I have the following three aims in this thesis. They are (1) to approach the political consciousness of youth from the view point of taking the large scale non-voting of youth as a typical phenomenan ; (2) to make clear the relationship between the non-voting and the political consciousness ; and (3) to reexamine the situation of the political consciousness of youth suggested by the large scale non-voting by expanding the object from elections to political systems in general.The cause of the large scale non-voting is first of all the migration of the youth population toward urban areas which is resulted from the high-rate economic growth. Secondly we can find it in their attitude to the present condition of party politics, such as the phenomenon of indifference to political parties. This attitude contains the criticism for the present situation of politics, and therefore it is dangerous to take it simply as political apathy. To explain this analytically, interest in politics is distinguished from political consciousness, and we can say that those who abstain from voting have little interest in elections but we cannot always say that they have little interest in politics. Actually in such societies as Japan where conformity is very strong, various social regulations on voting urge those who are indifferent to politics to vote. But we cannot neglect the tendency that not only in cities but in countries the criticism to conformity in voting is becoming strong among youth and that this criticism is expressed as non-voting.The difficulty of measuring the level of political consciousness from interest in politics is also known from the fact that elections are only one element of political system. As political consciousness is the total of psychological orientation to each element and the whole of political system, it is necessary to reexamine the political distrust and criticism of youth, which can be found in the large scale non-voting, in relation with the total of this consciousness. By this reexamination we can make clear the problem of continuity or discontinuity between youth and other generations on the level of political consciousness.