In 1959, during his very first trip to Japan, Peter Drucker tried to place a phone call to Tokyo from the town of Hakone, where he was giving a management seminar to about 50 executives. Over and over, the line failed.

"The telephone system was in such bad shape that the hotel operator in Hakone simply could not get through," Drucker recalled long afterward. On top of that, the glitch made him late for lunch. By the time Drucker arrived at the dining room, the only free chair was next to Koji Kobayashi, a pioneer in communications and computers at Nippon Electric (later known as NEC).

"I apologized for my lateness," Drucker recounted, adding that almost everybody sympathized with the reason for his delay. Some noted that a group of American experts had recently recommended fixing the telecommunications situation by having the Japanese replicate the U.S. telephone network—a process that would take until the late 1960s to complete.

Kobayashi, though, interjected. "Nonsense," he said, according to Drucker. "No point in copying the American civilian system. We'll do it in less than two years." Kobayashi then proposed using a microwave technology that was barely tested at the time. "Nobody at the table took him seriously," Drucker remembered. But a couple of years later, when he next visited Japan, Drucker found "a fully functioning telephone system based on Dr. Kobayashi's vision and courage."

U.S. Model
It is a combination of vision and courage that Japan must summon now, not only as it recovers from this month's devastating earthquake and tsunami, but also as the nation tries to move forward in the months and years ahead. This time, however, Japanese leaders would be wise to look at a U.S. model for guidance—in particular, at America's robust social sector.

Nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations are "going to be—and I think one can confidently predict it—the growth area of a modern developed society," Drucker declared at a symposium in Tokyo in 1994, when Japan was smack in the midst of a prolonged recession. "There is a need to maintain a neighborhood and to keep the environment from being polluted and the need to do something about learning-disabled children. … Sure, you must have a professional to lead and supervise, but the work is very largely by people who say, 'This is my neighbor; these are the people in my community.' "

In the areas hardest hit by the recent disaster, Japanese NGOs such as Peace Winds are diligently distributing emergency supplies. Others will have a role to play well after the rubble is cleared and the nuclear radiation safely contained. Longer term, "people must have not just physical relief, but psychological relief," says Koji Ogura, senior executive officer at the transportation company Yamato Holdings, some of whose employees are among the dead and missing.

Yet there exists another kind of psychological lift that a strong social sector can provide—and the beneficiaries, as Drucker pointed out, are not those obtaining the services. Rather, it's those giving them.

Social Spirit
In Japan, "there is no longer the commitment that 'I make a difference,' " Drucker told his Tokyo audience 17 years ago. It is this spirit, Drucker explained, that led him to predict Japan would turn into a global economic power right after his first visit in the 1950s, when "everybody thought I was crazy." But without this mindset, he asserted, "a nation very soon begins to fall apart. It loses its heart, its soul. We need a sector in which an individual can make a difference, can make a commitment. We need the nonprofit sector."

Jolted by the Kobe earthquake in 1995, the Japanese parliament began in the weeks immediately after the temblor to discuss legislation that would support volunteering. And in 1998 a law was finally passed to facilitate the creation of nonprofits across the country.

Still, the sector in Japan is lagging today. In the U.S., nonprofit organizations are responsible for 7.5 percent of the gross domestic product while employing 11 percent of all workers (including volunteers), according to the University of California's Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership. In Japan, by contrast, nonprofits generate 4.5 percent of GDP while employing 3.5 percent of workers.

To significantly boost these numbers in Japan, the country will have to adopt changes in tax law to stimulate philanthropy. But even more important, the Japanese must broadly embrace the idea that nonprofits deserve top-flight management and a stature equal to that of the three main pillars of society: the ruling party, the bureaucracy, and business.

Community Tradition
To do so would be to build on history. "Though I am afraid most of you do not know it," Drucker said during his 1994 talk, "you have probably the richest tradition of community organization … of any major country in the world." He then reeled off a series of examples, beginning in the 18th century with the fief, or han, which "took responsibility for local needs."

Japan has been in a funk for a long while, the latest tragedy aside. Some, citing a wealth of economic data, contend that the malaise that has supposedly gripped Japan since the early 1990s—the "lost decades," as they're called—is largely a media-made myth. But when I visited Japan last fall, one person after another remarked on the lack of spark the nation seemed to have. "Everyone is looking out the rearview mirror," Tadashi Yanai, the chief executive officer of the clothing-store chain Fast Retailing (9983:JP), told me. "They're not looking at the future. They just keep looking at the past."

Yet it's by rediscovering a past dedicated to community service that Japan can best seize the future.

Rick Wartzman is the executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University.