The Emergence of the Article 9 Association and Reorganization of Social Movements in Contemporary Japan: A Story of Network Practice for Social Change

摘要

Article 9 of the 1946 Japanese Constitution is one of the few constitutional laws that "forever renounces war as the sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international dispute" (the first clause). What makes the article even more progressive is the second clause, which further renounces the right to maintain "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential" and the right of belligerency of the state. Famous for this "peace clause", the Japanese constitution has remained contested ever since its establishment, but has resisted challenges in the National Diet and the courts for seventy years. After the massive protest cycles of the 1960s to early 1970s, protest activity in Japan declined, and there was no major protest mobilization over this issue for several decades. Suddenly in 2004, however, a new movement called the Article 9 Association (Kyujo no kai) emerged, and grew rapidly to encompass over 7,500 chapters across Japan and abroad. What led to this new social movement and how and why did it grow so rapidly after such a long period of quiescence? This dissertation examines these puzzles using social movement concepts and theories.;The study accepts as its foundation McAdam's political process framework (1982) to understand how the longstanding contentious issue re-emerged as a new social movement under new political and social conditions in the 2000s. This is a movement that re-emerged after a long period of abeyance (Whittier 1997; Crossley and Taylor 2015), and to understand the movement's emergence and rapid rise under these new conditions, it uses the perspective that social movements are network structures (Diani and McAdam 2003).;In examining closely how the Article 9 Association re-mobilized old networks and created new ones, the study not only demonstrates that the life of social movements may continue across protest cycles through network practices, but also contributes a more relational understanding to social movement theories of movement continuity. It thus proposes what is understood as 'continuity' through certain actors' maintenance efforts may be understood as infinite processes of network formation and reorganization of social movements-as-networks.