A Study of Policing the Protest in Japan: Effects for Social Movement Organizations and Arrested Activists

This study investigates the policing for social movements in Japan. Compared with other countries, a few studies empirically examined the policing in Japan. In 60s/70s movements, over 5,000 activists were captured by police. Though arrested activists had dramatically decreased since 1970s, policing still have an impact on social movement organizations (SMOs) and participants in Japanese political activism.
In this study, the author conducted the research regarding the effect of policing for political activities from two sides: SMOs and individual participants. Three kinds of data are employed in this analysis: Interview data, event data and network data.
We could find some features of policing in Japan from event data. In Japan, policing is relatively not violent, but the period of detention is extremely longer than other countries. On average, protesters have arrested from 10 to 20 days and SMOs have to do activity for helping the arrested person. On the other hand, seized participants face to the crisis collapsing their careers as a student, businessman, housewife, and other roles in their usual life. Participants received a wound in not their bodies, but their minds.
From the interview and network data, the author cleared that policing becomes a barrier for participating and continuing the social movements. Once the participants are arrested, some activists avoid taking part in and continuing the social movements. SMOs have to spend their money and time to release the arrested one from police, thus their resource are decreased and it is difficult to continue the movements as they used to be. Moreover, arrested participants sometimes break off with external relationship from the social movements: his/her offices, friends, and families.