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A New Wave Against the Rock: New social movements in Japan since the Fukushima nuclear meltdown
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
In the summer of 2012, following an accident at the Fukushima power plant in March 2011, 200,000 people filled the streets outside the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo. This new movement had much in common with contemporaneous movements around the world, such as Occupy Wall Street. These included its use of the internet and the central role played by a highly educated precariat. In this essay, I analyze the results of the research I conducted on this movement, including the characteristics displayed by its main actors and participants, the structure of the organizing group and its methods of mobilization. Furthermore, I analyze Japan's political structure to show why the movement has not directly affected electoral outcomes. While this article analyzes Japanese society, it also contributes to understanding a more universal problem: What is the relationship between twenty-first century social movements and political systems that took shape during the twentieth century?
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References
Notes
1 “Protesters rally in front of PM office, Diet calling for an end to nuclear power,” Mainichi Shimbun, March 12, 2016. For a useful overview of the various movements, see Machimura Takashi et al., “3.11 ikō ni okeru ‘datsu genpatsu undō’ no tayōsei to jūyōsei,’ 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.
2 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.
3 Noriko Manabe, “Music in Japanese Antinuclear Demonstrations: The Evolution of a Contentious Performance Model,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 11, no. 42.3 (October 2013); Alexander Brown and Vera Mackie, “Introduction: Art and Activism in Post-Disaster Japan,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 13, 6.1 (February 2015); Noriko Manabe, The Revolution will not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
4 Ran Zwigenberg, “The Coming of a Second Sun”: The 1956 Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima and Japan's Embrace of Nuclear Power,“ The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 10, iss. 6, no. 1 (February 2012).
5 Takeda Tōru, Watashitachi wa kō shite “genpatsu taikoku” o eranda (Tokyo: Chūōkōron shinsho rakure, 2011), 159-166.
6 Takeda, Watashitachi, 142.
7 The so-called “Three Power Source Development Laws” (dengen sampō) 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.
8 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.
9 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.
10 Oguma Eiji, “Japan's 1968: A Collective Reaction to Rapid Economic Growth in an Age of Turmoil,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 13, iss. 11, no. 1 (April 2015), http://japanfocus.org/-Oguma-Eiji/4300/article.html.
11 For a more detailed account see, Oguma Eiji, “Japan's Nuclear Power and Anti-Nuclear Movement: From a Socio-Historical Perspective,” (Paper presented at the conference on Towards Long-term Sustainability: In Response to the 3/11 Earthquake and the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Center for Japanese Studies, University of California, Berkeley, April 20-21, 2012).
12 Young women with children in particular, formed the core of these movements. One reason for this was the obstacles to the social advancement of highly educated women in Japan in the 1970s and the 1980s. In 1985, Japan signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and enacted the Equal Employment Act. Until that time, women were openly discriminated against in employment. Highly educated women who could not find suitable work were forced to become full-time housewives. Some of these women had been involved in the student movement in 1968. These women had abundant free time, a thirst for knowledge and ample economic reserves. Such women played leading roles in the feminist movement, the environmental protection movement, the natural food movement and the antinuclear movement in the 1980s. These women led the antinuclear movement that appeared in Japan after the Chernobyl nuclear accident. At the time, these movements were referred to as “new social movements” or as the “antinuclear new wave.” In this essay, however, I do not refer to the urban middle class movements represented by these women as “new social movements.” As a result of changes in the economic structure brought about by deindustrialization, the number of full-time housewives in contemporary Japan has decreased. In the research conducted for this essay, housewives did not make up a large proportion of activists. What I refer to as “new social movements” in this essay are those that have appeared as Japan has become a post-industrial society. As I will explain, these movements began with the precariat movement. This kind of movement appeared on a large scale with the antinuclear movement after the Fukushima nuclear accident. In 1980s Japan, the urban movements in which housewives played a central role were referred to as “new social movements.” The background to these movements differed, however, from those in the US and in Europe. In the US and in Europe, manufacturing reached a peak in the 1960s. In Japan, however, the number of people employed in manufacturing peaked in 1991. That means that in the 1980s, the US and Europe had already become post-industrial societies but Japan was still an industrial society. The abundance of full-time housewives who would marry workers with stable jobs was a product of industrial society. The “new social movements” centered on housewives in Japan belonged to the period when Japan was an industrial society. They were the result of a different social context than that in the US and Europe. One reason that social movements in Japan in the 1980s were referred to as “new social movements” in spite of these differences was due to the influence of contemporary social movement research in the US and Europe. In reality, however, the conditions in Japan actually differed from those in the US and Europe.
13 Video footage from these demonstration can be viewed in Noriko Manabe, “Music in Japanese Antinuclear Demonstrations.”
14 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Declaration (Argo Navis Author Services, 2012).
