It involves people all over the world who are searching for the conditions for a functional democracy in contemporary societies WI payday loans characterized by ever-deepening processes of globalization, informationalization and precarity. Since Cairo, New York, Madrid and Tokyo, similar movements have occurred in Taiwan and Hong Kong. International comparative research is needed in order to grasp the character of these movements.

In an interview in , SEALDs activist Okuda commented on the protests outside the prime minister’s residence. “I am protesting outside the National Diet every week because I saw the demonstrations that took place in 2012. Now the next generation is watching our movement. ” 54 Forty years after the stable and prosperous era of “Japan as Number One,” Japanese society is entering a new phase.

This is an expanded and updated version of the data and analysis I published in Japanese in 2013. 55 Images of the movement and interviews with some of the main actors can be viewed in the film I directed, Tell the Prime Minister (2015).

Notes

“Protesters rally in front of PM office, Diet calling for an end to nuclear power,” Mainichi Shimbun, . For a useful overview of the various movements, see Machimura Takashi et al., “3.11 iko ni okeru ‘datsu genpatsu undo’ no tayosei to juyosei,’ Hitotsubashi daigaku shakaigaku 7 (2015). As I will discuss below, MCAN, the object of the research in this essay, and other new movement groups, did not respond to Machimura’s survey.

This figure was given by the organizers. In Japan, the attendance figures released by rally organizers and those released by the police differ significantly. This difference has been particularly striking since 2011. One reason for the discrepancy is that there was a lot of coming and going from the regular protests that took place in the vicinity of the prime minister’s residence and the National Diet from 2012. In a protest that lasted from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m., one person might arrive at 7:30 while another might come at 6 and be gone by 7. The organizing group emphasized the fact that someone had participated and counted this example as two participants. The police, however, looked at things from a traffic control perspective. As only one person was in the street at any one time they counted this example as one. Some people believe that, for political reasons, the organizers tend to inflate the numbers while the police announce smaller numbers but this has not been substantiated.

Noriko Manabe, “Music in Japanese Antinuclear Demonstrations: The Evolution of a Contentious Performance Model,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 11, no. 42.3 (); Alexander Brown and Vera Mackie, “Introduction: Art and Activism in Post-Disaster Japan,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 13, 6.1 (); Noriko Manabe, The Revolution will not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

Perhaps they will start something that will take us to the next stage

The so-called “Three Power Source Development Laws” (dengen sampo) institutionalized the provision of subsidies derived from electric power profits to host municipalities. This led to a remarkable weakening of the antinuclear movement in host municipalities.

The experience of war ought to be considered as part of the background to the JCP’s stance. There was a widespread sense at the time that Japan had lost the war to the US because of a lack of scientific and productive capacity.

Even so, the JSP still did not make the antinuclear movement a major policy issue. Furthermore, in 1995, when the LDP and the JSP entered into a coalition government, the JSP dropped its opposition to nuclear power.