“Doing what we can do ourselves”

In the context of rapid aging and labor shortages, the Japanese government has been promoting “community-based care” to reduce the pressure on public care systems. The challenges are particularly pronounced in rural areas, where exceptionally high aging rates coincided with the retreat of the local state in a municipal merger wave in the mid-2000s. In response, many local governments rely on sub-municipal civic self-governance organizations to supplement service provision. Based on field research in several localities, this paper investigates how these state-linked self-governance organizations maintain, formalize, and expand pre-existing social practices of community care, and the limitations they face.

Hanno Jentzsch is Assistant Professor for Japanese Politics at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna. His research interests include state-society relations and local (self-)governance, agricultural politics, and social welfare in rural Japan. He is the author of “Harvesting State Support” (University of Toronto Press, 2021).

The presentation will be followed by discussion. 

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