(Mainichi)

       Japanese actors and musicians including Shun Oguri, Masaki Suda and Fumi Nikaido created and released a video calling for young people to go vote in the Oct. 31 House of Representatives election. In the video, popular rock band One Ok Rock's lead vocalist Taka says, "There have been moments when I doubted that my one vote would change anything even if I went (to vote)."

       A sense of helplessness -- that "nothing will change even if I vote or not" feeling -- hangs over Japanese society. It's contagious and erodes the foundations of democracy, which are elections.

       What is the true identity of this feeling? As I wondered, I was reminded of "learned helplessness" coined and published in 1967 by American psychologist Martin Seligman, who later pioneered the theories of positive psychology. Learned helplessness refers to when an individual repeatedly experiences situations of stress and oppression where they can neither resist nor escape from, they learn that they're helpless and become lethargic, resulting in not even making an effort to escape from the situation.

       In his study, Seligman and his team divided dogs into two groups: In one group the dogs were able to stop electric shocks if they pushed a lever, while those in the other group couldn't get the shocks to end no matter what they did. Later when a separate experiment using electric shocks was conducted, the dogs in the former group found ways to escape the shocks, while the other group didn't act to avoid the shocks, as if they knew nothing could save them. This sense of helplessness easily becomes a habit. Studies have shown that rape and abuse victims also exhibit this behavior.

       It's said that behind the sense of helplessness lies a certain train of thought: permanent (the situation will not change), universal (it applies to everything) and personal (it's all my fault).

       Yuki Honda, professor at the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Education and one of the authors in the book "Nihon no orutanatibu: Kowareta shakai wo saisei saseru 18 no Teigen (Japan's alternatives: 18 recommendations to regenerate a broken society)," says this kind of thinking is linked to a sense of helplessness toward politics and society.

       "For over a quarter century, the (Japanese) economy has been lackluster and its international presence is in free fall. People's livelihoods are only becoming harder and it costs a lot of money for a child to get an education. 'Women's empowerment' is just fantasy and only old men get to act like they're in charge. Japanese universities continue falling in world rankings. There's nothing I can do and I'm struggling because I'm incompetent ... these might be exactly the signs of 'learned helplessness,'" she says on the university's website where professors talk about their publications. Honda claims that one can break free of this thought process "just by believing that they can change society."

       In the aforementioned video, Oguri says at the end, "I guess I'll begin by saying 'Let's go for a walk' and taking them out on voting day." We can change society, and it begins with going to a polling station.

       (Japanese original by Tomoko Ohji, Expert Writer)

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