Experts say some men of that generation carry beliefs that women are best left at home, or should attend meetings but remain silent.

But Momoko Nojo, a Tokyo-based economics student, says those views have driven a generational wedge between the political gerontocracy and young people born in the 1990s, an era of economic stagnation dubbed the “lost decade.”

As a 23-year-old woman prepared to agitate for change, Nojo runs “No Youth, No Japan,” a student-led social media initiative founded in 2019 with more than 60,000 followers on Instagram, which promotes political literacy and aims to persuade a largely disenchanted youth to use their votes to influence the future.

“We are sharing information on online platforms such as Instagram because we want young people to make their voices heard and their votes count,” said Nojo.

Generational divide

From the late 1940s to the late 1980s, Japan turned its economy around. Powered by male white-collar workers, the country became the world’s…