Right Wing in Japan

This (Sunday) evening here in Tokyo I decided to be really geeky and get some fun pictures down at Shibuya Crossing - sort of the "Times Square" of Tokyo. My 360-degree panoramic shot is here at the left. Without clicking on it to see it enlarged, it may be tough to see because it's so long and skinny (and I never dated a girl like that). Anyway... it's always a fun place to people watch. I ended up taking in some very interesting propagandizing. In Japan causes, politicians and others can use vehicles laden with speakers to be mobile propaganda platforms. These things can actually be quite annoying, just because they're so loud. I'm sure even here in Japan you need a special permit, but I'm not even sure you could get such a permit in the U.S.

Anyway... tonight parked down at Shibuya Crossing was one of these propaganda trucks for Taikousya Sumera. Upon doing some research I discovered that they're a right ring group here in Tokyo of about 700 members, and they even have ties to the yakuza. Lovely. For the most part, their propagandizing wasn't bad. They brought up several speakers, each addressing the topic of how to make Japan better. Not a bad cause. They were even saying some really logical things like, "You'll have a chance next summer to participate in elections; study up on the issues and candidates to make an informed choice."

It's all good so far. As was one guy who said, "We can make Japan better by honoring our parents. Even if you don't like your parents, you still need to honor them because they brought you in to the world. Take care of them, and don't let anything bad happen to them. Don't let the medical establishment treat them poorly." And so on. All good stuff. But wait a minute... this is a land of socialized medicine: on that last point, how could that happen???!!!

One guy even got up and said, "You know... for as long as I can remember, at this time of year, we also light up all parts of the city with 'Christmas light-up' every year. Even here a Shibuya Station, erected back in the 1920s, in its first year it had Christmas light-up. Why is it that we all do this? Why do we like this so much? I believe it's because in the vast craziness of living in such a big city, it makes us feel like a small community..." (you can see a little bit of that "Christmas light-up" he was talking about at the right).

Interesting, huh? Man... he just DOESN'T GET IT!!! We like it because it's the Christmas spirit, you nitwit!!! Christmas. Christ. Geesh. Oh well... I'm glad this guys feels the spirit of Christmas, even if he doesn't recognize it for what it is.

But the most interesting part was when the guy got up and spoke about how we need to rely on ourselves to make Japan better. OK... I'm a self-reliance kind of guy; I'll go with that. But then he went on to rip on all foreignors, and that's when he lost me. He said that "in our own circles of trust (individually), we trust ourself the most. Then just below that we trust our family. Then just below that we trust our friends." OK... I guess this isn't so bad; I'll go with it. But then he lost me. He said, "Trusting foreignors is way down on the bottom; we cannot trust them. We can't trust the Chinese; look at what they do to their own people. We cannot trust the South Koreans because look how we treated them for several decades last century. (OK... he sort of has a point there.) We cannot trust the Americans; they nuked us. Why didn't they nuke the also-white-skinned Germans instead?"

Whoa wait a minute, fella (pictured at left). Maybe it had something to do with the fact that despite overwhelming losses for over three years the Japanese were still entrenched throughout the Pacific and were not giving up, but the Germans had already surrendered???

By this point, probably 100 people were standing there listening, including another white guy standing near me. He and I both started shaking our heads at the same time. He came over to me and asked in English with a very thick accent, "Do you understand this guy?" I laughed and said, "Yeah, I do." As it turns out, this guy I was near was from Russia but also speaks English and Japanese. He told me, "This guy's stupid." Well... I actually think he seemed pretty intelligent, just a little nutty.

It was really interesting. I was here in Japan in September when they had their big parliamentary elections, and I sat glued to my hotel room TV that Sunday night watching election returns in Japanese. I got really in to that then, and observing this tonight was pretty interesting, too.

Below, and linked here, is an embedded video of the massive throng of people crossing at Shibuya Crossing when the light turns green. You can hear one of these guys talking in the background.