Social Capital in Japan

Abstract

Japanese society is often said to be one with a high premium on social capital. Two major theses have been put forward with regard to social capital in the last few years. One, advanced by Putnam (1993), is that social capital enables democracy to work. In other words, the historically acquired and accumulated social capital in terms of the propensity of individuals to engage with others in community and associational life facilitates the task of democratically working out the resolution of conflicts of interest and collectively producing good public policy. The other, advanced by Fukuyama (1995), postulates that social capital allows the creation of prosperity. In other words, a high level of social capital enables business firms to take risks and stretch networks fully in the creation of wealth on a large scale for a prolonged period of time.