Seminar: Social movements in post-3.11 Japan

March 28, 3:00pm - 4:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Moore Hall 319 (Tokioka Room), 1890 East-West Rd. Add to Calendar

UH Mānoa Sociology Department Colloquium in co-sponsorship with the Center for Japanese Studies present:

"Mobilizing, participating, sympathizing - Social movements in post-3.11 Japan"

Abstract: Japan experienced the East Japan Great Earthquake on March 11, 2011, the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. These events quickly triggered anti-nuclear protests, with mobilization peaking in July 2012. The subsequent National Security Act legislation caused the second peak in mobilization numbers in 2015. In total, these post-3.11 protests mark the largest protest wave Japan had seen since the 1970s. We use a unique dataset entitled “Citizens’ political participation”, derived from a December 2017 survey among 77,084 Japanese living in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area. We present first findings about (a) who the people are that joined the movements and attended demonstrations, who are sympathizers, who are opponents; (b) creating a typology on the stages of involvement in either of the two protest issues; (c) analyzing attitudes toward policies on nuclear power, as well as political view and personal values and their relevance to the likelihood of participating and/or sympathizing.

Presenters:

Dr. Naoto Higuchi, PhD sociology, is associate professor at Tokushima University. His major research interest is xenophobia, social movements and social capital of migrants. He conducted a fieldwork on radical right activists and is now engaged in research on Peruvian migration to Japan. His most recent English book is Japan’s Ultra-Right (2016, Trans Pacific Press).

Dr. Barbara Holthus, PhD sociology UH Mānoa, is deputy director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo. Her research is on marriage and the family, child care, well-being, media, gender, rural Japan and demographic change. One of her most recent publications is Lifecourse, happiness and well-being in Japan and Happiness and the good life in Japan (2017, Routledge, ed. with W. Manzenreiter).

Dr. Mitsuru Matsutani, PhD sociology, is an associate professor of Sociology, School of Contemporary Sociology at Chukyo University, Japan. His current research focuses on post-party politics in Japan. He has written on the rise of populist leaders, social movements in Post-3.11, and young people's political orientation. One of his English publications is “Populism” in Shunsuke Tanabe’s Japanese Perceptions of Foreigners (2013, Trans Pacific Press).

This lecture is free and open to the public.


Event Sponsor
Center for Japanese Studies, Mānoa Campus

More Information
(808) 956-2665

Share by email