Declaration of “New Public Commons”

June 4, 2010
Introduction
A vibrant civil society in which people support one another ― this is the basic concept
presented by the New Public Commons Roundtable set up by the Hatoyama Government. In
such a society, various stakeholders voluntarily work together to create a “New Public Commons.”
This is not a new idea. In fact, the concept of a “public commons” has long thrived in Japanesecommunities, although it is in danger of becoming a thing of the past. For this reason the concept
has been revived and adapted to accommodate present circumstances in order to rebuild the bonds
among people and communities.
Several examples can be cited from Japan’s recent past and present in which the people
have joined together for their mutual benefit. On January 17, 1995, over 6,000 people were killedin the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. Soon after the quake, as local governments were
inoperable and businesses were closed due to the damage that they had suffered, people in thedisaster-hit areas spontaneously formed makeshift communities to support each other incoordination with “venues of cooperation” set up by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),
not-for-profit organizations (NPOs) and volunteers from across the nation. More than one million
volunteers were said to rush to the disaster area, and for many of them, this experience brought
about the realization that they, too, could lend a helping hand and achieve a sense of fulfilment inreturn. People cannot survive without mutual support, and this realization forms the basis of the“New Public Commons.”
In 1869, three years before the promulgation of the national educational system in Japan,
residents in the city of Kyoto established bangumi shogakko (community elementary schools) ineach of the city’s 64 bangumi (autonomous communities). These schools were supported in partby financial contributions called kamadokin, which were made by individual households inproportion to the number of kamado (kitchen furnaces for cooking) in each household. Eachschool had on its premises a community meeting room and quarters for local fire fighters and local
patrols. In the autumn of 2006, the old buildings of one of such schools, The Tatsuike School,
were renovated and reopened as the Kyoto International Manga Museum. Behind the project werelocal stakeholders, including a federation of local residents’ associations. Funds that had beencollected over a long period of time were donated to the project by neighbourhood associations inthe spirit of building their own city. Such examples demonstrate that a vibrant community ofmutual support can be created when people make their fair share of contributions.
In Kamikatsu Township in Tokushima Prefecture, local senior citizens run a community
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business called “Irodori,” which sells wild leaves, flowers and plants collected from nearby
mountains to restaurants for use as garnish. About one-half of Kamikatsu Township’s farming
families participate in the business, and its annual sales amount to 260 million yen. While theelderly account for 50% of the town’s population, the number of bedridden elderly is
extraordinarily small. In fact, per-capita healthcare costs for the elderly in Kamikatsu are thelowest among the 24 municipalities in the prefecture. Everybody in the town has a place to go anda role to play. As a result, they have worked together to produce a community that is less costly
and livelier than the neighbouring townships—one in which the residents also enjoy a high levelof personal satisfaction.
A third example of mutual support in a New Public Commons is The Big Issue, a popularmagazine sold on the streets by approximately 150 homeless people for a cover price of 300 yen.
Since for each copy 160 yen goes to the seller, a hard-working homeless vendor can make amodest living by selling say 800 copies each month. Readers of The Big Issue do not buy themagazine because they feel pity for the homeless but because they find its articles interesting andbecause they enjoy conversing with the vendors, who often employ innovative sales approaches.
This enterprise demonstrates the adage that quality sells, and it gives homeless people theopportunity and the confidence to support themselves. However, The Big Issue is not just acommercial venture. Rather, the interactions between the vendors and the buyers—and theempathy and commitment that they demonstrate—show that the market has the potential to be a
“venue of cooperation” that binds people together.
These are just a few examples of real activities and experiences that employ the conceptof the “New Public Commons.” More examples could be cited, and it is the hope of the New
Public Commons Roundtable that more people will embrace this concept so that such actions canproliferate.

