The concept of civil society inspires, irritates, or confounds depending on the context and whose judgment is brought to bear. Civil society consists of sustained, organized social activity that occurs in groups that are formed outside the State, the market, and the family. Such activity on the part of groups and individuals cumulatively creates a domain of discourse, a public sphere. Nonstate, nonmarket, nonfamily actors and activities are myriad in any society, however, and there will inevitably be debates over what to include and exclude in considering that vast sphere in which people come together to create social life and public discourse. But these uncertainties should not obscure the value of a concept that offers a powerful analytical tool for thinking about the associational landscape that exists in any given country, the forces that shaped it, the nature of social experiences within the various groups that comprise it, and the ways in which these terrains vary across nations.

Building on the existing literature on organized social life there, civil society provides precisely such a tool for analyzing associational life in Japan. A rich tradition of scholarship traces the country's early civic legacy in the feudal era and before (see Garon, this volume).