Depuis la crise des années 1990, une des transformations les plus importantes du Japon concerne le rôle de la société civile. Si de nombreuses études ont été réalisées pour analyser et réfléchir à la montée du bénévolat, peu de recherches ont analysé la dimension proprement politique de ce renouveau. Plus exactement, les travaux qui traitent de la dynamique des mouvements sociaux au Japon insistent surtout sur son déclin continu. Comment rendre compte alors du mouvement des sans-abri des années 1990, du très médiatique « haken mura (village des intérimaires) » de 2008, ou plus récemment encore d’actions de protestations localisées, mais intégrées au mouvement international des « indignés » ?Le recours à l’analyse spatiale permet de mettre en évidence que, même en période de faible activisme, certains sites peuvent être particulièrement politisés et assurer le maintien et le renouvellement de l’engagement. La mobilisation autour de la question de la pauvreté, si elle semble débuter au début des années 1990, possède ainsi toute une histoire, celle d’une fraction de la nouvelle gauche jusqu’alors oubliée.Since the 90s, one of the major transformations that affected Japanese society is the growing importance of civil society. In this regard, many researchers have focused on the rise of volunteer action. Few have examined its political dimension but most conclude that it is weak or even structurally impossible. A common point of these studies is that they fail to account for the growth of a strong, national and disruptive anti-poverty social movement that started in the 90s.I propose a spatial analysis of social movement sustainability to understand how, even during periods of low social mobilization, some specific sites support a high level of politicization. These local sites assure the continuity and the renewal of the activist’s engagement, the evolution of the action repertory and the ideological framework. I emphasize that mobilization against poverty, though recognized in the beginning of the 90s, has a long history. It is the one faction of the new left that has largely been forgotten until now

In this research paper I analyze Japanese civil society's activism rebirth in contemporary Japan, an until now poorly developed approach despite impressive theoretical development both in the United States and in Europe and the presence, for more than twenty years in Japan, of an "anti-poverty" movement strengthened by the recent world wild crisis. To understand the major characteristics of this rebirth, and distinguish it from the traditional "inhabitant movement", I focused on the Shinjuku Renraku Kai (SRK), one of the oldest and nowadays major organizations that supports the very poor. I argue that new Japanese activism has two major features : from an organizational point of view, there is a pluralistic base of recruitment with a central role played by "external" supporters, many of them belonging to the extreme left. From a strategic point of view, an evolution in the repertory of action has been witnessed with a systematic use of Media to facilitate communication with the authorities.

No abstract