![]() Attempting to fill this void, this article focuses on the involvement of Japan’s and South Korea’s civil societies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Surprisingly though, this development has so far been largely overlooked. We suggest the case study of SEALDs offers a novel contribution to the research of student activism worldwide, and highlights the importance of social context in any attempt to understand particular manifestations of student-led activism.Īs East-West Asia relations expand and diversify, cross-regional non-state relations develop as well. Unlike other movements that aim to ‘radically disrupt the system’ SEALDs found success through branding and popular appeal. The authors argue that while existing in a hybrid of cyberspace and urban space SEALDs was able to resonate with the country through social networking sites, music, fashion, and pop-culture appeal. By taking a case study approach, this paper analyses the movement and focuses on their unique ability to mobilise the masses through a unique utilisation of what Castells terms ‘spaces of autonomy’. Despite a variety of socio-contextual factors that have contributed to this reality, a student movement known as SEALDs emerged in 2015 and successfully mobilised a substantial number of Japanese youth and shifted public discourse on social activism. ![]() In recent decades Japanese university students have been characterised as politically apathetic and disinterested in organising for grassroots change. These conceptions of space, I argue, are needed to account for the various forms campus protest has taken since the 1990s. In this paper I focus on the develop-ment of campus protest in Kyoto from the mid-1990s until today to shed light on the following questions: How have campus-based activists responded to the ne-oliberalization of Japanese universities? What motivates them to use art or art-like forms of direct action and how are these activities related to space? I investigate the notions of space towards which activists have been oriented since the 1990's, focusing on three notions: official public space, counter-space and no-man's-land. This transformation has gone hand in hand with a shift of action repertoire towards forms of direct action such as squatting, sit-ins, hunger strikes, and opening "cafés". Although the radical student organisations of the New Left have waned, new movements are forming among students and pre-carious university employees in response to neoliberalization trends in society and the precarization of their conditions. ![]() However, campuses have continued to play a role in activism. Japan's so-called freeter movements (movements of young men and women lack-ing regular employment) are often said to have emerged as young people shifted their base of activism from campuses to the 'street'. This is a paper on the transformation of campus activism in Japan since the 1990's. ![]()
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