15 It must be borne in mind that respondents were not selected via random sampling. If, however, we look at the survey conducted at the same time by Machimura cited in note i, it is clear that it is very difficult to use random sampling with a movement of this kind. Machimura's research group conducted their survey of “antinuclear movement” groups across Japan as follows. 1) They conducted a keyword search of articles in the Asahi Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun containing any of the keyword pairs “nuclear & citizen”, “nuclear & group”, “energy & citizen” or “energy & group” in articles between March 12, 2011 and March 31, 2012. They then compiled a list of groups mentioned in the articles. 2) They obtained the contact details of the 1600 groups thus extracted using the web and other public sources. 3) They posted a questionnaire to each group. Because it was clear that they could not gain a representative sample through newspaper articles alone, they 4) added all of the groups that exhibited at “The Global Conference for a Nuclear Power Free World” held in Yokohama on January 14, 2012. Of the 904 groups whose contact details were obtained and who were sent a copy of the questionnaire by post, the response rate was only 36.1%. I am not aware of any small groups such as MCAN that organized protest activities from 2011–2012 that responded to Machimura's survey. The reasons for this are 1) these groups were not covered in the newspapers, 2) they do not maintain a physical office and so they can only be contacted via the web and 3) they were busy with pressing activities and did not respond to such surveys. As a result, the survey conducted by Machimura's group is limited to those groups which have a physical office and were able to receive a questionnaire in the mail. Therefore, the survey found that 1) the number of groups who were active prior to the Fukushima nuclear accident was as high as 66% and 2) 42% of them were incorporated bodies. I do not mean to downplay the significance of this kind of survey. Regardless of the procedures used, however, such an orthodox survey is not actually a random sample. This method is not well suited to conducting research on extremely fluid contemporary social movements. As a result, the survey conducted by Machimura's group, while it aimed for a random sample, was actually only able to capture the older, fixed part of Japan's social movements. My survey can be considered as complementing that carried about Machimura's group. For further details of my survey, including the complete responses see Oguma Eiji, ed., Genpatsu o tomeru hitobito (Tokyo: Bungei shunjū, 2013).
16 Some respondents did not clearly specify their age but I was able to estimate it based on the life history they provided in their essays.
17 All subsequent references to this series are from, Koko kara–teiten kansoku•kokkai mae Fixed Point Observations: Outside the National Diet], Tōkyō Shimbun, Morning edition. The columns appeared the day after the interviewee had taken part in the protests.
18 This example is taken from “Friday night, outside the prime minister's official residence”, Asahi Shimbun, July 19, 2012.
19 According to an announcement on the group's homepage, the composition of MCAN changed in February 2014 from the original 13 groups that founded the organization on October 2012, to 11 groups and “other sympathetic individuals”. See.
20 MCAN spokesperson Misao Redwolf has 7,142 followers on Twitter. The official MCAN Twitter account has 23,664 followers. These figures are both current as at September 9, 2015. On September 19, 2015, an official Twitter account in the name of SEALDs had 59,261 followers and leading SEALDs member Okuda Aki had 24,384 followers.
21 Email message to the author, August 24, 2015. I obtained permission to cite this source as it accurately reflects the attitudes of Japan's newspaper reporters.
22 On Beheiren see, Oguma Eiji, 1968 (Tokyo: Shinyōsha, 2009), vol. 2, chap. 13.
23 Noma Yasumichi, Kinyō kantei mae kōgi (Tokyo: Kawade shobō shinsha, 2012), 163.
24 Taken from a comment made by Misao Redwolf in a roundtable discussion. See Oguma (ed), Genpatsu o tomeru hitobito, 17.
25 Noma, Kinyō kantei mae kōgi, 36.
26 Oguma, Genpatsu o tomeru hitobito, p. 145. From the response of an activist from Osaka.
27 When asked about the future of Japan's nuclear power plants in a public opinion poll conducted by the Asahi newspaper group from August 22-23, 2015, 16% of respondents said “reduce them to zero immediately,” 58% said “reduce them to zero in the near future” and 22% said “don't reduce them to zero.” 28% were in favor of restarting existing nuclear reactors while 55% were opposed. Asahi Shimbun, August 8, 2015, Morning edition.
28 “Jimintō soshiki, ‘hōkai genshō‘ Aichi kenren tōinsū 3 bun no 1 ni gekihen,” (Nihon Kyōsantō Aichi ken iinkai homepage, September 21, 2008), accessed August 25, 2015, http://www.jcp-aichi.jp/minpou/080918-134937.html.
29 Noda Kazusa, “Shōgeki no dēta ‘ato 10 nen de jimintō no 9 wari ga takai suru’,” President Online, September 23, 2014, accessed August 25, 2015. After the LDP returned to power in December 2012, Diet members were assigned a quota and tried to increase party membership. This is said to have produced an increase in party membership from 730,000 in 2012 to 780,000 in 2013 and 890,000 in 2014. Noda claims, however, that regional LDP Diet members who were assigned a quota simply paid the membership fees themselves and that local residents were registered as party members in name only. They did so because they were afraid that if they could not achieve their quota they would not be re-endorsed by party headquarters. If they could maintain their endorsement then they could pay the membership fees out of the money they received from the party.
