Of Politics and Cacophonous Megaphones

Political season is upon us - and no, I don't mean the madness and rat-race that is known as the 2008 presidential race. (Speaking of which, that will be my first time voting for president, as in 2004 I was in London and since NY is such a blue state, absentee ballots don't count.)

This summer is the House of Councilors Elections and that's the Upper House of the Diet,and is sorta like the Senate in the States and the House of Lords in England. Sort of. There was a big to-do about the new PM Shinzo Abe and the fact that a) his popularity is going down and b) the elections in July will be life-or-death for him. Even before I arrived in Kyoto, there were signs of the candidates (though obviously I did not know that they were candidates, and that there was an election coming this summer) all over the place, even on houses in the neighborhoods off the main roads, my own included. There are a bunch of political parties in Japan, the one in power being the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP), the one who has continuously had power since the end of WWII. Here is their very logo, to the right. Enough with the cute little kids and the cartoons, they are totally unconvincing.

Japan really does have this thing with cartoons of one stripe or another.

The main opposition party is the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which is pretty young (since 1998) and one of their main issues is that the LDP has been running the show for a bit too long. Their logo is a bit more "political-ish," or at least more convincing. I pass by one of the Kyoto offices on my way to Rits when I ride my bike. (no, school hasn't started yet, but I have gone there twice already). Then again, I can't say much for logos being to convincing in terms of imagery - there are donkeys and elephants in the States.

You have your meet-and-greets, and I guess there are fund raisers; one needs money to run campaigns after all. The analysts in the States are probably having a ball with the way Clinton and Obama are changing the scene in that respect.

And then there are the megaphones.

In Japan, people like to drive around in cars with megaphones blaring on top of the car (and they are huge) - it can range from the little truck that comes around with a cute little song and an uber-peppy (they always are uber-peppy) female voice squeaking out that the recycling truck is coming, to the political vans that either are saying some sort of new slogan, campaign or propaganda.

Given that the conservatives/nationalists (I keep forgetting which, because like almost every other American, I am guilty of trying to align foreign political parties with the donkeys and the elephants back home, even subconsciously) are not very big fans of foreigners (as far as I know, see the Yasukuni Shrine broo-ha-ha and all that goes with it, it's a mega issue that runs in all sorts of directions) and the previous short-lived appearance of the "Gaijin Hanzai Fairu" (Foreigner Crime White Paper), whenever those trucks are blaring "gaijin this, gaijin that" I am always a bit wary, because it sometimes is never a good thing especially when it's by those people who are the Nationalists (conservatives?). Apparently, their presence is even worse in Tokyo, especially when you are right near the Yasukuni Shrine. Since I did a research paper on the place, I plan to visit when I go to Tokyo in June; according to Chen, you are not even allowed to take pictures inside, and invariably, I'll bet it's so that you don't take pictures of the museum captions (they have a nifty website that I used in my research, filled with propagandist tones).

So, with the elections making it a make-or-break for Abe, the trucks are blaring. Incessantly. They are on the corner of Marutamachi/Higashi-oji in the mornings, sometimes with the politician just waving his hand, while a deputy reads quickly and loudly through the microphone. They have just stopped blaring in my neighborhood after about oh, two or three hours of gibberish that I don't understand yet, although in one of the cars, the actual politician was a female, and waving from the car even though there were like two people on the street (she was in the depths of my neighborhood, off the main road), wearing white gloves. More power to the girls in Japan, even with white gloves and waving hands a la Miss America.

I think it will be a real long while before there is a Japanese version of Barbra Boxer, Hilary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi.