Despite a long history, the organized field of research on voluntaristics in Japan has emerged only in the past two decades. This article presents a comprehensive review of voluntaristics research in Japan through an overview of past studies and recent hot topics. Nonprofit sector and voluntary action research, now termed voluntaristics (Smith, 2016), is reviewed here using four approaches: organizational, economic, employment, and charitable giving. Discussion of recent changes in the political-legal environment for nonprofit agencies and associations as well as of collaboration among nonprofits, governments, and businesses are presented. The article also covers some of the key topics in recent years, including rising social movements and advocacy, social impact bonds, social capital, and information and communication technologies (ICT) and social media. In discussing the emergence, expansion, and diversification of nonprofit research in Japan, the article makes two main arguments. First, we argue that studies of voluntaristics are rather recent in Japan, still in pursuit of their own originality. Second, we argue that nonprofit research in Japan is constantly looking for an ideal relationship with practice. Research appears to have not fully caught up with the changing landscape of nonprofits in action, and research has not been able to guide practice into the best next steps. The article highlights characteristics of nonprofit sector research in Japan as well as suggesting key questions for future research.

This volume provides the first systematic analysis of the Japanese nonprofit sector ever undertaken. Using a broad range of qualitative and quantitative data, the authors show that Japan has a much larger nonprofit sector than is recognized, even in Japan. Three-quarters of all university students attend nonprofit institutions, significant shares of hospital beds are in nonprofit institutions, and nonprofit agencies are active in the field of social services. Yet in comparative terms the Japanese nonprofit sector lags significantly behind that of other developed economies. One reason for this, the authors argue, is the generally hostile attitude the government has historically taken towards nonprofit organizations in Japan; nonprofit organizations wishing to attain legal status, have to secure the approval of a "competent Ministry," and this is often given begrudgingly or not at all. The nonprofit sector in Japan has only just begun to "flex its muscles" as an independent force in very recent years, and is now on the brink of a new phase in its development.

A look at the voluntary sector in Japan, which has emerged strongly only in recent years.

Over the past decade, Japanese corporations have made a series of large, news-generating gifts to a variety of United States universities, museums, and research institutions. Many of these gifts have differed in both nature and magnitude from the contributions made by Japanese companies domestically. The stir generated by such corporate grants is evidenced on the one hand by the influx into Japan of American, European, and Asian fundraisers seeking grants for their organizations, and on the other hand by the intensifying debate within Japan about the appropriate role for Japanese institutions as international corporate philanthropists and citizens. As with every facet of the complex United States-Japan relationship, cultural disparities make the American and Japanese approaches to philanthropy quite different, creating the potential for friction and disappointment in this realm as surely as in the realm of trade and international business. This book examines major legal and functional aspects of Japanese corporate philanthropy and attempts to place them in their cultural setting. Drawing on her experience as an attorney and five years in Japan, Ms. London aims to make Japanese corporate grantmaking more comprehensible not only to Americans but also to Japanese as they begin to focus more attention on the role and meaning of corporate philanthropy.