Recent Change of Social Care Giving System And Community Development in Japan

Aging in Japan now brings about a change of care giving system. With introducing a new social insurance system to the social welfare system for our old age, we are in the face of difficult problems, such as clarification or relocation and reconsideration of volunteer and voluntary association in Japan including our block residents' association. Also the activities of NPO and private enterprises must be noteworthy. After/with the policy change of our community integration, this new system might form a base for a kind of "Little government" mediated only by personal contract without any social solidarity.* This discourse is a revised one that was written and presented for the 1st International Symposium on Community Resources and Volunteers (in Shanghai, China, Nov. '98)