Anti-apartheid International Solidarity Activism in Japan

Abstract

Anti-apartheid activism was one of the most significant global political campaigns in the twentieth century. Alongside South African liberation movements, transnational network of anti-apartheid movements also played an important role in ending the apartheid regime in South Africa. Anti-apartheid activism can be considered as one of the pioneer cases of transnational advocacy networks. Although there is a growing research interest in the topic, the literature was until recently geographically confined primarily to the Western Anti-apartheid movements, including those in the UK, Nordic countries, and North America. In particular, the role of anti-apartheid movements in Asia, including those in Japan, have been largely overlooked. The present article attempts to fill some of the research gaps through a consideration of anti-apartheid activism in Japan.

Following a literature review on anti-apartheid international solidarity and an explanation of the research resources used in this study in the first section, the second and third sections discuss the history of the Japan Anti-Apartheid Committee (JAAC) and its characteristics as a social movement. The close relationship between Japan and South Africa, symbolized by the term “honorary whites”, was seen as problematic in the activism. The Japanese citizens’ movements against apartheid had much in common with the solidarity movement with Asian peoples of the same period. This present article shows that the anti-apartheid movement in Japan began in the context of Asian-African solidarity, and that despite political divisions, the underlying orientation that solidarity with African peoples should start from solidarity with people within Asia remained.

The final section examines the various organizations, including those of Christian churches, labor movements and human rights organizations among others, as well as individuals that were involved in the anti-apartheid activism in Japan other than the JAAC groups. There were multilayered transnational networks which those various actors were part of. As small organizations, it was difficult for the JAAC groups to run large-scale campaigns on their own, and collaboration with relationships with external actors was essential to raise anti-apartheid awareness. Although JAAC did not single-handedly bring these organizations and individuals into the anti-apartheid activism in Japan, when interest in the issue of apartheid grew in Japan in the late 1980s, the availability of information and networks of JAAC, which had been continuously advocating on the apartheid issue for many years, was an important factor in making the anti-apartheid efforts of various actors possible.