The “New Public Commons” and the Future of JapanThe traits promoted by the “New Public Commons” are mutual support and social
vibrancy. In this society, everyone has a place to go and a role to play. People value the pleasure ofhelping others, and by generating new markets and services they allow economic activity to thrive.
When the fruits of such activities are properly returned to society, people can live better lives.
Thus, such a society develops in a virtuous cycle.
With a declining birth rate, the Japanese population is rapidly aging. This demographic
shift will create new challenges and new social issues, and these issues cannot be resolved by thegovernment alone or by simply injecting money and goods into the community. However, asociety of mutual support and vibrancy, realized through the “New Public Commons,” can create
communities that are rich in social capital and that enjoy a high level of mutual confidence, lowsocial costs and a great degree of happiness. In such communities, new ideas can emerge from thebonds among people, triggering social innovations that will lead the way to fresh growth.
2In the past, the Japanese people exercised their wisdom and social skills to create vibrantcommunities in which the people mutually supported one another, such as yui, ko and za, in which
the public sector was not the sole provider of public services. For example, in the Edo era, Japan
had a total of 15,000 neighbourhood private schools, or terakoya, in addition to local government
schools, called hanko, and the terakoya is considered to be one of the most advanced private
sector education systems in the world at that time. Various actors playing their respective roles
cooperated in supporting public services and in building a vibrant society of mutual support andgoodwill. Local governance, combined with festivals and events, invigorated towns and villages,
and traditional activities, such as the tea ceremony, often produced business offshoots.
As Japan developed into a modern nation state during the Meiji period, however, people
started viewing public services as the responsibility of the public sector. Consequently, decision
making and the allocation of resources became concentrated in the central government. For sometime, the central government bureaucrats played an important role in Japan’s modernisation and inits rapid economic growth; since that time, however, these officials have lost much of their initial
fervour. As a result, the Japanese public abandoned the idea that local governments should be themain provider of public services. People became less connected to each other and less involved intheir communities, and it is now widely felt that each person is responsible for his or her academic
achievements and for his or her own success in life. As such, individuals think of their own needs
and concerns first rather than considering the public good, and people in general have lost their
desire to work together for the benefit of society as a whole. However, people should rememberthat in Japan communities and individuals once played important roles in providing public
services, and it is still possible for the Japanese public to recover this role. Collectively, theJapanese must foster the momentum for people to be reconnected to their communities by taking
responsibility for working both independently and together to address the needs shared by all.
A long-standing view once common to many Japanese held that “Earning money or doing
one’s duty is not enough. Accomplishing the two makes a person complete. One’s duty is to lend ahelping hand to others and to do what one can for society.” Modern private sector enterprises areimportant actors in the “New Public Commons.” In fact, companies can achieve bothgoals—increasing their earnings and doing their duty to others—if their contributions towardbuilding a sustainable community are accepted by society. In return, the people patronize theirbusinesses, thus increasing such companies’ profits and their market share. Under the recent global
economic system, however, maximizing profit has become the sole objective of private industry.
As a result, many business people have concluded that economic returns and social returns cannot
be achieved simultaneously. The notion of a “New Public Commons,” however, offers an
opportunity to reconsider whether this conflict is an inevitable product of capitalism or whether
new models need to be proposed concerning how capitalism functions in society.
In Britain, several measures, including the 2000 pension law revision, led to an increasein the amount of outstanding pension funds managed through socially, environmentally andethically responsible investments from zero in 1997 to 80 billion pounds (approximately 11 trillion
3yen) in 2001. Similar initiatives have yielded similar results in other European countries, and these
initiatives have not resulted in a loss of revenue for the investors. In fact, it was a pensioners’
group that first called for such changes in investment strategy in Britain. As social awareness rises
among shareholders and consumers, capitalism can change for the better and lead businesses to act
in accordance with long-term social perspectives. In other words, the social awareness of
individuals and the will of society to make a change can achieve both economic returns for privatecompanies and social returns for the community.
Increasingly, business managers have been exploring opportunities to make social
contributions to the communities in which they operate, such as by making donations to NPOs thatare working to resolve social issues, promoting volunteer activities by employees and using theirbusiness strengths to support regional projects. These activities have the joint benefit of improving
corporate values and attracting high value human resources. In other words, company managers
are learning that economic returns are not incompatible with social returns.
In addition, NPOs and other social enterprises have been helping to improve society by
applying business approaches to the resolution of social problems. These social enterprises arecontributing to creating the “New Public Commons” in a number of down-to-earth ways that
could not be easily adopted by governments or corporations. For example, NPOs are providing
medical care, nursing, childcare and education to local communities, and they are offering advice
and resources in fields such as the environment, agriculture, forestry, culture and art. In otherinstances they are adopting novel business models, such as offering microfinancing to small
business owners. Most of these entities engage exclusively in social activities and place a priority
on creating social returns rather than economic returns.
Systems that pave the way for private enterprise to obtain economic returns in themarketplace while addressing social values in the community help to build a better society. To
achieve this goal, these new social systems will need to include: institutional reforms, such as tax
reforms that create incentives to donate to charities; the introduction of new schemes to support
projects by central or local governments, with new approaches that differ from conventional
subsidies; and effective financial support and investments to foster social capital. For entities that
depend on economic returns that are not obtained through the marketplace, transparency should be
increased—for example, by introducing requirements for financial disclosure and requiring
evaluation by third party, non-governmental entities.
In this way, the people, businesses, NPOs and governments, among other entities, canwork together to breathe fresh life into Japanese society. This is the essence of the “New PublicCommons” that we are pursuing.

