In 2009, the LDP suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of the DPJ in the House of Representatives elections. The DPJ was expected to initiate significant reform, but there was no consensus, either within the party or in public opinion as to what direction reform should take. Everybody recognized that the LDP’s politics of distributing favors had reached its limit. There was no consensus, however, as to whether reform should be carried out on neo-liberal or social-democratic premises.

The 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident occurred in this context. The large antinuclear movement that emerged in the wake of the accident included actors drawn from all the social strata discussed above. These included farmers and fisher folk confronting radioactive contamination, housewives alert to the radioactive contamination of foodstuffs and the special risk to infants and children, intellectuals critical of nuclear power in an earthquake-prone nation, and other social groups that engaged in anti-nuclear movements.

The group that organized the street demonstrations in Tokyo, however, centered on the new social groups that had first emerged in the 2000s. One month after the nuclear accident on , an antinuclear demonstration of 15,000 people took place in Koenji in Tokyo’s inner-west. The demonstration was called over the internet by a group of workers in their 20s and 30s who were involved in the precariat movement. Drawing on the style of earlier precariat movements, the demonstrations and rallies organized by this group had a “free” style and made effective use of music and design. 13 In , 30,000 people occupied a plaza outside Shinjuku station in the middle of Tokyo’s entertainment district. The action, which was inspired by the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt in , took place three months prior to Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in New York.

Strong public opposition and the need for more stringent safety standards made it impossible to restart them

The Koenji group was only one of a number of small groups in Tokyo that began to organize demonstrations after Fukushima. Continue reading “After Koizumi resigned in 2006, successive LDP prime ministers traded places every year”