For comments on earlier drafts of this article I would like to thank Akihiro Ogawa; all participants at the conference “After the Developmental State,” Seoul, Korea, March 2004; the editor, Byung-Kook Kim; and anonymous reviewers of Journal of East Asian Studies. I am grateful to Jaeyoung Choe for his help familiarizing me with the JIGS data set. I am indebted to Joseph Wong for his comments and direction in shaping this article.Google Scholar

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11. Typically, these favored groups were economic interest groups (employers groups, agricultural groups, industry associations). As such they are conceptually distinct—either excluded from civil society as market organizations or forming a distinct subgroup within civil society. Under the latter conception, Japan's civil society could be said to have a triple structure: (1) strong local grassroots groups and (2) weak professionalized groups except for (3) strong economic interest groups. The leading Japanese scholar of civil society includes business organizations in his conception of civil society and characterizes Japan's civil society as exhibiting “business supremacy”; Tsujinaka, Yutaka, “Japan's Civil Society Organizations in Comparative Perspective.” In Schwartz, Frank J. and Pharr, Susan J., eds., The State of Civil Society in Japan (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003). This is completely consonant with the above usage of “triple structure.” Google Scholar

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14. This supervision is established by Civil Code article 67. Paragraph 2 establishes a supervision system (kanshi seido) by the competent supervising ministry (shumu kanchou). Article 84 makes further provisions for fines by PIP directors who violate directions by the competent ministry.Google Scholar

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37. Source: http://roperweb.ropercenter.uconn.edu, March 22, 1998 poll. Accessed March 17, 2004.Google Scholar

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