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Democratic Youth League of Japan
Founded	5 April 1923 (1923-04-05)
Headquarters	4 Kamiyama,Shibuya,Tokyo 150-0047,Japan
Membership	7,000 (2025)
Mother party	Japanese Communist Party
International affiliation	World Federation of Democratic Youth (formerly)
Website	www.dylj.or.jp

TheDemocratic Youth League of Japan (日本民主青年同盟,Nihon Minshu Seinen Domei),abbreviatedDYLJ orMinsei (民青, みんせい), is a political youth organization inJapan. It is the youth wing of theJapanese Communist Party, as well as an organizational body ofZengakuren. Minsei describes itself as a "voluntary youth organization in response to a keen demand of the youth, aiming towards a better life, peace, independence, democracy and social progress".^[1] Its main activities are the peace movement, opposition to tuition hikes, petitions, volunteer work and educational activities and the like.

The DYLJ was formed on 5 April 1923 in theEmpire of Japan as the Japanese Communist Youth League (JCYL), influenced by theRussian Revolution inRussia. Like the JCP, it focused onsuffrage for young Japanese aged 18 and above, the overthrow of the "Emperor system",equal pay for equal work, and opposition tomilitarization. Also, like the JCP, it was banned under thePeace Preservation Law and some of its members, such asKawai Yoshitora,Takashima Mato, andIijima Kimi, were arrested by police and were either killed during interrogations or else died in prison.

AfterWorld War II, the JCYL was re-established in tandem with the re-establishment of the JCP. Following a series of violent misadventures in the 1950s, in which the JCP tried to foment an immediate communist revolution and ordered the JCYL into the mountains to help form "Mountain Village Guerrilla Squads", the JCP hastily retreated from its former militant line and the JCYL was recast as a "force for peace and democracy" and renamed the Democratic Youth League of Japan.^[2] Minsei's last bit of militant activism took place during the massive1960 Anpo protests against theU.S.-Japan Security Treaty, in which many Minsei students took part. However, thereafter the JCP and Minsei increasingly eschewed extra-parliamentary street protests. In 1960, during its 6th National Congress, Minsei established its "Agreement" and "Call to the Youth League", whereby the League promised to pursue "peaceful, scientific socialism."

At the height of the1968–1969 Japanese university protests, while other students werehurling rocks and stones at police, Minsei students observed major events such as International Anti-War Day in 1968 by holding peaceful potluck picnics in the park, and emphasized peaceful forms of activism such as petitioning university administrations to improve campus facilities, a focus on mundane daily life that led the more militant students derisively nicknamed the "toilet paper line."^[3] However, whenZenkyōtō activists began barricading university campuses, some Minsei students began arming themselves with helmets and staves and engaged in violent battles with the militant student activists. The Minsei students claimed they were "defending" the university from attack, and whereas other students called their stavesgebabō ("violence sticks"), the Minsei students called their stavesminshūkabō ("democratization sticks").

Minsei membership peaked in 1970 at around 200,000 students before declining steadily thereafter, in tandem with the decline of the Japan Communist Party and the Japanese student movement in general. In recent years, Minsei has consistently listed its membership as "around 10,000" students.

• Kapur, Nick (2018).Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.ISBN 978-0674984424.

• Official website

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