The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 14 | Issue 22 | Number 4 | Article ID 4978 | Nov 15, 2016

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Instability, the Crisis of Politics, and Social Movements: TheContemporary World and Japan

Oguma Eiji

Translated by Norma Field

I would like to approach “Instability, the Crisisof Politics, and Social Movements” from thestandpoint of political theory, Japanese history,and the present situation. This is not a topicspecific to Japan, but one that is universal. Iwill begin by offering reflections from thestandpoint of thought. Given that even what isuniversal will find different expressiondepending on place and era, I will also addressthe history and present-day circumstances ofJapanese society. But by history, I shall bereferring to developments since the 1970s.

The View from Political Theory

Modernity is a time of instability. We couldeven say that increasing instability is thedistinguishing characteristic of modernity. Whyshould instability increase in modern times? Ibelieve the reason is that modernity is foundedon a respect for free will. I am not a Christian,but I have read the Bible. There, it seems thatAdam and Eve’s eating of the fruit of

knowledge and being expelled from paradise ispresented as the first instance of humanitypossessing free will. Western thinkers such asJean-Jacques Rousseau identify free will as theorigin of inequality, but they also argue that itis a motive force for progress. Human beings,as long as they live in a community and abideby convention, are able to enjoy a sense ofstability. But that would preclude economic andscientific development. With modernity freewill comes to be valorized. As modernizationadvances, it gives rise to inequality, instability,and political crisis.

Why does inequality give rise to political crisis?Political scientists say that it is because it leadsto the decline in numbers of the middle class,associated with rational decision-making. But alittle more analysis is called for here. By middleclass, we mean people who have a certain levelof property beyond the minimum. Possession ofproperty frees us from poverty. If faced withthe threat of poverty and terror, human beingsbecome preoccupied with securing food andsafety and lose the capacity to act based onreason. But property and income are not thesame thing. To increase income requires takingrisks, including the risk of diminished property.That can result in instability and the risk offalling into a state of irrationality.

The philosophers of ancient Greece were wellaware of these matters. Plato held that ifincreasing numbers of people were to sell theirland for money, humans would grow distantfrom the idea of the Good, leading to tyrannical

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rule. Aristotle distinguished betweenchrematistics, the art of making money, ando ikonomike ( the o r i g ina l word f o r“economics”), the art of stabilizing life.

Hannah Arendt, who was influenced by Greekphilosophy, distinguished between propertyand wealth. Property here is “the sense of aplace of my own and that part of the world thatsustains my daily well-being.” Property in thiscase refers, for instance, to ownership of landand membership in a community. Wealth, onthe other hand, refers to one’s share of theincome of society as a whole. In this view,property such as land leads to a sense ofresponsibility toward society and politicalparticipation. Wealth, however, has no sucheffect and can even encourage irresponsibilityand indifference. Arendt thought that with theadvent of modernity, as property became tiedup with production and consumption, it washeaded for destruction. This process broughtinstability and political crisis. Human beingscannot long endure such a situation.

In order to stabilize their lives, people began tocreate communities under the social conditionsof modernity. Examples are the labor union, orthe modern family The family form in which themale engages in wage labor and the female inhousework is a new product of modernity. Whatmade the modern communal form possible wasstable employment. Without men beingemployed over the long term, the family form inwhich women dedicate themselves tohousework cannot materialize. It is also easierto organize men who are employed at the sameworkplace over an extended period into laborunions.

Employment doesn’t simply mean the securingof income. Employment takes human beingsand stabilizes them over a given period of timeand in a given set of relations. Employment, inother words, is occupation—having, that is,occupying, a place in the world. In that sense,it may be seen as a substitute for property,

fulfilling a function lost to modernity:occupying a place in the world. Accordingly, ifemployment is stabilized, then it is easier forpolitics to be stable as well.

