2:26am September 29, 2014

The Tokyo Protest Post has Revived…

Very cool. Thanks, everyone. The main updates are as follows:

-Protests are still being held, especially in Tokyo.
-For a couple of protests they found a guy with a bulldozer to head the march which was nuts and awesome (“bulldoze the facists!” I believe was the purpose)
-Japanese troops are now training for ACTIVE combat with US servicemen (they always did training before with US military but always for support tactics and search and rescue type stuff- never active combat).
-Shinzo Abe copypasted his Hiroshima bombing memorial speech from *last year’s speech* and basically only changed the date which really hurt his image and gave the protestors more ammo to use.
-Shinzo Abe decided to bring a handful of women into his cabinet but a couple of them had early been associated with the Japanese Neo-Nazi Party (I know- go figure) and had taken pictures with their leader which has caused a lot of backlash- protestors are now also officially combatting Japan-wide hate speech and are using this instance as a platform talking point, lamenting the fact that Abe basically back-handed those who wanted a more gender-equal government by hiring shady people for the jobs.
-Protestors have been met with counter-protestors, i.e. the neo-nazi supporters or people who hate Koreans living in the country, etc., and the protestors have taken photos of the police protecting those people while hindering the anti-war/hate speech supporters.

Basically, in true fashion, while the voices have been loud, I’m not sure it’s had a substantial effect on Japanese politics so far. HOWEVER, more and more people are TALKING about the consequences of active warfare for Japan- especially in the school system since the idea is that it is the children who will have to fight for Abe’s ambitions and this has struck a chord. That is at least one bit of progress.

Thanks again to everyone for passing the post around, as all that stuff is still being totally ignored by the media here in Japan.

(original post about the protests can be found here.)

Notes: