Focusing on the case study of Kobe that uses Chinatown for better community making and a symbolic gesture of internationalization, the paper explores organizations and networks that bring Chinese and Japanese together for the city's common goal. It also assesses the changing character of ethnic relations from a historical perspective. The paper concludes with my finding that Japanese urban society is not so much ambivalent to nor intolerant of foreigners and minorities. In fact, urban Japan can experience both attraction and repulsion by what is considered as alien or anomalous. The basic cause of this weakness is not cultural but structural-the elite manipulation of political institutions.
Citizens resent their powerlessness, but can do little about it.
The two major organized interest blocks, business and labor, enjoy a centralized corporatist organization connected to the state through peak associations. Hierarchical domination by the major political party and a career bureaucracy reinforce this weakness of the public sphere. This situation leaves relatively little political opportunity for citizens not so incorporated. Sociology and the Roots of Japan's Property Tax Revolt Andrew DeWit and Naohiko Jinno , Shimonoseki City University Taxes on land have long been points of urban contention in Japanese fiscal politics, but in the 1990s a building wave of frustration has brought vigorous corporate lobbying, court challenges, and increasing taxpayer delinquency. The implosion in land values is often argued as the source of this problem.