Paper short abstract:

This paper traces the rise of "active listening" as a form of community-based grassroots psychosocial therapy. Against the backdrop of aging residents and increased attention to mental health needs, keichō aims to empower individuals by transcending distinctions between caregiver and care-receiver.

Paper long abstract:

Over the past 30 years, there has been a steady increase in volunteer groups in Japan that provide a service called keichō, or “active listening.” This involves a specific mode of listening whereby the volunteer becomes an empathetic listening partner for an interlocutor to speak freely about their thoughts or concerns. Keichō originally comes from American psychotherapy, and was localized and made available for non-specialists in Japan through keichō training seminars since the 1990s. Today, volunteers have since expanded their activities to include elderly care homes, schools, prisons, and post-disaster situations. Some estimate that between 330,000 to one million people have had keichō volunteer experience in Japan. Based on longitudinal fieldwork and interviews with keichō trainers, volunteers, and recipients, this paper examines the emergence of this keichō volunteer movement and how it is situated within contemporary notions of mental health, psychological care, and social welfare in Japan. I argue that this form of “grassroots psychosocial therapy” emerges as an alternative mode and meaning of mental healthcare and an egalitarian model of social welfare, which is characterized by “average citizens” offering community-based psychosocial care to other “average citizens.” Moreover, rather than part of a neoliberalization of welfare in Japan, I suggest that the growing popularity of keichō volunteer movements reveals both an increased attention to mental health needs among the general populace, as well as an increased interest among aging residents in providing care for one’s own community in a way that transcends conventional distinctions between caregiver and care-receiver.