During the 20th century, social democraticparties with labor unions as their base andconservative parties with families and churchesas their base led to political stability indeveloped countries. We could say that bothtypes of part ies were able to receivecommunity support on the presumption thatthey would provide stable employment.Manufacturing was crucial to employment.Manufacturing in the 20th century generallyprovided stable employment to males without ahigh level of education. It was such men whoprovided stability to labor unions and families.In an era without personal computers or email,there was a huge volume of jobs in themanufacturing sector much of which is nowperformed by machines or outsourcedoverseas.

In the present age, however, neither stableindustrial employment for the majority ofworkers nor politics resting on a base of stablelabor unions is viable. This is true throughoutthe world. In the United States, the two majorpolitical parties that were dominant in the mid-twentieth century have either lost power orundergone transformation. What can we do inthe face of such tendencies? We can’t simplysay that increasing income levels will solve theproblem. GDP does not take into accountproperty that is not traded on the market. Norcan we assert in any simple sense thatincreased employment would be good. Thereason is that the kind of job increasingly onoffer today in both Japan and the United Statesis irregular work, unstable employment thatdoes not lead to the condition of occupying astable place in the world.

It is under these conditions that, since 2011, anew kind of social movement has begun toappear in various places around the world

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including Japan and the United States. What Ifind of interest is that this movement has beentaking the form of occupying places. It is as ifthe people who had lost their place in the worldwere trying to recover them. In Egypt, NewYork, Spain, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and recently,in France, people having been taking overpublic squares and parliament buildings. There,nameless people have been giving speechesand conducting debates.

This reminds us of the value that Arendtassigned to human action. Here, the actionconsists of people appearing in the world andclaiming a place through their speech acts.Arendt was no friend of socialism or the term“social,” but she did applaud the socialmovements of the 1960s. Political theory is notmy specialization, so I will not continue further.Keeping the above points in mind, l will nowturn to Japanese politics and social movements.

The Age of “Japan as Number One”

Let me turn to Japanese developments sincethe 1970s. There are certain markers inpostwar Japanese history, and when I haveoccasion to lecture abroad, this is the story Isometimes tell.

Yoshida Shigeru

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(1946–7, 48–54)

Tanaka Kakuei(1972–4)

The prime ministers of Japan change all thetime, and it’s hard to remember their names.So let me tell you the simplest way to keeptrack.

First of all, the prime minister from 1945 to1954 was a diplomat. This is because the job ofthe prime minister was to negotiate with theUS Occupation forces. Domestic politics mighthave been unstable, but the prime minister ofthat era, could speak fluent English.

From 1955 to 1992, the prime ministers wereregional bosses or ex-bureaucrats. During thisperiod, bureaucrats made policy and regionalbosses unified the local population. Politics andthe economy were stable, but the primeministers of this period could not speakEnglish.

Since 1993, prime ministers have been eitherthe children or grandchildren of politicians. Inother words, they’re either second or third-generation politicians. In general, theirknowledge about policy or ability to unifypeople does not come up to the level of theprevious generation. Japanese politics andeconomics have become unstable. Moreover,most of the prime ministers can’t speakEnglish.

What do you think? It’s easy to remember, isn’tit? If you hang on to this, there is no need toremember the names of individual primeministers.

Kishi Nobusuke (1957-60) with young AbeShinzo (2006–7, 2012–)

This periodization of Japanese politics reflectsthe changes in Japanese society. Changes inthe world, in economics, technology, localcommunities, political parties—all sorts ofchanges are represented as changes in thesuccess ive pr ime min i s ters . Thesechronological markers, however, are by nomeans unique to Japan. 1945 marked the end ofWorld War II, and 1991, the end of the ColdWar. 1955 comes shortly after the death ofStalin, the end of the Korean War, andcompromise between the US and the SovietUnion produced a stable Cold War world order.We can see that the Japanese historicalmarkers are in line with those of worldgeopolitics.

