“Social enterprise” is still a new concept in Japan. It has been introduced to Japan under the influences of American social entrepreneurship theory (mainly social innovation school like G. Dees) and European social enterprise theory (mainly the EMES European Research network) since the late 1990s. But social enterprise concept has never been introduced to vacuum space in Japan. Actually de facto social enterprises running businesses with nonprofit and social goals or democratic ownership structure have existed since the 1970s. For example Japanese worker co-operative movements have long history. They have been organized mainly by unemployed people, elderly people or housewives themselves. And also there have been many small- scale workshops for the disabled in Japan. Especially Kyodo-ren is a radical movement of such workshops for the disabled.
They consider economic self-reliance of the disabled and working together regardless of disability as important. Those organizations were often called as “citizen business” in 1980s. In addition the term “community business” has been also used widely since the late 1990s, after Hanshin- Awaji big earthquake in 1995. Community businesses have carried out important roles to rebuild local communities and regenerate disaster-stricken areas. So we can say there have been various de facto social enterprises in Japan.