A recent survey suggested that overall support for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi remained around 75 percent, an already striking figure in any contemporary democracy. More surprising still was the generational breakdown. Among people in the younger generations, support was reported to approach 90 percent.
Even allowing for the usual caveats that accompany polling, margins of error, timing, question framing, and shifting political moods, the shape of the result was difficult to ignore. These were not marginal fluctuations or momentary approval spikes. They pointed to something deeper, a pattern that ran against decades of political intuition.
For much of the postwar era, it was almost taken for granted that young people stood in opposition to the governing order. Youth was associated with impatience, moral urgency, and resistance to authority. Older generations valued continuity. Younger generations demanded rupture. This rhythm appeared so consistent across societies that it came to feel almost natural.
And yet, the figures suggested a reversal. Younger voters were not merely tolerating the current administration. They appeared to be affirming it. There was no wave of mass protest, no surge of ideological confrontation, no widespread sense that the existing order was illegitimate. Instead, there was a calm endorsement of stability.
What made this especially striking was the contrast with Japan’s own past, particularly the late 1960s through the 1970s. During that period, youth politics in the country was defined by anger, idealism, and a conviction that the political and social order was not merely flawed, but morally bankrupt. Compared to that era of confrontation and ideological intensity, the present moment felt almost subdued.
The question, then, was not whether seventy five percent or ninety percent was perfectly precise. The deeper question was why such numbers felt plausible at all. What had changed so fundamentally that a generation historically associated with rebellion now appeared to favor continuity. To answer that, it was necessary to return to a time when calm was impossible, and when opposition felt like a moral duty.
When Rebellion Was a Moral Duty
In the late twentieth century, youth politics in Japan was marked by confrontation. To be young was to resist, and to resist was to claim moral seriousness. The student movements of the late 1960s and 1970s did not arise from restlessness alone. They emerged from a deep unease with the postwar settlement, with American influence, and with a political class perceived as pragmatic to the point of ethical compromise.
Although the occupation had formally ended, its presence lingered in security arrangements, institutional structures, and cultural influence. For many young people, the alliance with the United States symbolized submission rather than protection. Politics felt inherited rather than chosen, administered rather than lived. Against that background, rebellion appeared not only understandable, but necessary.
The barricading of Yasuda Auditorium at the University of Tokyo became one of the most enduring images of that era. It represented more than a protest against university administration or state authority. It symbolized a broader rejection of hierarchy itself. Authority was suspect by definition. Compromise was weakness. To be radical was to be honest.
The moral atmosphere of the time rewarded purity. Ideological clarity mattered more than institutional viability. Young people were less concerned with whether a system could function than with whether it felt just. Politics became a stage for existential positioning rather than a space for governance.
This was not irrational idealism. It was historically situated. It arose from war memory, postwar guilt, and the fear that pragmatism was merely another word for moral surrender.
The Romance of Distant Ideals
Within this emotional landscape, socialist and communist ideologies gained powerful appeal. Marxism offered a complete moral grammar. History had direction. Oppression had structure. Liberation appeared inevitable. For many young Japanese intellectuals and students, these ideas provided coherence in a world that felt compromised and morally exhausted.
Admiration for the Soviet Union, Maoist China, or North Korea was rarely grounded in lived knowledge. These societies functioned as symbolic counterpoints rather than concrete models. They represented imagined alternatives to capitalism, hierarchy, and American hegemony.
Distance mattered. Because these systems were far away, their contradictions could be reframed or ignored. Violence became revolutionary necessity. Scarcity became temporary sacrifice. Authoritarianism became discipline in service of historical progress. Theory shielded belief from reality.
This pattern was not unique to Japan. Across the world, intellectuals projected moral longing onto distant regimes. But in Japan, the effect was intensified by a desire to reject anything resembling prewar nationalism. Communism appeared not only progressive, but purifying.
In hindsight, these ideals functioned less as political programs and more as moral mirrors. They reflected dissatisfaction with domestic reality rather than genuine commitment to foreign systems. Yet at the time, the belief felt sincere, even virtuous.
When History Refused to Stay Abstract
What changed was not ideology alone, but evidence. Over time, the outcomes of these systems could no longer remain theoretical.
