Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses the state of democracy in Japan via the political participation of the young generation and the the so-called 'Silver Democracy' debated in the country.

Paper long abstract:

With the change of the age for right to vote from twenty to eighteen in 2016, Japanese political parties have started to focus more on policies for young people than previous period, and their policy menus have been considerably expanded since. For example, the decision to establish Children's and Families' Agency in 2022, is one of the consequences of the trend. Although their share in the population is negligeable and their voter turnout among remains still low, the younger generation is no longer negligible in Japanese politics, getting more attention than ever. In addition, beyond the dimension of party politics, the input into policy through social networking and lobbying from the generation appears to be more active than ever.

These attentions brought to young generation in political scene in recent years has generated the term so-called 'silver democracy', stating that with the weak political participation of young people, various policies in Japan are heavily geared towards the elder generation that distribute disparately goods and services among generations and disregard the generation to come.

However, a precise analysis of the public policies reveals that this literature on 'silver democracy' has to be nuanced and that, in fact, the burden on the elder generation is increasing and policies for young people are on the rise. Indeed, in terms of demographics and voting rates, with a few exceptions, there is no significant incentive for most of the political parties, to focus and trying to deliver goods to young people. On the other hand, the growing social security burden and the need to review the livelihood security system are the principal driving force for reviewing the inter-generational redistribution.

In this presentation, we first trace the evolution of policies of Japan's major political parties towards the younger generation; secondly, we examine the validity of the much-vaunted 'silver democracy' theory; finally, we point out that the problem of the political enrolment of young generation, and more broadly about the state of democracy in Japan, is the political de-mobilization observed in many areas.