Uprising: Music, youth, and protest against the policies of the Abe Shinzō government

Abstract

The passage of the Act on Protection of Specified Secrets (Secrecy Law) in Japan on December 6, 2013 was a turning point for many antinuclear and anti-discrimination activists, causing them to shift their energies to protesting Prime Minister Abe Shinzō's policies. This law, which would jail people for inquiring about state secrets even if those secrets had not been so identified, has been flagged by the UN Human Rights Council and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations as compromising the people's right to know and undermining democracy. When it was passed in the middle of the night on December 6, 2013, about 40,000 protesters had been maintaining a vigil in front of the Diet. On a live internetradio program on Dommune on July 30, 2014, the activist Banchō expressed concern that the Secrecy Law could turn Japan into a “police state” that did not require police to explain the reasons for one's arrest “because it was secret” (Banchō, Dommune, Tokyo, July 30, 2014). Lawyers like Tamura Yūsuke of Asu no Jiyū o Mamoru Wakate Bengoshi no Kai (Association of Young Lawyers for the Protection of Tomorrow's Freedom) have also highlighted the problematic nature of the Abe Cabinet's reinterpretation of the Constitution without undergoing an amendment process, which would require a two-thirds majority in the Diet. He argued that the Right to Collective Self-Defense primarily enables overseas wars in cooperation with the United States rather than Japan's self-defense, which is already constitutionally permitted (Tamura Yūsuke, Dommune, July 30, 2014).