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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
In this essay I explore the way the internet has facilitated people's participation in anti-nuclear activism in Japan. After contextualising the use of the internet in the anti-nuclear movement which developed after the compound disaster of “3/11”, I present a case study focused on the tweet messages of one twitter user. By undertaking content analysis, tracing tweets over time, and tracing the connections between particular vocabulary items, and an interview, we gain a picture of how one participant in the anti-nuclear movement developed a political consciousness through participating in internet-facilitated activism.
1 Wesley Sasaki-Uemura, Organizing the Spontaneous: Citizens Protest in Postwar Japan, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2001, pp. 148-194.
2 Simon Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens: Civil Society and the Mythology of the Shimin in Postwar Japan, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2010.
3 James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 7.
4 David H. Slater, Keiko Nishimura and Love Kindstrand, “Social Media, Information and Political Activism in Japan's 3.11 Crisis”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 10, no. 24, iss. 1, 2012. Retrieved 14 October 2014.
5 Gilad Lotan, Erhardt Graeff, Mike Ananny, Devin Gaffney, Ian Pearce and Danah Boyd, “The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows During the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions”, International Journal of Communication, Vol. 5, 2011, pp. 1375-1405.
6 W. Lance Bennett, “The Personalization of Politics: Political Identity, Social Media, and Changing Patterns of Participation”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 644, no. 1, pp. 20-30.
7 Gonoi Ikuo, Demo to wa Nani ka: Henbō suru Chokusetsu Minshushugi What is a Demonstration: The Transformation of Direct Democracy], Tokyo, NHK Shuppan, 2012, p. 15.
8 Itō Masaki, Demo no Media Ron, Chikuma shobō, Tokyo, 2012, pp. 92-4.
9 Yasmin Ibrahim, “Weblogs as Personal Narratives: Displacing History and Temporality,” M/C Journal, vol. 9, no 6, 2006, p. 24. Retrieved on Jan. 2014; Asako Miura and Kiyomi Yamashita, “Psychological and Social Influences on Blog Writing: An Online Survey of Blog Authors in Japan.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication vol. 12, no. 4, 2007, pp.1452-1471.
10 Joseph E. Davis, Stories of Change: Narrative and Social Movements, New York, State University of New York Press, 2002, p. 24.
11 Akihiro Ogawa, “Young Precariat at the Forefront: Anti-nuclear Rallies in Post-Fukushima Japan”, Inter-Asian Cultural Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 317-326.
12 Akiba Hiroshi and Kawabata Akira, Reinō no Riariti e: Shakaigaku, Shin'nyoen ni Hairu Approaching the Reality of Mediumship: Sociology Enters Shin'nyo-en], Tokyo, Shin'yōsha, 2004.
13 Akiba and Kawabata, Reinō no Riariti e, pp.1 228-9. There is a quite a long history of seeing analogies between the development of political consciousness and religious conversion. See: Vera Mackie, Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Gender, Labour and Activism, 1900-1937, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 172.
14 Francesca Polletta, It Was like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006, pp. 51-2.
15 Robert D. Benford called this “participant narratives” as contrasted with “movement narratives” in Davis, Stories of Change, p. 54.
16 Interview with @tatangarani, 13 April 2013
17 The tweets analysed are from 11 August 2010 to 4 August 2013 (a total of 50,563 messages).
18 KH Coder is free software and can be obtained from Sourceforge. Retrieved 14 March 2014.
19 “Zutto uso datta”. Retrieved 14 March 2014.
20 This was a reworking of one of his earlier songs “Zutto suki datta” (I always loved you).
21 Interview with @tatangarani, 13 April 2013.
22 Patricia Steinhoff, “Memories of New Left Protest”, Contemporary Japan, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2013, pp. 127-165.
23 Interview with @tatangarani, 13 April 2013.
24 Interview with @tatangarani, 13 April 2013.
25 Interview with @tatangarani, 13 April 2013.
26 Asano Tomohiko, Jiko e no Monogatariteki Sekkin: Kazoku Ryōhō kara Shakaigaku e Approaching the Self through Narrative: From Family Therapy to Sociology], Tokyo, Keisō Shobō, 2001.
27 The Zaitokukai, an abbreviation of the group's full name “Citizens Against the Special Privileges of the Zainichi”. The organisation, founded in 2006, is an extreme nationalist organisation which believes a fabricated story that ethnic Koreans who are resident in Japan (Zainichi Koreans) enjoy “special privileges” (tokken), which are unavailable to ethnically Japanese nationals or other foreign residents. They are particularly active on the internet. On the Zaitokukai, see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Freedom of Hate Speech: Abe Shinzo and Japan's Public Sphere ”. Retrieved on 23 February 2014.
28 Interview with @tatangarani, 13 April 2013.
29 Kakuko Miyata, Ken'ichi Ikeda and Kobayashi Tetsuro, “The Internet, Social Capital, Civic Engagement, and Gender in Japan”, in Nan Lin and Bonnie H. Erickson (eds.), Social Capital: An International Research Program, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 206-233.
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