This chapter offers a theoretical account of socially embedded good governance. It connects the two major principles discussed in the book so far – accountability as accessibility and transparency in people – to the idea of a public–private divide and debates around good governance and corruption in Africa more broadly. Specifically, the public–private divide is written into principal–agent models of democratic accountability and forms the crux of liberal definitions of corruption. Popular conceptions of socially embedded good governance hold that the connections that make powerful people knowable and accessible in ordinary life should not be severed as they enter the public office. This requires expanding the scope of good governance beyond the formal realm of the state. The chapter repurposes Peter Ekeh’s idea of the ‘two publics’ to suggest that popular demands for transparency in people and accountability as accessibility could be understood as a demand to re-connect the social with the political and thus unite the ‘two publics’. It concludes that not only is “personal politics without clientelism” (Mueller 2018) possible but also the porousness of the state to social relations – for so long seen as the Achilles heel of governance in Nigeria - may in fact be its strength.

This chapter sets out the conceptual framework of the book, examining challenges to democracy in Japan and the world, and recent searches for alternative visions of politics. The end of the Cold War in Europe did not, as some had hoped, lead to a global triumph of democracy. Rather, social frictions associated with the global spread of market capitalism created a crisis of democracy symbolised by the rise of new forms of populism. This crisis has inspired new searches for political alternatives, many of them focusing on grassroots forms of informal politics. The chapter introduces the notion of informal life politics, which will be central to the chapters that follow, and highlights the importance of examining the historical as well as the present-day dimensions of informal life politics in Japan and beyond.

An examination of historical traditions of informal life politics in Japan, and their links to similar traditions internationally. Though political life in East Asia is often viewed as highly state-centric, I argue that there is a long tradition of East Asian thought – evident in some forms of Daoism, Buddhism and even Confucianism – which emphasises the importance of non-state everyday action in creating the good society. One practical manifestation of these ideas in pre-Meiji Japan was the emergence of mutual aid groups. The chapter also examines how modern Japanese informal life politics drew on various European traditions, many of which had links to non-conformist Christianity or to the late nineteenth century upsurge of interest in Asian religions. The final sections of the chapter discusses the impact on Japan’s informal life politics of the early twentieth century Heiminsha movement, the Ashio pollution incident and the High Treason Incident of 1911.

This concluding chapter offers a reassessment of informal life politics in the modern Japanese context. The activities explored in book can, from one perspective, be seen as having had very little effect on mainstream political life in Japan: indeed, they have often deliberately eschewed engagement with mainstream political institutions. But it can be argued that, as well as improving the quality of life for communities directly concerned, these activities have helped to offer an alternative understanding of ‘the political’ itself: an understanding that speaks to the crisis of democracy which confronts the world today. As this chapter acknowledges, the book has only been able to address limited facets of the rich history of informal life politics in Japan, but it is hoped that it has helped to open up a perspective that can be further developed in the future, as researchers and activists continue to seek a path forward out of the twenty-first century crisis of democracy.