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Paper short abstract

Drawing on the case of the “open park” event in Kyoto, this paper discusses how, in the face of demographic change in cities, solutions are sought that open up new spaces and avenues for youth participation, intergenerational exchange, and sustainable governance.

Paper long abstract

The effects of demographic change and population decline are now evident throughout Japan. Even major cities such as Kyoto struggle with an aging population, an outmigration of young workers and families, a shrinking tax base, and the resulting strain on municipal services. One response to these challenges has been the pursuit of new governance partnerships. In 2021, Kyoto City initiated a pilot project searching for private actors to assume management responsibilities for selected public parks. While this may be viewed as a worrying sign of neo-liberal decentralization, privatization, and burden shifting, it has also opened up new opportunities for diverse actors to collaborate and reimagine the park as a public asset through expanded forms of participation.

One initiative that emerged in the wake of this pilot project is a monthly “open park” event planned and organized by several stakeholders in a public park in Kyoto. This event aims to create a community space for the neighborhood, facilitate intergenerational exchange, and provide access to a place that everyone can use freely. Through strategic cooperation with university professors, it also drew the interest of many young participants and students.

This paper examines how the “open park” facilitated the exploration of new forms of local participation, especially of younger people. This is of importance, as Kyoto City has been promoting youth participation, but young voices have often been overlooked so far. I ask how and to what degree the “open park” succeeded in creating a community space for different generations. I argue that these new constellations constitute a turning point for participation in city planning and governance in Kyoto, which warrants close analysis. I address these questions by drawing on a qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews from two fieldwork phases, news reports, pamphlets, and policy documents.

My analysis sheds light on new spaces and avenues for youth participation, intergenerational exchange, and sustainable governance. Thus, I contribute to and update the existing literature on civil society, machizukuri, and governance in Japan by providing a new and specific perspective on youth participation in planning.

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Paper short abstract

Young people face ageing-related welfare risks and are urged to offset them through private investing. This paper reviews whether financialisation and anxiety about public pensions reshape young people’s welfare-state perceptions and policy preferences in Germany and Japan.

Paper long abstract

In public discourse, young people are usually seen as the group most affected by demographic ageing, paying higher contributions to social insurance schemes today and drawing lower benefits later in life. Governments in many countries, including Germany and Japan, have responded by advocating for private pension saving and encourage young workers to invest in capital markets and financial products in order to compensate for benefit cuts. In recent years, partly due to social media, public campaigns, and the advent of new and highly accessible forms of investing, many young people have developed a strong interest in financial markets. As stock-market valuations have grown dramatically since the global financial crisis, this may appear to many to be a more lucrative way of achieving social security than relying on established social-insurance schemes, which have repeatedly been described as vulnerable to demographic ageing. This raises the question of whether this new way of thinking about old age security, together with widespread anxiety about public schemes, affects how young people perceive the welfare state and whether it shapes their policy preferences differently from those of other generations. This paper provides a systematic overview of the mixed empirical evidence that has emerged so far in the literature, investigates how welfare-state institutions shape perceptions and preferences, and suggests new avenues for research.

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Paper short abstract

This presentation draws on a five-year ethnographic study with Japanese youth climate activists to shows how their trusted cooperation with senior environmentalists turns into tension through age hierarchy, discursive domination, and tokenism, thereby deepening intergenerational political divisions.

Paper long abstract

This presentation draws on empirical insights from a five-year ethnographic study of Japanese youth climate activism to examine the relationship between younger and senior activists. Young activists sometimes seek cooperation from senior environmental activist activists (many of whom are over 60 years old) to mobilize participants and raise public awareness about coming climate change. Although they initially build a relationship of trust, such collaboration gradually leads to tensions. This presentation analyses the challenges faced by young activists in four dimensions: (a) age-based hierarchy building, (b) discursive domination, (c) exploitation through decorative/tokenistic participation, and (d) acceleration of intergenerational division. As a result, young activists feel disappointed with senior activist groups and, consequently, refuse to further collaboration, keep the distance, and express distrust towards intergenerational collaboration. This presentation sheds light on why forging horizontal relationships remains a persistent challenge for youth activists in Japan.

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Paper short abstract

This paper explores youth participation in aging Japan through youth councils, youth work, and youth centers. It examines how young people engage with social and political issues beyond formal institutions, highlighting alternative forms of participation shaped by demographic aging.

Paper long abstract

This presentation introduces recent developments in youth policy and practices of youth participation in Japan, with a focus on youth councils, youth work, and youth centers. In the context of an aging society and declining youth voter turnout, young people in Japan are often described as politically disengaged. However, alongside formal political institutions, a variety of participatory practices have emerged at the local and community levels.

Drawing on empirical examples from Japanese youth policy and youth participation initiatives, the presentation highlights how youth councils provide institutionalized channels for young people’s voices, while youth work and youth centers function as semi-institutionalized and non-institutionalized spaces for participation, learning, and collective decision-making. Together, these practices enable young people to engage with social and political issues in ways that are closely connected to their everyday lives.

In the concluding part, the presentation briefly reflects on how the neoliberalization of young people’s life worlds shapes the conditions under which participation takes place, and discusses how these diverse practices contribute to forms of representation beyond formal political institutions in Japan’s aging democracy.