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Creating a “New Public Commons”
The “New Public Commons” consists of venues of cooperation established by and among
stakeholders to create a society of mutual support and vibrancy. In this way, individuals, citizens’
groups, local organizations, businesses and governments can work together to achieve social
benefits for the community and economic benefits by increasing productivity. The cooperationneeded to work out the rules and roles for creating such a platform resulted in the creation of the“New Public Commons.” To this end, the New Public Commons Roundtable expects people andbusinesses to contribute as outlined in items 1 and 2 below and recommends that the government
implement the measures outlined in item 3.
1) People
Each citizen is a central player in the “New Public Commons.” Just a few examples will
be sufficient to demonstrate this principle in action.
An elderly couple developed the habit of pausing at a neighbourhood intersection during
their morning walk to make sure that school children could cross the road safely. The couple
began this practice for the sake of the children, but it became a daily pleasure for them to receive
greetings from the kids. Thus, every person can make a small step forward if motivated by a desire
to help others. This is the basis of the “New Public Commons.”
The bigger the social issues are, the more important it is for each of us to be involved inresolving them. However, each individual may contribute in very small ways. For example, inTokyo’s Mitaka City, exchanges among different age groups at a joint elementary and junior highschool have reportedly brought about remarkable changes among the children. Junior high school
students have become more caring by taking care of the younger children at community gatherings
outside the school. In turn, elementary school students who saw the junior high school students
lending a hand at elementary school sports events began volunteering at a nearby kindergarten.
In many towns and villages in Nagano Prefecture, volunteers, mostly in their fifties, areproviding consulting services to members of their community. They talk to neighbours, ask how
they are doing and distribute leaflets on healthcare and health-related topics to each household. As
a result of this initiative, along with other factors, Nagano Prefecture is now known for its
residents’ longevity, and its per-capita elderly healthcare costs are among the lowest of any
prefecture in Japan. However, that was not always the case: the prefecture once faced serious
healthcare challenges. The local health consultant system that has operated since the 1950s is
regarded as one of the main factors behind this substantial improvement. The volunteer healthconsultants’ tireless efforts combined to improve the welfare of everyone in the community.
In 2007, the prefecture-run Kaibara Hospital in Hyogo’s Tanba City faced a crisis as it
was losing its paediatric doctors. As the regional medical system teetered on the brink of acollapse, mothers in the region stood up. They called for others like themselves to do what they
could to address this crisis by, for example, limiting their children’s hospital visits during5

off-hours and expressing gratitude to the paediatricians. The campaign spread and, as a result, thenumber of patients visiting the paediatrics department during off-hours was halved. The
municipality also took countermeasures and the number of full-time doctors was increased to fivein the following year.
Needless to say, it is important for both businesses and governments to play theirrespective roles. However, the people should acknowledge that they are the ultimate social
stakeholders and the central players in building a happier society.
2) Businesses
Businesses can make contributions to a society and increase their profits through public
relations and improved goodwill. Therefore, companies need to take their social characteristics
and contributions to society as seriously as they take their efforts to maximize profits. According
to a purely capitalist model, funds shift to wherever the highest returns can be obtained. However,for their long-term survival enterprises must return their profits and wisdom to society in order tohelp the market on which they depend to thrive.
Many of the benefits of the “New Public Commons” may be intangible, but they can leadto measurable improvements. For example, by engaging in socially responsible activities,
corporate executives and employees can encounter people from a variety of fields—which, in turn,can lead to new and creative manufacturing ideas and services. In fact, some commentators haveargued that, as Japan has entered a period of slow economic growth, enterprises can only survive
by refining their corporate values and addressing social goals. Many enterprises have begun torealize that by “going cultural” they can help their employees to widen their social and cultural
perspectives, leading to the socialisation and diversification of the company as whole and to therealisation of flexible organisational structures. The result of such actions has been theenhancement of the companies’ corporate values.
Private enterprises should acknowledge the importance of their relationship to society throughsocially responsible and philanthropic activities, even if only to enhance their own sustainability.
Corporations also need to be aware that their employees are members of the community and, assuch, the companies should embrace a management philosophy that works to improve the social
characteristics of their businesses—for example, by creating mechanisms to return their profits tosociety.
3) Governments
In order to realize the “New Public Commons,” governments should aggressively review
their relationship with the people and the manner in which they provide public services. The
public sector should recognize that it has been given a mandate by the people and by the private
sector to provide core public services, and it should take such measures as those discussed below
in order to play its many important roles successfully for the benefit of the New Public Commons.
Governments should implement reforms to attract more specialised, diligent and capable
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public servants from outside the public sector and to share human resources between government
departments to improve the quality of public services. They should stop wasting taxpayers’ money
and make use of new budgeting methods, such as program-by-program screening, to appropriately
distribute funds. Furthermore, politicians and bureaucrats should cooperate in boldly fostering
information disclosure, regulatory reforms and local autonomy.
In addition, the central government should acknowledge that various members ofsociety—including individuals, citizens’ groups and private enterprises—have the capacity toprovide public services. Local governments should consider what cooperative and/or contractual
relationships can be established among these actors to promote dialogue and to work together onan equal footing. In this way the government can open up to the “New Public Commons” services
and functions that it has long monopolised, and it can increase the number of options available tothe people while implementing such measures as institutional reforms and reviews of operational
procedures. For the “New Public Commons” to be truly effective, the government must takespecific measures to build a society in which the people become part of the decision making
process.
In terms of institutional improvements in support of the “New Public Commons,”
government must expedite tax reforms to introduce tax credits for public service projects, adopt
the provisional authorization of NPOs to allow tax deduction for donors, review the public support
test standards for NPOs and raise the ceiling on deductible contributions. In particular, thegovernment should proactively reconsider the scale, the timetable and the eligibility of tax
credits—as Prime Minister Hatoyama instructed at the New Public Commons Roundtable. Finally,
governments should promote Socially Responsible Investment by institutionalising the disclosureof public pensions’ investment policies. For these institutional improvements to be effective it isimportant when reviewing and reforming the existing regulations to recognize that people are themain actors in the “New Public Commons.”
It is also important for the government as a whole, including all ministries and agencies,
to develop and promote systems and mechanisms for stepping up social innovations utilising thespecial reform zones, among other measures, and enhancing the social capital of local
communities. The government, businesses and NPOs should work together to promote the training
and education of human resources who will engage in social activities.
Governments and citizens’ groups should work together to redefine their relationships
with each other and with other sectors involved in the operation of central and local governments.
To this end, the central and local governments should create new mechanisms for developing
citizen-participation public works projects and innovative projects proposed by the private sector
rather than employing the current conventional unilateral system of subsidies and subcontracts.
Human beings are a highly social species. People are naturally happy to help others, andpeople are pleased when their actions are appreciated. Under the “New Public Commons,” people
are perceived as independent beings, not dependent on the government. However, people are alsointer-dependent, and they can work together to support each other. This is the foundation for the7

“New Public Commons.”
Finally, in order to define the rules and roles for and within the “New Public Commons,”a panel should be set up to maintain an ongoing discussion of the appropriate relationships among
the people, private enterprises and local governments, among other entities, as providers of public
services, as well as to monitor future governmental responses.

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The above is a consensus among the members of the New Public Commons Roundtable.

Ikuyo Kaneko

Professor, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio
University

One Akiyama

President, Integrex Inc.

Ryozo Ichimura

Mayor, Obuse Town, Nagano Prefecture

Hideyuki Inoue

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Policy Management, Keio
University

Kensuke Onishi

Representative Director, Civic Force

Takehiko Ogi

President, Maruzen Co.

Izumi Oguri

Newscaster, Nippon Television Network Corp.

Ayumu Kaitsu

President, Swan Co.

Koichi Kaneda

Senior Manager, Corporate Communications Department,
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.

Shoji Sano

Publisher, Big Issue Japan

Kyoko Shimada

Part-time Lecturer, Japan Women’s University

Naoko Taniguchi

Founder and Director, NPO Palette

Ken Terawaki

Professor, Department of Art, Kyoto University of Art and
DesignTakeshi Niinami

President and CEO, Lawson, Inc.

Hirohiko Fukushima

Professor, Social System Research Institute, Chuo Gakuin
University

Yoshiharu Fukuhara

Honorary Chairman, Shiseido Co.

Kumiko Hori

Director of Community Affairs and Diversity, UBS Securities
Japan Ltd.

Tomoji Yokoishi

President, Irodori Co.

Nana Watanabe

Photographer9

As government members participated the New Public Commons Roundtable, we agree to the
Declaration of the New Public Commons based on the consensus among the members of the
New Public Commons Roundtable and will strive to realize “New Public Commons.”

Yukio Hatoyama

Prime Minister

Naoto Kan

Deputy Prime Minister

Hirofumi Hirano

Chief Cabinet Secretary

Yoshito Sengoku

Minister of State for the New PublicCommons

Yukio Edano

Ministerof
Revitalization

Koji Matsui

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary

Atsuhi Oshima

Senior Vice Minister, Cabinet Office

Kohei Otsuka

Senior Vice Minister, Cabinet Office

Shu Watanabe

Senior Vice Minister of Internal Affairs andCommunications

Naoki Minezaki

Senior Vice Minister of Finance

Hiroshi Suzuki

Senior Vice Minister of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science and Technology

Kenta Izumi

Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office

Seiji Osaka

Special Adviser to Prime Minister

Oriza Hirata

Special Adviser to the Cabinet

State

for

Government

10Appendix: Specific Image of “New Public Commons”

Invigorating nonprofit sector and developing social capital◇”New Public Commons” Creation Foundation and Contribution Promotion Organization
Proposes to create a nationwide “new society creation foundation”, modelled after the
Kyoto Foundation for Positive Social Change, a public fund founded by citizens; to provide tax
breaks and social credits for regional civic activities: to manage and utilize subsidies, loans andregional assets; to cooperate with relevant organizations in recommending “provisionallycertified” NPOs through their open screening, in training relevant human resources and inproviding interest subsidies. A “contribution promotion organization” will also be proposed tosupport benefactors in pursuit of a society in which citizens will contribute 1% of income.
◇Civil Society Initiative FundThe fund is a financial intermediary organization that has specialized consulting functions
and receives various donations and grants from individuals, enterprises and other entities in order
to increase financial resources for NPOs and secure the autonomous development and invigorationof the private nonprofit sector. In FY 2009, seven companies and one fund (individual) provided a
total of 124.95 million yen to finance 123 programs through the fund. The fund also undertakes aninternship program for students to learn at NPOs.
◇ SVP (Social Venture Partners) Tokyo
Building on donations of 100,000 yen per person mainly from working people, SVP
Tokyo provides management advice and investment to support social ventures that try to resolve
social problems. For example, SVP Tokyo implemented an investment program, including thedevelopment of an instructor certification system and system support, for Madre Bonita, which isan organization seeking to promote the beauty and health of mothers after child deliveries,
allowing the organization to become a certified NPO, continue operations and scale out.
◇1% Club
The Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) founded the 1% Club in 1990 to help
its corporate and individual members spend more than 1% of ordinary profit or disposable income
on social contributions. The club has 234 corporate and 940 individual members (as of May 2010).
In FY 2008, 391 companies responding to “a social contribution promotion survey” of 1% Cluband Nippon Keidanren corporate members spent a total of 181.8 billion yen on social
contributions (including gifts in kind).
◇FIT Charity Run (FIT: Financial Industry in Tokyo)
The FIT Charity Run is an annual charity event planned, managed and implemented byvolunteers among employees working at financial services and relevant companies. The event hascontinued to expand since the first one in 2005 (the 2009 event featured 5,180 participants from97 companies). Past contributions through the charity event totalled more than 219 million yen.
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FIT aims 1) to collect funds for local nonprofit groups which carry out locally rooted significant
activities, 2) to increase the public awareness of organizations subject to its support through theevent, and 3) to provide more citizens with opportunities to support volunteers and local nonprofit
bodies.

