Nonformal Education and Civil Society in Japan critically examines an aspect of education that has received little attention to date: intentional teaching and learning activities that occur outside formal schooling.

In the last two decades nonformal education has rapidly increased in extent and significance. This is because individual needs for education have become so diverse and rapidly changing that formal education alone is unable to satisfy them. Increasingly diverse demands on education resulted from a combination of transnational migration, heightened human rights...

This book is an up-to-date critical examination of education in Japan by an author of the widely read and comprehensive Education in Contemporary Japan: Diversity and Inequality (1999, Cambridge University Press). In the last two decades Japan has faced slow economic growth, a low birth rate and an aging and increasingly multi-ethnic population. In education we have seen responses to these challenges in national and local educational policies, as well as in school-level practices.

The book discusses these significant developments and raises the following questions: Why have...