뉴미디어 세대와 일본 풀뿌리 평화운동의 조우: ‘헌법 9조에 노벨평화상을’ 운동

This paper examines the campaign entitled “The Nobel Peace Prize for Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution.” By collecting petitions, this campaign has recommended the Japanese people who have kept the Peace Constitution as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize for three consecutive years. Building on an intriguing new media-based grassroots peace movement launched by Takasu Naomi, an ordinary housewife and mother of two young children, the campaign represents an effort to protest against the Liberal Democratic Party government’s series of actions aimed at revising the constitution after the establishment of the second Abe Shinzō Cabinet in 2012. My study pays special attention to the role of new media in creating new mobilizing structures for ordinary citizens to promote the movement and gain popular support. Nevertheless, without numerous enthusiastic supporters, grassroots social movement organizations, and their accumulated experience and strategies, it would have been impossible for the movement to expand its popular base. Thus, I assess this movement as having successfully combined the ways of traditional Japanese grassroots social movements with the new methods of the second-postwar generation movement. It also suggests that an everyday-life pacifism (as opposed to political pacifism), which has conventionally been associated with conservatism in postwar Japanese society, can surprisingly serve as a catalyst for civic activism.