Buy Nothing Day (BND) in Japan is a case for connecting notions on individual-ization of life courses and emerging forms of civic engagement. Based on interviews with BND Japan participants, we will see who participates and why. Moreover, we will explore how this participation interacts with the Japanese context. The highly educated participants of BND are well aware of the notions of seeking and shaping their own path in life, including civic life, and especially of doing so in a loose network of like-minded others. They are uncomfortable to define themselves in a one-dimensional way. There are three categories of motives to participate in BND Japan. The participants appreciate loosely structured, lifestyle-oriented and spontaneous activism. Also, they reflect Japanese cultural and structural conditions by, especially, separating their lives, identities and activism from the ‘world above’, the polity in Japan. It is complicated in Japan to present an ‘authentic self’ in one’s lifestyle that is stable and noticeable across roles, situations or contexts if one does not want to risk exclusion.
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