30 On the effects of this electoral cooperation see the analysis in Sugawara Taku, Yoron no kyokkai (Kōbunsha shinsho 2009), chap. 2. The JSP and the People's New Party engaged in electoral cooperation with the DPJ. The JCP put forward a limited number of candidates in electoral districts where the competition was tight, thereby indirectly supporting the DPJ.
31 Sugawara Taku, “Naze Jimintō wa sōsenkyo ni shōri shi, Abe naikaku wa shiji o atsumeteiru no ka,” Sight, Spring, 2013.
32 “Yoyatō taiketsu, jiriki no sa”, Asahi Shimbun, April 3, 2015, Morning edition.
33 “Datsu genpatsu shikō no hyō, bunsan”, Asahi Shimbun, December 17, 2012, Morning edition.
34 Noda, “Shokugeki no dēta.”
35 Gerald L. Curtis, Election Campaigning, Japanese Style (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971).
36 “Dōnyū ga kasoku suru taiyō denchi, Nihon de wa 2030 nen ni 100GW made kakudai,” Smart Japan, April 9, 2015, accessed August 27, 2015.
37 The system had only nine regions in 1951. The tenth region was added in 1972, following the return of Okinawa to Japanese control.
38 □Okada Hiroyuki, “Neage tanomi no denryoku kessan, hajimatta shinkoku na kyakubanare,” Shūkan tōyō keizai, November 21, 2015.
39 Okada, “Neage tanomi no denryoku kessan.”
40 “Genpatsu no anzen kosuto minaoshi, jiko kakuritsu hangen o zentei,” Asahi Shimbun, April 16, 2015, Morning edition.
41 “Genpatsu anzen hi, 2-3 chō en,” Tōkyō Shimbun, May 17, 2015, Morning edition.
42 “Nihon no genpatsu, saikadō tenbō wa 3 bun no 1 ika, 17 ki wa konnan ka”, Reuters, April 2, 2014, accessed August 27, 2015.
43 “Ikata 1 gōki hairo,” Tōkyō Shinbun, May 10, 2016, Morning edition.
44 “Owatta ‘genpatsu zero’,” Asahi Shimbun, September 5, 2015, Evening edition.
45 “Saikadō ni kōfukin 15 oku en,” Asahi Shimbun, January 1, 2015, Morning edition.
46 Kawano Tarō, “Kokuhi tōnyū wa kokumin e no sekinin tenka,” Shūkan economisuto, September 24, 2013.
47 Hiyoshino Wataru, “Dare mo, honki de kangaenai ‘genpatsu no mirai’,” Shinchō, vol. 45, June 2015, 51.
48 I calculated this figure as follows. For each of the percentages for “scrapping nuclear power immediately,” “gradually phasing out nuclear power altogether” “not pursuing zero nuclear power” I multiplied the percentage of respondents who said they had voted for the LDP in each, giving a total of 26.61%. The LDP received 27.62% of the vote in proportionally represented constituencies in the 2012 House of Representatives elections, giving a gap of 1.01%. The number of informal votes in this House of Representatives election was 2.4% so I subtracted this from the “other, no reply” category of 7% giving 5.6%. If we assume that the number of LDP votes contained in this 5.6% is the remaining 1.01% then 18% of this group voted for the LDP. There is not much difference between this figure and the 16% of people who favored “scrapping nuclear power immediately” and voted for the LDP so it is probably too low. I then made a provisional calculation of the total percentage of votes obtained by the LDP of 27.62% at the slightly higher rate of 30%. If we assume that four tenths of those who replied “other, no reply” were LDP voters then the LDP's reliance on the antinuclear vote is 68.5% (of whom, 7.6% favor scrapping nuclear power immediately) and if we assume seven tenths voted for the LDP then the party's reliance on the antinuclear vote is 64.0% (of whom 7.1% favor scrapping nuclear power immediately). If we assume that 30% of the “other, no reply” category were LDP voters then the LDP's reliance on the antinuclear vote is 70.9% (of whom 7.8% favor scrapping nuclear power immediately). Whichever figure we choose, these are merely estimates based on an exit poll, so no effort was made to achieve strict consistency.
49 Oguma Eiji, “Weakened LDP power base allows Abe to run roughshod over, opposition,” Asahi Shinbun, July 7, 2015.
50 Hiyoshino, “Dare mo, honki de kangaenai ‘genpatsu no mira’,” 48.
51 Okuda Aki, “Yūki, arui wa kake to shite,” special supplementary issue, Gendai shisō, October 2015, 48.
52 Okuda, Yūki, interview, 59.
53 The organizers claimed 120,000 people attended this rally while the police claimed 33,000. One possible reason for this discrepancy in the figures is discussed in footnote ii.
54 “Kantei mae demo ‘seiji bunka o tsukuridashita’,” Asahi Shimbun. September 7, 2015, Evening edition.
55 Oguma Eiji, “Mōten o saguriateta shikō”, in Genpatsu o tomeru hitobito, ed. Oguma Eiji (Tokyo: Bungei shunjū sha, 2013).