The human cost of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution became impossible to deny. Tens of millions died through famine, purges, and chaos. In Cambodia, under Pol Pot, genocide was compressed into a few short years, destroying nearly a quarter of the population. In the Soviet system, Stalinist terror reshaped society through fear, forced labor, and mass death.
These were not deviations from the system. They were expressions of power unrestrained by accountability, justified by historical destiny. The moral language that once inspired hope became indistinguishable from coercion.
Then came collapse. The dissolution of the Soviet Union marked more than the end of a geopolitical rivalry. It signaled the exhaustion of an ideological promise. What had been presented as inevitable progress ended in stagnation, repression, and institutional decay.
For younger generations, these outcomes are not contested narratives. They are established history. Archives are accessible. Testimonies are recorded. Comparative data is readily available. Ideological innocence did not gradually fade. It ended.
Once a system has fully revealed its consequences, belief no longer feels courageous. It feels willfully blind.
Reckoning and Continuity After the War
The contrast between postwar trajectories is revealing. After World War II, Germany and Japan underwent painful but decisive transformations. Their militarism was not only defeated, but delegitimized.
In both societies, constitutional constraints were imposed. Political culture absorbed deep suspicion toward military power. Education emphasized responsibility and restraint. Over time, these values became internalized rather than externally enforced.
As a result, modern Germany and Japan are among the least expansionist nations in the world. Their political systems generate debate, delay, and friction. Power is fragmented. Memory is heavy. Militarism carries social cost.
By contrast, communist regimes largely survived their own crimes. In China, the same ruling party that presided over famine and terror remains in power. There has been no comprehensive admission of wrongdoing, no institutional repentance, no moral reset. Economic success has functioned as retroactive justification.
A similar ambiguity persists in Russia. While the Soviet Union collapsed, the reckoning with Stalinism was partial and fragile. Under Vladimir Putin, centralized authority and selective historical nostalgia have returned without full accountability.
The danger of a system lies not in its past alone, but in whether it has learned to restrain itself.
The Inversion of Generations
This historical backdrop helps explain the present paradox. In contemporary Japan, younger generations increasingly support political stability, while older cohorts express anxiety and resistance.
Support for Sanae Takaichi among younger voters is often interpreted through outdated frameworks. Critics assume nationalism implies militarism, or that conservatism signals regression. These assumptions reflect memories that younger people do not share.
For today’s youth, Japan is not an empire seeking redemption. It is a society facing demographic decline, economic uncertainty, and regional instability. Their concern is not excessive power, but erosion of continuity.
National identity, in this context, is not a call for expansion. It is a framework for responsibility. Defense policy is not preparation for conquest. It is deterrence. Capitalism is not idealized as moral triumph, but accepted as a known system with limits.
This helps explain why the political atmosphere feels calmer than in the 1970s. Young people are not disengaged. They are cautious. They have seen what happens when ideology outruns reality.
Older generations, by contrast, often remain emotionally anchored to the moral struggles of their youth. Conservative language triggers memories of a past they fought to overcome. Fear persists even when conditions have changed.
The result is an inversion. The generation that once rebelled now warns against order. The generation that inherited the outcomes of rebellion now seeks structure.
Media, Memory, and the End of Innocence
This generational shift is amplified by changes in how information flows. Legacy media institutions were shaped during the Cold War. Their moral instincts were formed when fascism was the primary remembered threat and capitalism carried ambivalence.
Those instincts remain. Nationalism is treated as inherently suspect. Conservative movements are framed as regression. Authoritarian states are often contextualized rather than confronted.
Younger audiences sense the mismatch. They live in a world of comparison. They can observe China’s internal repression alongside its economic rise. They can see Russia’s aggression without romantic framing. They can compare democratic disorder with authoritarian silence.
Social media does not guarantee truth. It magnifies noise and distortion. But it breaks narrative monopoly. It allows younger generations to question inherited assumptions and form judgments without institutional mediation.
This does not lead to cynicism so much as sobriety. The politics of innocence has ended. What remains is historical literacy.
In that sense, calm support for pragmatic leadership is not apathy. It is recognition that the most dangerous systems are not those that argue too loudly, but those that no longer allow argument at all.
Japan’s youth are not returning to empire. They are drawing boundaries shaped by history. They have learned that the greatest risk lies not in nations that remember too much, but in those that never learned to remember.
Image: Stockcake
Tom’s Blog 