If there is something distinctive about Japan, itis that 1973, an important marker elsewhere,does not stand out in Japan. In the otherdeveloped countries, the heightening of socialmovements in 1968 and the oil crisis of 1973led to neoliberal reform and political changesin the 1980s. Numerous kinds of socialmovements emerged during that period. Therewere similar developments in Japan, but theywere less conspicuous than in other countries.This period, from the latter half of the 70s tothe beginning of the 90s, is also the time whenJapan as an exception attracted the interest of

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researchers from around the world. It is alsothe period when social movements weresluggish.

In order to understand present-day Japan, it isnecessary to reflect on Japan in that period.There are a number of features of Japan in thelatter half of the 70s through the early 90s thatdistinguish it from other countries. During thisperiod in Japan, people of low educationalattainment tended to vote at higher rates thanthe highly educated. This is the opposite of thetrend seen in other developed countries.Further, the number of people employed inmanufacturing also increased in Japan duringthis time. These numbers peaked in 1992. This,too, contrasts with the trend in other developedcountries.

What are the underlying reasons for thesefeatures? As a matter of fact, the numbersemployed in manufacturing briefly declined inJapan after the 1973 oil crisis. But they beganto increase again in the latter half of the 1970sand this continued until 1992. A number oftheories have been advanced to explain thisphenomenon. But whatever the reason, in thelate 70s and early 80s, Japan was replacing theUS and Europe as the center of worldmanufacturing, as manufacturing declinedthere. The US trade deficit with Japan was oneconsequence. In 1984, one-fourth of the UStrade deficit with Japan resulted from exportsto the US by American corporations located inJapan and orders for parts and OEM (originalequipment manufacturer) contracts byAmerican corporations.

We could say that Japan in the 1980s was the“factory of the world,” holding a positioncomparable to China in the 2000’s. Once theCold War was over and the internationalenvironment changed, Japanese manufacturingbegan its decline. Through the 1980s, thanks tothe flourishing of the manufacturing sector, theemployment situation and politics were stablein Japan. But this stability was of a nature thatgave the impress ion that Japan wasexceptional.

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In the field of Japanese politics, Gerald Curtis’sElection Campaigning, Japanese Style is a well-known work. Published in 1971, the bookrecounts the election campaign of a lower-house candidate from the Liberal DemocraticParty, the conservative ruling party, with hislocal community as a base. The politicians oft h e L D P m o b i l i z e d n u m e r o u scommunities—farming villagers, shopkeeperand trade associations—in their vote-gettingcampaigns. Candidates would make “courtesycalls” on influential people in those associationsand they, in turn, would mobilize their networkand gather votes for those candidates.

Curtis was initially surprised by this mode ofcampaigning. But then he thought that in fact,it resembled the campaign style of theDemocratic Party in New York in the 1950s,where he grew up. Back then, the DemocraticParty would mobilize networks of immigrant

communities for gathering votes by pork-barrelpolitics. Curtis anticipated that modernizationwould force changes on this form of electioncampaigning. And yet, nearly fifty years later,the LDP’s mode of electioneering has notchanged in essence. It is as if modernity hadbeen stopped in its tracks.

There are two principal ways to explain whythis was possible. The first has to do with howthe law (the Public Offices Election Law) hasregulated elections so as to prevent new waysof contesting elections. Until 2013, it wasforbidden to use the internet in electioneering.Political parties, moreover, to the present,cannot advertise on television, and politicianscan give speeches only at specified places atgiven times. The basic form of this law goesback to 1925, when universal manhoodsuffrage was adopted, as a precaution againstthe growth of proletarian (those withoutproperty) political parties. The more numerousthese restrictions, the greater the advantagefor conservative candidates with access tocommunity networks, specifically, the LiberalDemocratic Party which has dominatedJapanese politics almost continuously since itsfounding in 1955.

