Paper short abstract

This paper examines overlooked forms of socially collaborative art in Japan since the 2000s. It introduces “Social but not Public” to describe practices that limit visibility, reframing how cultural practice, civil society and governance intersect in contemporary Japan.

Paper long abstract

This presentation examines a neglected dimension of civil society and cultural practice in Japan since the 2000s, through the lens of socially collaborative art. Over the past three decades, social art practice has become a globally prominent form of contemporary art, characterised by artists working with non-artists to experiment with new forms of sociability. In Japan, social art practice has become highly visible since the 1990s through Art Projects (āto purojekuto), which are closely associated with governance agendas of regional revitalisation and encouraging active civic participation. As a result, discourse has tended to treat these highly public forms as representative of social art practice in Japan as a whole.

I challenge this assumption using findings from my recently completed PhD. I argue that alongside highly visible, state-aligned forms of social art practice, there exists a substantial and enduring tendency in Japan that deliberately limits public visibility and accessibility. I develop the concept of ‘Social but not Public’ to characterise practices bearing this tendency, developing the concept by situating artists’ practices in relation to broader transformations in Japanese civil society under socioeconomic conditions of ‘second modernity’. More publicly visible social art practice has been theorised as responding to economic restructuring and demographic decline of second modernity. I show that ‘Social but not Public’ practices emerged from the same conditions but through different trajectories: the reconfiguration of intimate spheres, organised forms of psycho-spatial withdrawal, and artists’ strategic navigation of state-directed publicness. I illustrate these dynamics through case studies of Maemachi Art Center, Takafumi Fukasawa, Keijiro Suzuki and Datsuijo.

I conclude by outlining the wider relevance of Social but not Public practices for Japanese Studies and related disciplines. By foregrounding less visible forms of collectivity, this complements existing social-scientific accounts of more publicly visible forms of civic participation and opens connections to adjacent fields such as community-based welfare, therapeutic group practices and community participatory enterprise. In doing so, I offer a revised understanding of how cultural practice intersects with civil society and governance in contemporary Japan.