There are old people whose primary retirement activity is protesting the military bases (they're out there basically every day), and every time a news story breaks about a troop committing a crime everyone else comes out in force for a huge protest, which is on top of the yearly demonstration which is practically a cultural festival alongside all of the other ones.

Americans like to cope by saying that actually most of the protestors are paid or that they fly down from the mainland, but it's basically the number one issue among politically active locals so even if some mainland Japanese come down they're pretty firmly in the minority. When I first lived there the protests were a lot smaller than they used to be, but when I left they were ramping up and getting bigger again in response to Shinzo Abe talking about militarization.

Other than that which was impossible not to see I wasn't really involved in politics myself so I can't talk about much else.