Guven Peter Witteveen 
Renaissance of Takefu [PDF ebook] 
How People and the Local Past Changed the Civic Life of a Regional Japanese Town

This book tells the story of a citizen group through the example and results of their participation in local civic life. The book draws attention to the complicated condition under which civic participation may succeed. The story is about the individuals and organizations in the regional Japanese town of Takefu, but these events are also placed in the context of the surrounding Japanese nation-state at the time.The author relies on participant observation, conversations, surveys and interviews in order to weave primary sources with his own observations. Combined with scholarship on citizen movements, cultural politics and historical representation, the result is a memorable account about good people persevering in their love of their townscape, in spite of numerous socially and culturally rooted obstacles.