Anti-Nuclear Protest in Post-Fukushima Tokyo: Power Struggles by Alexander Brown (review)

Alexander Brown's Anti-Nuclear Protest in Post-Fukushima Tokyo: Power Struggles is a well-crafted and thorough account of antinuclear protests in Japan immediately after the Fukushima nuclear accident of March 2011. Brown looks specifically at the cultural and discursive practices of this movement, including demonstration style and use of urban space, music, visual art, street theater, and digital media. Adopting a detailed case study approach that examines critical moments and groups of activists, he unpacks the meanings and motivations behind some of the largest protests Japan has experienced since the student Anpo demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s. Anyone wanting to better understand contemporary political protest in Japan will find his book a rich source of information and analysis.

Post-Fukushima activism was significant in that it attracted a broad segment of the Japanese public who had never participated in political protest. Yet, Brown reminds us, the catalyst for these demonstrations grew from a culture of "freeter" activism building throughout the post-economic-bubble era. "Freeter" is the Japanese term for young workers who lack access to stable full-time jobs, activists among whom have been increasingly speaking out against precarity in response to growing economic inequality. While the antinuclear movement has a longer history in Japan, Brown's focus is primarily on the role that these freeter activists played in setting the stage for the recent wave of protests.

The book leans most heavily toward describing the ideological positioning of the movement organizations, followed by theoretical reflection through discourse analysis. The result is an intellectually engaged discussion of the principles, values, and ideas driving these movements. Theoretically, Brown draws heavily on autonomous Marxist thinkers like Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, who argue that political protest in industrial versus postindustrial societies differs in several fundamental ways: whereas protest in industrial societies was typically organized by the working-class proletariat, that in postindustrial societies consists of more heterogeneous struggles better characterized as a "multitude" of individual activists sharing common ideas, symbols, and practices. It should be underscored that Brown's choice of an autonomous Marxist theoretical lens to analyze freeter activism is no coincidence, given that many of the activists themselves identify with the ideas, symbols, and practices of autonomous Marxism. This convergence between the theories adopted by the researcher to analyze movement organizations and those that the organizations themselves consciously use to inspire their activism is productive but also has some potential limitations, as I will discuss further on.

The case studies in the book begin with chapter 2, which explores the significance of the 10 April 2011 "Genpatsu Yamero" antinuclear protest organized in the Tokyo neighborhood of Kōenji by the Shirōto no Ran (Amateur Revolt) group of freeter activists. The event mobilized an estimated 15,000 people and served as an early spark for the increasingly massive antinuclear demonstrations that took place in Tokyo over the months following the Fukushima nuclear accident and extended into 2012. Originally established in 2005 as a loose network of Kōenji activists primarily concerned with the issues of poverty, inequality, and precarity, Shirōto no Ran gained a reputation for organizing playful and irreverent demonstrations in a festive atmosphere while managing recycling shops and hangout spaces for freeters. The members linked their precarity politics to the antinuclear movement through a shared critique of the broader political and economic structures that conspire to bring cheap electricity to Tokyo in order to fuel consumer capitalism. In their view, unrestrained consumer capitalism contributes to economic inequality and also threatens existence through the environmental risk taking required to produce the power supporting it.

In chapter 3, Brown extends his analysis of the contestation of urban space by freeter activists through a consideration of the "Nantoka Neighbourhood," the name given to an informal association of small shops, meeting places, activist spaces, bars, bookshops, and cafés frequented by freeter activists in and around Tokyo, including the...