The second reason has to do with politicalefforts to stop communal disintegration.Government funds were used for public works,attempting to stem population flow from ruralto urban areas and to provide subsidies toshopkeeper and trade associations. Since thisaspect is relevant not just to elections, but toJapanese society as a whole, let me explainfurther. It is not that individual LDP politicianswere consciously trying to obstruct the onset ofmodernization. Rather, in order to be elected,they practiced clientelism, thereby maintainingthe communities that were their political base.When faced with opposing communities ororganizations they wished to crush, such aslabor unions, however, the LDP often adoptedneoliberal policies such as privatization ratherthan policies designed to help maintain

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communities.

Even though they lacked consistency, policiesthat served to maintain communities could beput into practice because there was the budgetto sustain largescale public works and providesubsidies. And this was possible because Japanat the time held the position of “factory of theworld,” and its economy was performing well.Such policies were successful for a time. Fromthe latter half of the 1970s to the first half ofthe 1980s, the rural-to-urban population flowdeclined and, by various measures, the incomegap in Japan was at its smallest during thisperiod, indeed it was one of the smallest amongdeveloped countries.

This was also the period when the “invention oftradition” took place all over Japan. Thepublishing and tourist industries flourished,and regional “traditional culture” was newlyacclaimed. Regional governments andbusinesses set out to develop local industry andspecialty products. Enka (traditional-styleJapanese ballads) performances with electricguitars or electronic organs or August BonFestival dances with participants wearingsynthetic kimonos and the music provided bylarge speakers and records are a product of the1960s and beyond.

In the eyes of foreigners, Japan in those daysseemed to be a society where, along withflourishing technology and manufacturing, theincome gap was small, politics stable, labor andeducation sectors characterized by a highdegree of morality, maintenance of localcommunities, preservation of traditionalculture, and, moreover, was safe. In a word, itseemed to be a country that provided a modelresponse to modernity’s challenging problem,namely, how to have both development andstability. It was in 1979 that Ezra Vogel’s Japanas No. 1 was published. We might say that thestereotypical view of Japan persisting to thisday was constructed in that period.

Yet this sort of stability was the other side ofthe coin of low political participation. In theregional and trade group communitiesmaintained by the LDP, dominance by seniorswas the rule. This was linked with the exclusion

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of women and young people from decision-making. Those who disliked this arrangement,particularly those with high educationalbackgrounds, tended to leave the countrysidefor the major cities. This tendency wasstrengthened by the fact that even if they wereable to obtain employment in the provincesthanks to public policy, it was often not the sortof employment attractive to the bettereducated.

This meant that it was the less well educatedand senior citizens who tended to stay behindin provincial constituencies. Those seniorstended to have lower educational levels thanyoung people. Through their regional and tradenetworks, they voted for LDP politicians. This iswhat led to the higher voting rates on the partof the less educated.

What happened in the cities? To be sure, therewere neighborhood and trade associations thatsupported the LDP in cities, too, but they werenot as influential as in the provinces. At thes a m e t i m e , b e c a u s e o f t h emodernizing/atomizing trend and the advent ofneoliberal policies, labor unions werebeginning to lose their ability to attractmembers. This led to the atomization of theurban population and the decline in voting rate.

This is hardly unique to Japan, but people whodon’t belong to any sort of network tend tohave a low voting rate. This is because it ishard for them to feel as if they had a place inthe world or to see any incentive for beinginterested in politics. Political science researchshows that those who have resided in a givenarea for fewer than three years, in other words,people who don’t belong to any network, havelow voter turnout in Japan.

The Japanese Public Offices Election Actforbids door-to-door canvassing, speeches inany but designated areas at designated times,and television advertising. Consequently, thosewho do not belong to a regional or workplacenetwork that mobilizes votes for a political

party are likely to have few opportunities forpolitical discussion. Since these restrictionsfavor politicians who have been elected underthe current system, they are disinclined tochange it.

To be sure, there were efforts to organize newnetworks in urban areas. Some of the youngpeople who moved to the cities in the 1960sbecame adherents of the Buddhist groupsupporting the Kōmeitō, a Buddhist religiousparty, and others joined the youth group of theCommunist Party. This led to the growth ofthese two parties during that period. Thepeople mobilized by these parties tended to bethe less well educated of those who migrated tothe cities.