□□ Fostering social and public human resources to undertake the New Public Commons◇ NPO learning scholarship system: NPO-government-enterprise cooperation in fostering social
human resources
Under the system, NPOs, government organizations, enterprises, education institutions
and the like will work together in fostering young people who can find social problems and think
and act on their own to undertake the New Public Commons; NPOs will accept internships; thegovernment and enterprises will provide scholarships and information; education institutions will
select the young people joining the program and certify credits. The number of people
experiencing NPO activities will increase to enrich human resources that will allow everyone toundertake the New Public Commons.
◇ Invigorating PTAs to develop public schools into community schools
Proposes to set up NPOs or utilize existing regional organizations to support PTA
executive officers faced with heavy clerical duties. The government may use contract program
outlays and educational benefits to financially support these organizations and may found audit
committees to check their governance. These measures will make it easier for everyone toparticipate in PTAs, promoting parents’ social participation to foster regional society leaders. Also,
public schools throughout Japan should be developed into community schools.
◇ Local residents’ efforts based on comprehensive local sports clubs
Proposes to develop local sports environment centring NPO-type community sports clubs
managed voluntarily by residents with member fees or donations, departing from gratuitous public
service by the government. Various sport, health and cultural activities integrating sports clubs andschools, such as utilizing schools and unused school facilities and dispatching sports instructors toschools, should lead to the development of inter-generation exchanges and community schools.

□□Public service innovation◇ Building relationships between public service and citizen sector under new ideas
The government and the citizen sector are required to conclude a new compact
representing their respective duties and attitudes to build their new relationships. In Aichi
Prefecture, the prefectural government has compiled an agreement with NPOs. The governor and657 organizations (as of October 2006) signed the agreement to create a “cooperation rule book.”
Abiko City founded a proposal-based public service privatization system to transfer certain public
service to the private sector as proposed by the sector. These efforts are spreading to other local
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communities.
Reference: The United Kingdom has promoted welfare pluralism since 1990, leading NPOs and private
enterprises to compete with each other. Local governments have thus become service purchasers and NPOs haveworked as service providers. Government funds provided to NPOs have shifted from subsidies to contract-based
payments. Recently, the Office of the Third Sector issued an action plan to appropriately award contracts ororders in efforts to increase effects, social outcomes and efficiencies.

