Urban Social Infrastructure and Care: Japanese Examples

Abstract

In response to the crisis of care created by the neoliberal capitalist era, many new concepts have emerged as part of the collective search for solutions to the care crisis, including care commons, caring cities and caring infrastructures. Care infrastructures as part of the urban social infrastructure are understood in this work as "everyday non-institutional care spaces" (Merkel, 2023). This study focuses on the infrastructures of care in contemporary Japanese cities. Based on six months of fieldwork in Japan in the spring of 2023, it explores the potential of the socio-economic endeavors of mostly Japanese women in major Japanese cities as a care infrastructure to support the care needs of different social groups. The paper presents two cases as culturally specific examples of Japanese care infrastructure. It contributes to the literature by showing that care is intertwined with the economy as a new social business model in contemporary Japan, in a different way from the more volunteer-based care infrastructures in other countries.