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While Japan's political mainstream has the DPJ and the LDP as dominant forces, there is political extremism to the left and the right. Neither left- nor right-wing extremists managed to wrest power from the LDP in post-war history, but they managed to influence public opinion on certain topics. These include the Sino-Japanese relations, the role of the military and national symbolism. On some topics like the Yasukuni Shrine, all three elements play a role. The public and the government appear to tolerate certain forms of public disorder as inherent to a properly functioning democracy. Demonstrations usually follow established forms. Groups receive legal permits and keep to assigned routes and areas. Placards and bullhorns are used to express positions. Traffic is sometimes disrupted, and occasional shoving battles between police and protesters results. But arrests are rare and are generally made only in cases involving violence. Although membership in extremist groups represent only a minute portion of the population and present no serious threat to the government, authorities are concerned about the example set by the groups' violence, as well as by the particular violent events. Violent protest by radicals also occur in the name of causes apparently isolated from public sentiments. Occasional clashes between leftist factions and rightist factions have injured participants. ==New Left== According to the 1989 Asahi Nenkan, there were 14,400 activist members of the "new left" organized into five major "currents" (ryū) and twenty-seven or twenty-eight different factions. Total membership was about 35,000. New-left activity focused on the New Tokyo International Airport at Narita-Sanrizuka. In the early 1970s, radical groups and normally conservative farmers formed a highly unusual alliance to oppose expropriation of the latter's land for the airport's construction. Confrontations at the construction site, which pitted thousands of farmers and radicals against riot police, were violent but generally nonlethal. Although the airport was completed and began operations during the 1980s, the resistance continued, on a reduced scale. Radicals attempted to halt planned expansion of the airport by staging guerrilla attacks on those directly or indirectly involved in promoting the plan. By 1990 this activity had resulted in some deaths. There were also attacks against places associated with the emperor. In January 1990, leftists fired homemade rockets at imperial residences in Tokyo and Kyoto. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Political extremism in Japan」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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