Abstract:
The aim of the work is to assess the state of democracy in Japan at the population level, therefore analyzing the democratic political culture and the historical development of freedom of thought and expression. This goal is reached through a reasoning developed in three parts.
In the first part, explanations of concepts which are fundamental to the understanding of the work are going to be given: what do we mean when we talk about “democracy”, what “political culture” is, and, last but not least, what Confucianism is and how it affected Japanese society through time.
In the second part Japanese democratic political culture will be observed, especially through data analysis related to faith in democracy, in the government, in political parties, in the judiciary system, in freedom of speech and so on.
The third part focuses on one of the main pillars of liberal democracy, which is freedom of speech, here analyzed through the figure of the intellectual Maruyama Masao and through some examples of Japanese political activism in time.
