Political Generation and Protest Behavior :

Abstract

For political society in Japan, late 1960's is the age of confrontation politics represented by a lot of conflicts between radical youth protesters and severe social control power. The peak of national-wide university conflicts is located during 1968 and 1969. The generation which experienced such a confrontation politics in their youth has a chance of leaning rebellious political culture. This paper analyzes the continuance of political socialization on this generation up to the present. “Have those who were politically socialized by confrontation politics of late 1960's been engaging in radical protest behavior?” “At present, social movements are supported by their protest energy?” Three hypotheses, hypothesis of political generational unit, hypothesis of social movement participation by political experiences in the same age, hypothesis of protest engagement by social movement participation, are presented for answering to previous two questions in this paper. These hypotheses have reference to a theoretical model of generational political socialization proposed by the author. The data derived from protest constituency as a source of social movements support three hypotheses, and guarantee the validity of theoretical model of generational political socialization. This paper proves that the generation of 1968-69 has oriented to confrontation politics and engaged in protest behavior, through generational political socialization process consists of the radicalization of university conflicts in youth and their experience of social movement participation.