Japan's Living Politics: Grassroots Action and the Crises of Democracy

by Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Overview

The first two decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed a rise of populism and decline of public confidence in many of the formal institutions of democracy. This crisis of democracy has stimulated searches for alternative ways of understanding and enacting politics. Against this background, Tessa Morris-Suzuki explores the long history of informal everyday political action in the Japanese context. Despite its seemingly inflexible and monolithic formal political system, Japan has been the site of many fascinating small-scale experiments in 'informal life politics': grassroots do-it-yourself actions which seek not to lobby governments for change, but to change reality directly, from the bottom up. She explores this neglected history by examining an interlinked series of informal life politics experiments extending from the 1910s to the present day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108748018
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2022
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.22(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Emeritus Professor in the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University, Canberra.

Table of Contents

1. Japan and the crisis of democracy; 2. Living politics: Japan and the world; 3. The white birch and the Earth: giving life to the self in interwar Japan and beyond; 4. Rethinking the village; 5. Peasant art, free drawing and the free university; 6. The body politic: Saku Hospital and the Japanese cooperative movement; 7. Seeds of democracy: rural spaces of autonomy in postwar Japan; 8. Development from within: environment, region and autonomous action from the 1980's onwards; 9. Disaster and aftermath: informal life politics after 2011; Conclusion. Towards another democracy.

Editorial Reviews

'Tessa Morris-Suzuki incisively explains why democracy is so difficult. For two centuries, many Japanese individuals have produced an impressive array of visionary, cosmopolitan, compassionate, and useful institutions that improve the lives of their neighbors - both body and soul - at the local level - surely the beginning of the answer, she argues.’ Laura Hein, Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of History, Northwestern University

'From White Birch Teachers, Peasant Art and Free University, to craft and health cooperatives, Morris-Suzuki powerfully exposes the Japanese multitude’s transnational past from the ground up and in transwar perspective. This history of symbiotic everyday networks that countered capitalist modernity reveals a new past that could change and challenge old future imaginations of the Anthropocene, democracy and climate change.’ Sho Konishi, University of Oxford

‘Morris-Suzuki reminds us that the transnational history of Japan involves more than the circulation of ideas and practices at the level of nation-states. In this engaging account of translocal connections, we witness the formation of 'new villages' and other communities that championed autonomous politics outside the state and in dialogue with like-minded groups around the world.’ Sheldon Garon, Princeton University

‘… those who are interested in rural activism in Japan will find a fascinating and rewarding read that is elegantly written and presents an important and new perspective on Japan and its history of grassroots activism.’ David Chiavacci, Journal of Japanese Studies

‘Japan’s Living Politics is likely to be of greatest interest to Japan scholars and students, and it should be widely adopted in Japan studies courses. That said, it should also be of interest to sociologists and anthropologists interested in community activism and communal living. I hope that comparative democracy scholars also take notice because Morris-Suzuki’s methodology reads, to this reviewer at least, as both more authentic and more informative than much of the large-n quantitative research that has become a focus of that subfield.’ Mary Alice Haddad, Monumenta Nipponica

From the Publisher