Young Democracy Dissolves

That young group was organized to protest Designated Secrecy Protection Act on May 3^rd, Constitution Day, last year. With ordinary people gathering around, the members repeated yelling for restoration of democracy in front of Prime Minister’s Official Residence, or Kantei in Tokyo. People called it new type of demonstration, different from students’ movement in 1960s or 1970s. Defining it as temporary action, the organization announced its dissolution on Monday, or War Memorial Day of August 15^th.

The name of the group is Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy-s, or SEALDs. In early 2014, some college students was talking about the passage of the bill of Designated Secrecy Protection Act in late 2013, on which argument over possible restriction of human rights was continuing. “Can’t we find an alternative to simply watching out discussion in the Diet?” told one of them. They decided to “revive” demonstration to deliver their opinion.

Demonstrations had already been taken place in front of Kantei to protest nuclear power generation policy of the government. SEALDs brought new method to that kind of demonstrations, yelling their opinion on rhythm like rappers. They introduced in their calls a message in Occupy Wall Street movement that was “Tell me what democracy looks like.” The members kept on questioning whether democracy was working in Japan, when unusually conservative agenda, such as new security legislation with reinterpretation of Article 9 of Constitution of Japan, was promoted in Shinzo Abe administration.

One of their achievements includes grand coalition of the opposite parties. In the campaign period of election of House of Councillors this summer, SEALDs organized people’s alliance against new security legislation with scholars or mothers and required the opposite parties to be united beyond traditional borders in policy. Democratic Party and Japan Communist Party, with others, approached each other and were successful to raise integrated candidate in every 32 electoral districts with one seat each.

As students’ organization, SEALDs did not want to be the professional of civil movements. They only wanted to make some change on the landscape of Japanese politics, in which the sovereign people refrained from say something to a small core of political power. It is worth watching whether liberal democracy will find the follower of SEALDs in the future when politics take another step to dismantle post-war regime under Constitution of Japan.