Student movement builds a broader political platform

In a dramatic turnaround in the past year, Japanese students and young people have shed their conventional image as docile members of society to become major players in national politics.

The Japanese student movement came to the fore with the founding in May 2015 of Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy, or SEALDs, to protest against Prime Minister’s Shinzo Abe’s defence policies, particularly his attempts to alter the country’s pacifist legislation.

Despite the widespread protests, Abe’s ruling coalition rammed security bills through the Diet or parliament last September, allowing Japan to assist friendly nations – including the United States – if they come under armed attack.

Unlike some one-issue student movements that quickly die down, SEALDs has continued to be active.

It now has a much broader political platform – to support opposition parties in upcoming Upper House elections in August, to achieve its goal to block amendments to the country’s pacifist constitution.

Abe justifies constitutional change as important against the growing threat of China’s military build-up. On Japan’s 3 May Constitution Day holiday, rallies were held by SEALDs and other civil society groups targeting the August election.

A two-thirds majority is required in the Upper House to propose constitutional change. The ruling party coalition already has a more than two-thirds majority in the Diet lower house.

SEALDs hopes to encourage more students to the polls to stop the government’s bid to change the constitution drawn up after World War II and never altered. Japan’s voter turnout is depressingly low – just 51% recorded at the December 2014 general election.

‘Ready to fight’

“I believe students are now ready to fight back to protect their interests,” said Jinshiro Motoyama, a co-founder of SEALDs, who says the decision to voice opposition to government policies has spawned similar actions by students and other groups – including academics – across Japan.

SEALDs rejects Abe’s conservative policies, saying that they ignore the views of the public.

“Abe is undemocratically pushing constitutional change that will permit Japan to participate in US-led global wars,” said Motoyama, now a fourth-year student at the International Christian University in Tokyo.

“He has not opened a debate on the impact on Japanese society, which never wants to be mired again in a war after the terrible experience during World War II.” Motoyama is from Okinawa, which hosts some two-thirds of the 47,000 US troops in Japan.

He explained that the main thrust of the student movement is mutual respect. “Through politics we will change Japanese society to be more tolerant and transparent, rather than the top down system we have now.”

Expanding influence

Although SEALDs is still a small minority among students, its ability to garner support from other groups is considerable. Public polls indicate that more than half of Japanese are opposed to the proposed constitutional reforms, with 31% supporting them.

“In sharp contrast to the 1970s when Japanese campuses were wracked with violent leftist protests against the Japan-US Security Treaty, SEALDs members are talented young people who have started a protest movement as individuals who want politics to reflect their voices,” explained Yasuhito Morihara, an associate professor of economics at Mie University. “They have inspired others.”

Morihara has participated in the demonstrations and is often invited to SEALDs study sessions to lecture on economics.

SEALDs currently has branches on campuses across Japan.

Students began to push for responsible and transparent politics five years ago, when they joined public campaigns against nuclear energy following the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown. The plant was hit by the massive East Japan earthquake and tsunami disaster on 11 March 2011.

Shocked by the government’s lukewarm response to the disaster, which posed a radiation risk to people as far away as Tokyo, normally passive citizens came out to lobby for an end to nuclear power.

That was when Ayumi Oka (25) decided it was time she raised her voice.

The organiser of SEALDs Tokai in west-central Japan was in her fourth year studying education at Mie University when she joined SEALDs last year. She has recruited 30 university students through social media.

Oka says she was scared to talk politics with university friends who avoided the topic. But SEALDs showed her another way. By speaking up, she said, even her parents – who believed that politics was not a matter for domestic debate – have begun to think otherwise.

Maturing civil society

The small but expanding youth-led street movement is a sign of maturing Japanese civil society, analysts say.

Total SEALDs membership officially hovers around 500, but swells more than threefold during demonstrations, such as the 3 May rallies, when SEALDs is joined by other students and civic organisations.

Supporters point out that encouraging more debate is crucial in Japan, where political issues are rarely discussed in schools or even among friends.

Lawyer Keiko Ota, another SEALDs supporter, says the student movement has brought about a long-awaited change in Japanese universities.

“Students who discussed politics were viewed as weird and were ostracised for not being ‘trendy’.” Now even the most fashionable students are willing to stand up to critics who dismiss them as juvenile, she explained.

Political experts contend that the student movement will continue to gain steam with the enactment in June last year of a new law that lowers the voting age to 18 years from 20. Some 2.4 million 18- and 19-year-olds will be able to vote in the first expansion of voting rights in 70 years.