□□ Utilizing local resources under new ideas◇Local residents revived Kamigata rakugo theatre to triple shopping street visitors
Osaka’s Tenjinbashi shopping street association has established a culture centre,
sponsored various events and developed new products in a bid to make the street more attractive.
In an effort to revive rakugo theatre at the Osaka Tenmangu, the association and the Rakugo
Association collected donations from individuals, enterprises and other organizations. As a result,the “Tenman Tenjin Hanjo-tei” rakugo theatre has been completed to revitalize the street withshopping and art culture. The theatre has become a new sight in Osaka.
◇ Obuse’s town development by a stock company
In Obuse Town, Nagano Prefecture, the local chamber of commerce and industry and theadministration sector cooperated in collecting 16.5 million yen in investment to found Ala-Obuse
Co. Investors provide funds, labour and ideas and benefit from the overall improvement of Obuse
Town as a result of the company’s business. The company has contributed to build a town withmature lifestyles through business activities including the management of community spaces andlodging facilities, the publication of sightseeing leaflets and the promotion of local industries.
◇ Free movie theatre admissions for students aged 14
A campaign is proposed to provide free movie theatre admissions to students aged 14.
Local communities, PTAs, enterprises and the like may collect donations from campaign
supporters to help finance the campaign to offer free movie theatre admissions only for
14-year-old students. Junior high schools may encourage second-year students to go to movie
theatres in a bid to diffuse movie-watching experiences. The government sector may support
movie-screening events in areas without movie theatres and promote advanced self-expression
through movies in order to promote movie culture.
◇U.K. and U.S. projects launched for people to create places of their own
The “NPO Participle” program in the UK has positioned “isolation” as the fundamental
problem for an aged society and provided a mechanism for registered citizen volunteer helpers to
respond to telephone requests from elderly people who may say, “I have become ill and would liketo ask you to take my dog for a walk,” or “Will you hang a frame on my wall?” The U.S. “Senior
Tutor Program” allows senior citizens to get education coupons by serving as tutors for children atorphanages or low-income families. The coupons can be used for education of grandchildren andfoster children.
◇ Kasumigaura Asaza Project as a citizen-led public works
This is a citizen-led public works project in which Asaza Fund, an NPO, as well as
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enterprises, local residents, agriculture-forestry-fishery participants, local industries, education
institutions, administrative agencies and the like cooperate in improving the environment andfostering biodiversity in the Kasumigaura Region. A total of 200,000 citizens and more than 200
elementary and junior high schools have participated in the project covering a total area of 2,200
square kilometres in 24 municipalities of three prefectures since 1995. The project includes
environment improvement planning based on interviews with elderly people by elementary school
pupils, the utilization of idled paddies for production of pesticide-free rice for sake and bankprotection using forest thinning.
□□ Economic activities based on sympathy and commitment to form social connections
Reference: “Warashibe Choja” (The Straw Millionaire) is a tale found in Tales of Times Now Past (Konjaku
Monogatari) and Uji Shui Monogatari. “A poor man tied a fly with straw and a child wanted the fly. Then, theman exchanged the fly for an orange. He received cloth from a thirsty person in exchange for the orange. He
then got a dray horse in exchange for the cloth. As he gave the horse water, the horse got well. Then, a person
wanted the horse for his imminent travel. The poor man took over and cultivated paddies left by the person andeventually became a millionaire.” The fly the poor man gave to a child can be interpreted as an inventive idea
and the orange was a healing. Amartya Sen questioned rational economic behaviours to maximize returns andindicated “sympathy” and “commitment” as new choices. The Straw Millionaire represents sympathy andcommitment.

◇Palette and Swan Bakery
Palette is an NPO, while Swan Co. is a stock company. The two organizations of different
types both provide handicapped people with employment opportunities. Palette sells cookies andSwan breads. Based on the principle that customers should buy these products not because they
are made by handicapped persons but because they are delicious, Palette and Swan havesimultaneously realized economic activities and opportunities for handicapped people to get roles
to play based on sympathy and commitment. Palette for regional operations and Swan for
chain-based operations are social ventures that have pioneered “the scale out of sympathy.”□□ Private sector’s organized public support◇ Private sector platform to address large-scale disasters
No one knows when big disasters like the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake Disaster could
occur, while the administration sector is expected to take much time to address such unforeseeable
events. Therefore, Civic Force, a public interest incorporated association, has called for a private
sector-led platform to promptly and effectively provide 500-person balloon shelters, transportationof goods and other services and coordinate enterprises and volunteers in the event of large-scaledisasters. Such platform may be implemented by the private sector but must be authorized by local
administration authorities. The private sector’s close cooperation with the administration sector isconsidered as a future challenge.
◇ Civic water resources conservation activities and trust law
Water resources are expected to become more precious than oil in the 21st century. Civic
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trust activities have been launched to conserve deep-mountain water resources. Lands totalling
1,536 hectares have already been purchased under the activities. In orders to promote these
activities, ”a trust law” should be considered to ban land transfers (including sales, collateralizing
and compulsory subrogation without Diet resolutions) and exempt contribution or inheritance oftrust assets from tax.
◇ Citizens watching commuting children
A campaign has been under way for citizens to watch commuting children for Kyoto
City’s No. 4 Kinrin elementary school for their protection from crimes. Store owners advance thetime for opening their stores, elderly couples put off morning walks slightly, housewives adjust
their afternoon shopping times, and Kyoto University sports club students change their runningtimes and routes. In this way, some 400 citizens have made the best use of inventiveness tocontinuously participate in the campaign. This campaign has contributed to invigorating the local
community as well as to preventing crimes. Many similar campaigns are seen throughout Japan.

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