Paper short abstract:

This presentation discussed why movement and political interest are hidden in youth culture after the 1970s even though students had involved in the radical insurgency in the late 1960s from magazines published after the 1970s edited by retired activists who had involved in student movements.

Paper long abstract:

My study investigates how Japanese youth lost their political and counter identity after the late 1970s. Previous researches of youth studies and social movements showed their interest in youth culture and movements after the 1970s. Youth studies argued that young generation who called as apathic (shirake) or no movement (mukyoto) generation lost their interest in political issue because they became able to enjoy their modern lifestyle on consumer society after the late 1970s. On the other hand, social movement studies mentioned that youth engaged new social movements by lifestyle level after the 1970s.

This presentation discussed why movements and political interests are hidden after the 1970s even though students had involved in the radical insurgency in the late 1960s. The author focused on the magazines for youth created by retired activists who had involved in student movements like Zenkyoto and Shinsayoku activisms. In the magazines, retired activists played the role as leaders of youth culture after the 1970s and they tried to socialize the next generation. The study tried to investigate how ex-protesters inherit their political experience to the younger readers. The author collected document data of magazines published after the 1970s: They are "Bikkuri House" and "Takarajima", and interview data of participants who contributed the magazines. From the data, we considered that youth gradually lost their political and counter identity in the communicational process between editors and readers on the magazine because editors who had joined 1960s student movements socialized young readers as "depoliticized youth". We could find that the contents which sneered and ridiculed activists and feminists in both the contributed articles and editors' comments in the magazines. Moreover, we could find that there was similar tendency among other medias represented 1970s sub-culture (e.g. radio and television contents) from the interview data.

From the findings, we can discuss that barriers to political participation was culturally constructed after the 1970s because people consider political participation as selfish, trouble making, meaningless, and disrespectful: such antipathy for social movements and political participations was passed on from retired activists generation to the next generation via subculture (sabukaru) after the 1970s.