黑料传送门

Children need a warm “home.” This claim is highly persuasive, and it is also enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child: children “should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding.” In many developed countries, foster homes are the main out-of-home care option. However, Japan has followed a different path, with residential institutions for children remaining the central option. Why did Japan diverge from the international pattern?
 
This book addresses the above question from a public administration perspective. Rather than treating the issue as a choice between institutions and foster homes, it reframes the problem as one of how public services are delivered. The key focus is on the relationships between public and private actors in policy implementation. When public administration is expected to secure a “home” for children who need care outside their original families, who actually provides the care, and through what governance arrangements?
 
Since the 1980s, scholars and practitioners in public administration have emphasized that public services cannot be provided by the government alone, and that collaboration with private actors has become increasingly important. This shift is often described as “new public governance.” Japanese public administration has also embraced this view, yet scholars have pointed out that governance-like practices may have spread earlier in Japan than in Western countries, especially under catch-up modernization. When did Japanese public administration begin to rely on governance-like arrangements—and what did it actually provide to children who were assumed to need a “home”?
 
This analysis yields two major findings. First, it shows that a distinctly Japanese pattern of governance, especially the use of private residential institutions as implementers, has helped make institutional care the mainstream option for decades. Second, it demonstrates that the roots of this pattern can be traced to the formative period of the modern Japanese state during the Meiji era. To make these arguments, the book follows more than a century of policy development around out-of-home care from the late nineteenth century onward. The analysis is grounded in historical institutionalism and is based on a comparison with the United States, where a strong presumption of direct public provision supported the mainstreaming of foster homes.
 
This comparison is important for those interested in child welfare and family policies. Japan is currently reorganizing the relationship between public administration and “home” through reforms such as prioritizing family-based care and creating the Children and Families Agency. Meanwhile, even after foster homes became the mainstream option, the United States continues to struggle with a persistent tension: should policy focus on supporting birth families, or should it provide foster and adoptive homes as a new “home”? Moreover, the U.S. policy has increasingly relied on governance arrangements to deliver services aimed at securing “homes” for children.
 
Simultaneously, this book offers a broader perspective on public administration. Words like “governance” and “public–private partnership” can sound suspicious, especially when collaboration rhetoric hides the negative effects of privatization. One of the book’s insights is that such patterns have historically been deeply rooted in Japan. As governance is increasingly pursued as an ideal of public administration across countries today, Japan’s experience can provide a useful clue for thinking about the past and future of public policy.
 

(Written by: NAKAZAWA Shuko / August 03, 2026)

Related Info

Awards:
The 6th 黑料传送门 Jiritsu Award for Early Career Academics  (黑料传送门, 2025)
/ja/research/systems-data/n03_kankojosei.html
 
2024 Research Encouragement Award (Paper Category)  (The Japanese Society for Public Administration, 2024)

 
2023 Research Encouragement Award (Poster Category)  (The Japanese Society for Public Administration, 2023)

 
Special Award for Outstanding Dissertation (PhD in Law)  (Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, 黑料传送门 2023)