The 1960s also saw vigorous activity on thepart of the New Left student movement. And

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from the 1960s into the 1970s, citizens’movements emerged in the cities. Intellectualsand highly educated housewives were theactors sustaining these movements. These wereall developments on the part of the highlyeducated.

In Japan, many of the males residing in citieswere absent from their neighborhoods during

the day, being at workplaces located far away.Those who stayed close to home during the daytended to be farmers or self-employed peoplewho by-and-large supported the LiberalDemocratic Party. But intellectuals such ascollege professors, lawyers, and physicians whodid not commute to work, as well as highlyeducated housewives unable to find jobsbecause of discrimination against women, alsotended to be in their own neighborhoods byday. Some members of ethnic minorities suchas Koreans or Ainu in Japan who wereperipheralized under the LDP regimeparticipated in social movements. These werethe people who became active in citizens’movements.

But in the 1980s, these activities experienceddecline. The principal reason is that while thecommunities supporting the LDP werestrengthened, the labor unions that had madecommon cause with earlier citizen movementswere weakened. The second reason is thatalong with modernization and the rise ineducation levels, intellectuals and studentsbegan to lose a sense of mission with respect topolitics: they were, in other words, losing asense of themselves as elites. The third reasonis that as discrimination against women inemployment lessened, there were fewer highlyeducated stay-at-home wives. Discriminationagainst ethnic minorities in social security andemployment also lessened and consequentlycollective consciousness of them also declined.

In this way, from the latter half of the 1970sinto the first half of the 1990s, socialmovements entered a period of sluggishness.That the economy was doing well, and peoplehad relatively few complaints, bolstered thistrend. This situation contrasted with thatprevailing in other developed countries at thetime. Internationally acknowledged as the“factory of the world,” with policies sustainingdomestic communities, Japan was able to holdpost-1970 political and social change to aminimum. For this reason, too, social

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movements failed to expand as they did inother developed countries.

The Changing Tide

Change in manufacturing labor force aspercentage of total

With the end of the Cold War, however, thesituation in Japan began to change as well.First of all, manufacturing moved overseas,with the result that the number of thoseemployed in manufacturing in 2013 were onlytwo-thirds of those in 1992. In order tocompensate for the loss in jobs, public worksprojects increased, with the consequence thatin 1998, construction accounted for 11 per centof total employment. This, however, led to ahuge budget deficit, and public works declinedin the 2000s.

In turn, this led to the decline of regionaleconomies and a population drain into thecities. And yet, permanent employment was

hard to come by in the cities. Many of thosewho had migrated into the cities went to workin the construction, service, welfare andnursing care industries, but these sectors tendto offer only unstable employment. Suchunstable employment now accounts for fully 40percent of total employment.

Urban migration and the decline of publicworks weakened the base of the LDP.Liberalization of trade and privatization of thepostal service and railroads had a like effect.Membership in the party, which amounted to5.47 million in 1991, declined to seven hundredthirty thousand in 2012. If we look at thetransformation in membership in the 2000s ofthe LDP chapter of Aichi Prefecture, we findthat the construction and postal branchesdeclined by ninety per cent.

Protest for improvement of conditions ofunstable employment

Despite these changes, party politics andelection campaigns remained the same.General interest in politics failed to rise. Theold organizations continued to weaken, and thevoting rate kept falling, but without producinga major threat to LDP rule through the 1990s.

From 1999, the LDP, in order to shore up itsposition, formed a coalition with the Kōmeitō,

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which controlled 8 million votes. In spite ofthis, however, from 1995, candidates officiallybacked by the LDP for gubernatorial races inlarge cities such as Tokyo and Osaka often lost.One of the reasons for this is the weakness ofLDP organizing power in major cities. But itwas not the Socialist or Communist Party-backed candidates who benefited. Rather, itwas often famous writers or popular TVpersonalities.

