"Community Representatives" in Modern Japanese cities

Lessons from Nagoya City

Abstract

In this article, the author discusses intra-municipal decentralization in modern Japanese cities. Intramunicipal decentralization is an important policy issue in large cities such as Nagoya & Osaka because of the political style called populism that is characterized by the attacks on interest groups and the top-down decision making with reformist rhetoric. The author studies a case of Nagoya city in which mayor Kawamura has taken office since 2009. This article understands the intra-municipal decentralization in Nagoya as a process of reconsidering community representatives. The case study indicates two important points. First, through the argument about the intra-municipal decentralization in Nagoya, it revealed a cleavage between the mayor and other actors against the building of its community councils, such as the leaders of neighborhood associations and the members of the city council. There are two different logics which are based on two distinct interpretations of legitimacy of community representatives. Second, behind the political antagonism between the mayor and the city council, an important problem is overlooked that it is too difficult to maintain the cohesion of local communities in Nagoya. Citizens of Nagoya city don’t participate in community activities diligently. The author argues that the cohesion of local communities is indispensable to construct community representatives as the leaders of neighborhood selfgovernance. In conclusion, the author discusses (re)building of local communities in Japanese cities. In Nagoya, the citizens don’t respond to the top-down intra-municipal decentralization clearly. Though this case study indicates the difficulties of the neighborhood self-governance in Nagoya, the citizens need to address the issue of neighborhood self-governance by themselves.