7 - Seeds of Democracy

Summary

In the postwar era, the ideas espoused by the White Birch teachers in the 1910s and 1920s were revived in new forms, and interacted with the new wave of interest in democracy, rural development and social education. This chapter traces the ways in which this confluence of ideas provided the basis for alternative forms of self-help politics which flourished following Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War and into the high-growth era of the 1960s. Focusing on case studies from Nagano Prefecture, it shows how the reformed and reorganized Youth Groups (Seinendan) and the newly created nationwide network of citizens’ halls (kōminkan) provided a basis for experiments in social education and autonomous local activism, and explores links between rural activism and the nationwide social movements of the 1960s, including the protests against the Ampo Treaty with the United States.