself that I wouldnt make them study when they

are in junior high school. I said that I would let them play and enjoy life.

But the reality is that if his grades and scores arent high enough, hell have

to go to a bad high school. So then I tell him, Just study hard for this

year. But its hard to leave him alone. When hes in his room and my

husband comes home, my husband wants to go into his room to see him.

I tell him [her husband] Im asking you: Please, dont go in. I noticed,

though, that when he [Ken] starts concentrating on his studies he becomes

selfish, just thinking about himself. He doesnt want to do certain things if

it takes time away from his studying, o