For all the obstacles that remain, civil society is burgeoning in Japan, and the idea of civil society is at the core of the current debate about how to reinvigorate the country. The only volume of its kind, this book gathers the insights of American and Japanese scholars from the fields of political science, sociology, social psychology, and history to investigate the nature of associational life and the public sphere in Japan. It goes beyond assessing the condition of civil society to explore the role of the state in shaping civil society over time, and its broad, comparative framework is useful for thinking about civil society not just in Japan, but elsewhere in the contemporary world. Given its wealth of original research and the uniform strength of its individual chapters, this book will appeal to a broad audience of social scientists, practitioners, and policy-makers.