This article studies the discussions that took place at a lifelong learning course in Yokohama city, Japan, on the topic of tōjisha, or subjects who might utilize the part of the city that was intended for commercial‐residential mixed‐use zoning. I examine how the course facilitators mediated the tōjisha talk using a semiotic ideology by instructing the discussants to list potential figures who might publicize the city by performatively enacting their citizenship using public spaces and exchanging symbolic artifacts in the city. This demonstrates how the male facilitators exercised their power to produce tōjisha as human capital that markets the city, which resulted in a breach in the gendered division of labor that historically produced and used public spaces for self‐cultivation and community development. I argue that a bourgeois, masculinist public sphere acts as a gatekeeper of Japan's dual civil society, by mediating the subjectivization of individuals through lifelong learning.