Taking the Lower Voter Age as an Opportunity to Change Japanese Education and Society

Senior high school students and other young people meeting the new minimum voting age of 18 will participate in the voting process for the first time in the Upper House election (which may even become a double election) in July this year. As someone who has been calling for a lower minimum voting age for many years now, I have high hopes that this change will refresh and energize Japanese politics.

Japan's Public Offices Election Act was revised only last year, but Western countries began adopting a voting age of 18 as of around 1970 when student activism was a potent force worldwide, Japan included. Recognizing young people's right to participate in the political process was a way of responding to student demands. When the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child led more than 100 states, developing and socialist countries included, to reduce their minimum voting age, Japan found itself almost alone in leaving young people out of the electorate.

My sense is that Japanese society rather than politics shaped that choice. When I began speaking out on this issue in 2001, most parties already had a lower voting age on their manifestos. However, much to my dismay, the Japanese media and other areas of public opinion continued to display very little interest in the topic.

Rather than any clear opposition, the lack of interest seemed to be rooted in an emotional reaction. Why hand rights to young people who weren't even self-supporting? The economic affluence enjoyed by Japanese households from the high growth era onward has without doubt created a growing tendency for parents to hold on to their children and for children to remain dependent on their parents just because they can. Recent years, however, have produced a number of teenage cultural and sporting stars who have also been vocal with their opinions on the Internet and elsewhere. In fact, by 2015, the world of politics was the only place left that offered no opportunity for young people to speak or act.

In addition, even if we buy into the idea that independence is predicated on being self-supporting, with so many young people enrolled in four-year degree programs, 20 is no longer an appropriate line to draw in the sand. And we should certainly be respecting the rights of the good 20 percent of our population who go straight from high school out into the workforce at the age of 18.

One very concrete merit of a voting age of 18 is that high school students are easily encouraged to vote. The classroom makes them a captive audience for conveying that message, and, moreover, voting booths are likely to be close by in places familiar to them?their own former elementary schools, for example.

Moreover, if they do actually vote at the first opportunity, there is a strong tendency for that behavior to become habitual, and this should in turn boost the voting awareness of their parents and other adults with whom they associate.

At the same time, major improvements and reforms will also obviously be needed in civil and political education?what the Ministry of Education calls citizenship education?in primary and secondary schools. Mock elections have been among the efforts made to prepare 18 year olds for their first election, but clearly much more needs to be done.

For example, teachers and boards of education have tended to be so intent on maintaining political neutrality that they have ended up avoiding political education as a whole.

Neutral teaching in the strict sense is in fact impossible. I would like to see schools recognize this and instead aspire to make students aware that multiple viewpoints exist by, for example, laying out the political manifestos of all Japan's political parties, and then teach them to compare and choose for themselves.

The key issue is to not simply provide students with knowledge but also to shape their consciousness and their attitudes. Elementary schools are making good use of "integrated study" time in that regard by with having students study their own districts and identify local issues, for example, adopting an action learning approach that is very effective for civil education. In secondary school education, and particularly senior high school, however, the curricular focus on exams actually reduces opportunities for students to come into direct contact with and think about the society they live in.

To provide a manual addressing both the theoretical and practical aspects of this issue, my department at Sophia University?the Department of Education within the Faculty of Human Sciences?has worked with the Development Education Association and Resource Center (DEAR) to publish Juhassai senkyoken to shimin kyoiku handobukku (Handbook on voting rights for 18 year olds and civil education). This proposes a workshop-style program designed to broaden children's perspectives, starting with their households and moving out to their schools, communities, Japan as a nation, and then to global society, and we have already received many interesting reports of the program in action.

Now that the voting age has been lowered, the Civil Code and various other laws will be revised to bring the statutory age of adulthood down to 18 as well. Accordingly, civil education will have to equip students with knowledge and skills not only in relation to politics but also consumer issues and all other aspects of life in society.

For example, once a juvenile becomes an adult, they no longer require a guardian's permission for business transactions, but nor are they covered by the cooling-off period that applies to juveniles. The concern there is a possible increase in fraud damage.

I would suggest, however, that most 18-year-olds are unlikely to become embroiled in major fraud. In the event that they are stung, they will inevitably ask their parents or school for advice, and if they are taught at that stage how to deal with such problems, they will then be equipped to avoid suffering more major damage in the future. In that sense, the increasing number of fraud incidents involving 20-year-olds who can be isolated from their parents and from school may well provide an opportunity to learn early on from other people's mistakes.

My own area of specialization is lifelong education?which includes the civil education I have been discussing here?with a particular focus on research and practice in Education for Sustainable Development, or ESD.

Development education looks at how we can address the problems faced by developing countries, while the 1992 Earth Summit foregrounded environmental education as a global challenge. ESD evolved as a way of integrating these two strands.

Of the eight teaching staff in Sophia University's Department of Education, myself and three others deal with global issues. This is a very rare and noteworthy achievement among Japan's education-related departments and faculties.

I touched earlier on a program for broadening children's gaze to encompass the global level. In today's world, civil education means education for fostering global citizens. In that sense, I believe that students graduating from our department will find a huge sphere of action open to them both at home and abroad.