The decline of the LDP was also reflected inwho became prime minister. Once the vote-gathering base is weakened, only certain kindsof politicians can win reelection. They are theones representing agricultural districts whosecommuni t ies have surv ived , whererepresentation is handed down—in otherwords, second and third-generation politicians.As I have already indicated, these are thepeople who have become prime ministers since1993.

In other words, in Japan, leading politicians arepeople who have gained popularity ontelevision and through the media, or are therelatives of famous politicians. This is amanifestation of the weakened consciousnessof political participation as society lost itsrobustness to modernization. But this is notunique to Japan. With politics stagnant and theeconomy sluggish, dissatisfaction intensified. In2009, the LDP lost in a major upset to theDemocratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Burdenedwith a huge deficit, however, the DPJ wasunable to effect major policy changes.

These were the circumstances when theFukushima triple disaster of earthquake,tsunami and nuclear meltdown took place. Itwas two months after the Egyptian revolutionand six months before Occupy Wall Street. Alarge-scale antinuclear movement, centered inTokyo, emerged, with two hundred thousandgathering at the prime minister’s residence toprotest in 2012. Each year since then, therehas been a major protest movement around one

or another theme.

There are several features distinguishing thesemovements from their predecessors. Up to the1960s, movements relied on the mobilizingpower of the networks formed by labor unionsor political parties or student self-governanceassociations. The leading activists weremembers of political parties or labor unions,and participants were workers belonging tolabor networks or students who belonged toself-governance networks. Movements since2011 , however , have the fo l l ow ingcharacteristics:

First of all, the sponsoring organizations aresmall groups ranging from several dozen to afew hundred like-minded people who havenothing to do with political parties or laborunions. They attract participants not throughmobilization by formal organizations but bycirculating information on the internet andsocial media.

Secondly, many of the activists are people whohave failed to secure stable employmentdespite high educational levels, the so-called“cognitive precariat.” Among the activists Iknow are designers, self-employed informationtechnology specialists, adjunct lecturers, andadjunct librarians—those engaged in irregularknowledge work that has mushroomed over thepast twenty years. These activists, using theirparticular skills, have brought IT, soundequipment, music, and design to the new

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movements.

Thirdly, those who gather include men andwomen, young and old. They come because ofinformation found on the internet, not becausethey were mobilized by specific organizations.In that sense, these movements are differentfrom labor movements, which attractedworkers, and student movements, whichattracted students in earlier eras.

In the summer of 2015, a student group calledSEALDs (Student Emergency Action for LiberalDemocracy) emerged, and more than onehundred thousand people gathered in front ofthe parliament building in response to their callto oppose the security legislation. There weresome reports comparing this to the 1960 anti-US-Japan Security arrangement, but in fact,they were completely different.

SEALDs is not an organization but rather agroup of 200 or so like-minded people. Unlikethe 1960s student movement, they did not seekto gain control of the student self-governancebodies and mobilize participants. Participantswere men and women, young and old who sawthe information SEALDs circulated throughsocial media and came out of their own accord.We should probably call this not a “studentmovement” but a “movement sponsored by agroup with ‘student’ in its name.”

We should also note that among the membersof SEALDs are students who are alreadysaddled with 6 million or even 10 million yen

[approximately US $60,000 to $100,000] instudent loans. At the same time that they arestudents, many are also members of thecognitive precariat. Given that official statisticsshow that half of Japanese college studentshave student loans, the economic situation ofSEALDs members reflects a significant changein the Japanese student population since theeconomic boom of the 1960s.

What is of interest is that these movementstake the form of occupying the public spaces infront of the prime minister’s residence or theparliament building for a given period of time.Occupying the public space in front of PrimeMinister Office and Paliament in 6pm to 8pm inevery Friday was employed and continued byanti-nuclear protesters since 2012 and it wasinherited by the SEALDs protest in 2015. Theparticipants in these demonstrations spokewith one another rather than privileging one ortwo leaders.

