On July 28^th, the Global Asia Research Center, Waseda University, hosted a special lecture entitled “The Politics of Non-Politics in Late 20^th Century Japan” that was presented by Associate Professor of History, Nick Kapur from Rutgers University.

In the beginning of the presentation, Professor Kapur introduced the concept of “Non-Politics”. In the late 1960s and early 1970s in Japan, many people began calling themselves “Non-Politics”. Many of the people who embrace this term often remain deeply political not only in their general outwork but in their actual actions and in their daily lives. There seems to be a gap between the English word politics and the conception of politics in Japan.

Then, Professor Kapur explained the prehistory of “Non-Politics”. The occupation empowered and legitimized the left through a number of measures. They released communists and socialists from prison, and they encouraged and facilitated the formation of labor unions among the number of early occupation reforms. They were the only people who could not be blamed in any way for Japan’s disaster defeat, so the Japan Communist Party took the initiative to organize a powerful nationwide labor movement. However, in 1950 Joseph Stalin ordered the JCP to immediately pursue an armed and violent Communist Revolution in Japan, and they sent the young communists to start a violent revolution. Many of the JCP’s young members were arrested in jail and the violence permanently turned many ordinary Japanese against the party. Meanwhile, the right was empowered by the reverse course and some right-wing groups and organizations started to become more active again. When the Anpo protests and the Miike struggle failed, it turned out that the broad silent majority of people preferred to the middle. This process was accelerated later in the ’60s by extremists on the left and the right. As activists on both the left and the right seemed to become more and more extreme, an increasing number of Japanese people started opting out of politics entirely.

The specific Japanese term “Non-Politics” first arose in the context of 1968 and 1969. Initially, this term was a derogatory term that the very political activists hurled at the students who did not join the movement, but later the new left started calling themselves “Non-Politics”. They were critical of “democratic centralism” and the extreme emphasis on hierarchical structures that typify the old left in Japan. Then, as Japan was in the midst of unprecedented high-speed economic growth, there was an ever larger incentive to keep one’s head down and secure one’s own slice of the economic pie in Japan. In addition, another incentive for people to adopt a “Non-politics” stance was a feeling that being “Non-Politics” allowed one more freedom and independence to act as an individual and according to individual desires rather than simply going along with an existing group. In 1970, the year when the US-Japan security treaty would finally be up for renewal, the violent campus protests combined with violent activities and incidents of the rump of the new left. The vast majority of the country decisively turned against explicitly ideological political organizing and activism of both the left and right.

This discrediting and delegitimization of politics opened the way for new forms of political organizing. Examples of new types of movements that arose to fill the space vacated by the old and new left included women’s rights movements, environmental movements, minority rights movements, and the so-called residents movements. Then, in the new left movements, women often played a central role in organizing and carrying out the New Politics of “Non-Politics”. While these new movements rhetorically focused on aspects of daily life, it was harder to think of something more political than that demanding changes to the law. Nevertheless, these movements, many of which were primarily organized by women, ultimately ended up with robust environmental protection laws for quite a while better than anywhere else in the world, and much stronger consumer protections cleaner streets and public spaces. Professor Kapur argued that they achieved so many substantial victories that help explain why the politics of “Non-Politics” has become so deeply entrenched in Japan.

After the presentation, many audience asked questions and discussed various topics.