Challenging the Boundaries of Citizenship: Transnational Activism in Contemporary Japan

This article analyses the development of post-national citizenship in contemporary Japanese social movements. It reconsiders the Japanese experience in light of recent theorizations on deterritorialized and transnational citizenships which challenge the domination of the national state in defining civic identity and propose novel alternatives based on cross-border affiliations and interactions among civil society actors. Until around the late-1960s Japanese activists tended to imagine their activist identities in terms of a framework of victimized citizens versus a pernicious alliance of the state and industry. Herein the government and corporations were the aggressors and citizens were always the victims. But transnational engagements in the anti-Vietnam War and environmental movements disrupted such assumptions, forcing activists to rethink their intrinsic position as victims and to consider their complicity in the actions of the Japanese state and industry abroad. The result was an enriched and more broadminded conceptualization of post-national citizenship in which victim consciousness was tempered by a recognition of and concern for those beyond the borders of Japan. The article argues that a transnational perspective can greatly enrich our understanding of the evolution of post-national citizenship in contemporary Japanese social movements and civil society