These features show a certain commonalitywith the occupy movements that arose invarious parts of the world after 2011. We cansay that the Japanese movements haveunfolded as part of what has been going on inthe rest of the world.

Toward the Future

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What, then, are the differences between thesemovements and the “new social movements” ofthe 1970s? And what about their ability toinfluence elections? There are features that areshared by contemporary movements and the“new social movements” of the 1970s. Bothemerged from groups unrelated to politicalparties and labor unions. But there aredistinguishing characteristics as well. In the70s, students and highly educated womenattracted attention as new actors. In thepresent movement, however, activistsrepresent a broader spectrum of the “cognitiveprecariat” with respect to age and gender.

Participants in the 70s “new social movements”represented specific affiliations, as students,housewives, immigrants, etc. It is for thisreason that the movements took the form of

feminist or ethnic movements, inaugurating“identity politics.” But the current movementdraws on a variety of generations and socialstrata. This difference is also reflected in theslogans that are used.

While many of the 70s activists invoked theirspecific identifying characteristics such asworkers or students, the current movementuses the slogan, for example, “We are the 99per cent.” This is because it does not representa gathering of a particular minority or thosewith other specific attributes. In Japan’s anti-security legislation movement of summer 2015,the slogan, “Don’t think you can make fools ofthe People,” can be seen to reflect this change.

In the 1970s, those who felt excluded frompolitical decision-making were students, highlyeducated women, and ethnic minorities. Buttoday, 99 per cent of people feel dissatisfiedabout being excluded from political decision-making. In such a situation, “identity politics,”whose point is to affirm particular identities,can no longer be effective to mo bilize peopleas it did decades ago.

What kind of impact will these movements haveon elections? That is not such a simple matter.Keep in mind that the participants in thecurrent movements do not have a particularsocial characteristic. They are not organizedwithin a particular network. Their solecommonality is their dissatisfaction with beingexcluded from political decision-making.

Therefore, even though they are able to cometogether in protest of a particular issue, it ishard for them to offer a shared vision of thefuture. It is also hard for them to organizevoting around a particular party or candidate.Consequently, even if scores or hundreds ofthousands appear together on the stage ofactivism, the parties they support are various,and it is difficult for them to have an impact onelections.

This situation was caused by s mismatch

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between society in the 21st century and apolitical system which was established in the20th century. Many organizations, includingpolitical parties which gained power in the 20thcentury, have lost the ability to represent theinterests of people in the 21st century. This isone reason why 99% of the people are feelingisolation from the political system. Althoughthings might be the other way around, socialmovements in the 21st century have failed toadopt to the election system which wasestablished in the 20th century.

In countr ies that have not adopted aproportional-representation system, it isvirtually unknown for a party emerging from asocial movement to make it to the nationalparliament. The Japanese electoral systemconsists mostly of single-seat constituencies,and it does not have a presidential system. Inother words, there is no opportunity to elect apolitician who represents. the entire country.Even if two hundred thousand people gather inTokyo, it will have no direct impact on aregional election. This means that it is difficultto influence national elections.

If we inspect election results, we see that theconservative LDP-Kōmeitō coalition controlsabout 30 per cent of the population in eachsingle-seat constituency. In 2009, when thiscoalition was defeated by the DPJ, the votingrate was an unusually high 69 per cent.Furthermore, in that election, the DPJcooperated with other opposition parties andmanaged to field a unified candidate in eachelectoral district. Such circumstances made itpossible to defeat the conservative coalitioneven though it controls 30 per cent of the votein each single-seat constituency.

But the DPJ administration’s response to thenuclear disaster provoked despair. As a result,many DPJ supporters stopped voting. Thevoting rate has never exceeded 60 per cent ine l e c t i o n s s i n c e 2 0 1 2 . G i v e n t h e s ecircumstances, the conservative coalition’ssecure command of 30 percent of the voteassures its victory. If the opposition cannotunify, conservative victory becomes even morecertain.

