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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.