In accord with our
The four co-authors of the present
All four co-authors have doctorates, and are Japanese university faculty members. They include Prof. Yu Ishida, who is Executive Director of
The present review is impressive in the variety and depth of Japanese voluntaristics research in the past two decades described by the authors. Comparing Japanese voluntaristics with the Chinese review by Smith with Zhao in 2016, one very clear difference is the advanced level of voluntaristics as an organized research field in Japan. China has three academic journals on voluntaristics, and many research centers in the field, but no national interdisciplinary researcher association. A major barrier to such a Chinese national voluntaristics researcher association is that it would likely be controlled by the national party-state, hence being a Government Organized Nongovernmental Organization (
A related comparison of interest is the per capita prevalence of voluntaristics researchers. Based on the current estimate of 441 academics and student members of
In terms of voluntaristics research content, comparison of the Japanese vs. Chinese review suggests, as might be expected, that nonprofits in Japan are much more independent of the national government, compared to the many
The present article remarks on an earlier lack of attention to social movements, activism, and advocacy by voluntaristics researchers in Japan, but with some growing interest in the past 10 years. A similar statement can be made about voluntaristics research in China, where only recently has there been much research on nonprofit advocacy and social activism (Smith with Zhao, 2016). Indeed, the latter article indicates that nonprofit advocacy and activism can be successful in China now if carefully done, without challenging the larger party–state political regime. Those authors refer to a special, non-threatening style of orderly activism.
Comparing voluntaristics more generally in the two nations, both reviews showed an extensive range of topics of research, in spite of the numerically less developed and less organized field of voluntaristics in China. This may in part be a result of China’s roughly ten times larger population, with numerically many more universities, academic researchers, and graduate students. However, the literature review by Zhang and Guo (2017) concluded that only about 5% of Chinese articles on voluntaristics were quantitative. Japanese voluntaristics research, as seen especially in The Nonprofit Review of
The present article on Japan also characterizes voluntaristics research as lacking in Japan-based theory, usually borrowing theory from the West, if using theory at all. Chinese voluntaristics research seems similar in this regard (Smith with Zhao, 2016). But as voluntaristics theory develops globally, its content may approach multi-cultural applicability, with only minor adjustments needed to apply to cultural variations (e.g., Smith et al., 2016: chapters 2, 30, 31). Such cultural variations and adjustments might be captured by the several key dimensions of culture analyzed by Hofstede (2003).
One example of theory that is potentially multicultural in its validity is S-Theory, derived from research in Western nations, but that has now been validated in a large Russian national sample survey (Smith, 2015; Smith et al., 2016: chapter 31). Finding such validation in Russia, a non-
At a minimum, one can conclude from the two articles that voluntaristics research is alive and well in two major Asian nations, though more organized in Japan than in China regarding a national voluntaristics researcher association. However, both nations have several, even many, research centers and university courses/programs on voluntaristics, and one or more active voluntaristics academic journals. Various other Asian nations also have active voluntaristics research communities, including interdisciplinary researcher associations, research centers, and academic journals in some countries (Smith, 2013, 2016).
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The editor is grateful to Prof. James M. Mandiberg, Hunter College, City University of New York, for linking him to Prof. Hironori Tarumi, of Hokkai-Gakuen University, Sapporo, Japan. In turn, the editor is grateful to Prof. Tarumi, President of