As this situation came to be recognized, theanti-security legislation movement of 2015began to encourage electoral cooperationamong the opposition parties. Of course, it isnot easy to bring about large-scale change inelectoral results in a short period of time. Butwe can say that social movements have broughtabout a certain revitalization of party politics.

In conclusion, Japan is experiencing instability,a crisis of politics, and the rise of socialmovements. These features are not unique toJapan, but rather, are phenomena common tothe rest of the world now making theirappearance within a Japanese context. Keepingthis in mind, we recognize that in order tounderstand Japan, we need to understand theworld. At the same time, in order to understandthe world, we need to understand Japan. This iswhy researchers from various countries need tocooperate. I hope my talk today might serve asan occasion for you to better understand Japanand the world in which we live.

Oguma Eiji’s film, “Tell the Prime Minister” andhis lecture on September 27, 2016 comprisedthe 11th Tetsuo Najita Distinguished Lecture inJapanese Studies at the University of Chicago.

Oguma Eiji is a professor in the Faculty of Policy Management at Keio University. Hisresearch focuses on national identity and nationalism, colonial policy, and democratic thoughtand social movements in modern Japan. His major English language publications include:

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The Boundaries of 'the Japanese': Volume 1: Okinawa 1818-1972(https://www.amazon.com/dp/1920901485/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) (Melbourne: Trans PacificPress, 2014), a translation of "Nihonjin" no kyōkai: Okinawa, Ainu, Korea, to Taiwan1868-1972 (Tokyo: Shinyōsha, 1998).

A Genealogy of "Japanese" Self-Images(https://www.amazon.com/dp/1876843047/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) (Melbourne: Trans PacificPress, 2002), a translation of Tan'itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen: "Nihonjin" no jigazō no keifu(Tokyo: Shinyōsha, 1995).

"The Green of the Willow, the Flower's Scarlet: Debate on Japanese Emigrant and Koreaunder the Japanese Empire", in Naoki Sakai, Brett de Bary, and Iyotani Toshio,eds.,Deconstructing Nationality (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University East Asia Program,2005).

“Instability, the Crisis of Politics, and Social Movements: The Contemporary World and Japan(http://apjjf.org/2016/22/Oguma.html), ” The Asia-Pacific Journal

A New Wave “Against the Rock: New social movements in Japan since the Fukushima nuclearmeltdown (http://apjjf.org/2016/13/Oguma.html),” The Asia-Pacific Journal

"Nobody Dies in a Ghost Town: Path Dependence in Japan's 3.11 Disaster and Reconstruction(http://apjjf.org/2013/11/44/Oguma-Eiji/4024/article.html)," The Asia-Pacific Journal

"From a "Dysfunctional Japanese-Style Industrialized Society" to an "Ordinary Nation(http://apjjf.org/2012/10/31/Oguma-Eiji/3804/article.html)"? The Asia-Pacific Journal

Norma Field, translator, is a professor emerita, University of Chicago. Recent publicationsinclude Fukushima Radiation: Will You Still Say No Crime Has Been Committed?(https://www.amazon.com/FUKUSHIMA-RADIATION-Still-Crime-Committed-ebook/dp/B00XKIZRX4?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0) (editor and co-translator, 2015); “FromFukushima: To Despair Properly, To Find the Next Step (https://apjjf.org/2016/17/Field.html)”(September 1, 2016); For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of JapaneseProletarian Literature(http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo5828625.html) (co-editor andtranslator, 2016; see The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, “Art as a Weapon(https://apjjf.org/2018/04/Field.html),” February 15, 2018); Ima heiwa o honki de kataru niwa: Inochi, jiyu, rekishi (https://www.iwanami.co.jp/book/b427316.html) (To seriously talkpeace today: Life, freedom, history, 2018); “No One Who Is Alive Today”… An Introduction to“The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and the Tokyo Olympics”(https://apjjf.org/2019/05/Koide-Field.html) (March 1, 2019).