Wednesday, February 19, 2003

-Richard Wilcox in Tokyo (Demo Report)

There was a peace rally in Shibuya, Tokyo which began in Miyashita park at 6:30 pm on February 15. About a thousand people attended, I would guess, maybe more than that (according to the Communist party newspaper, there wer e 5,000 protestors that evening). There was a good cross section of young and old, Japanese and foreigners in attendance and the mood was jovial despite the impending holocaust of war.

Just a day earlier I had read on the BBC World News website (via [url=http://www.antiwar.com]http://www.antiwar.com)[/url] that Japan had publically announced that it would attack North Korea in a preemptive strike if it had evidence. According to one Japanese friend who monitors the media, this major story was not covered in the Japanese media. The truth must be kept from the “great beast”. The general public eschew war as a solution and seemed sympathetic to our march that wound around the trendy Shibuya area of Tokyo.

My own poster read on one side: “No More Bushit” and on the other side: “Shut Down Capitalism”. Thank you to Patrick McNally for coining the term “Bushit”, it was a big hit among foreigners in attendance who got the joke and most Japanese seemed to at least get the “No Bush” idea and gave smiles and thumbs up from their cars and street side. One foreigner approached me and said how great the “Shut Down Capitalism” slogan was, and it turned out he was also in the US Green Party (Duane Sturm and his wife).

There were many many other great posters and banners as well, too many to comment on.

The previous night I heard that 40,000 people (I can’t verify that number) attended a peace rally in Sendagaya, central Tokyo.

(NOTE: organizers say about 25,000--TP)

It is heartening that most Japanese seem to oppose Bush despite the Japanese media support for the US war on Iraq, and that Koizumi as junior partner in the military alliance has not yet wavered his support as have the French and Germans. Still, I am not convinced that just because most people oppose the war they will actually do anything to stop it. People in Tokyo are nationalistic in their opposition to Bush but still support (at least superficially) ultra rightists like PM Koizumi and Tokyo mayor Ishihara (Japan holocaust denier among other noted achievements). Yet here again, the media treat people like mushrooms: fed them manure and keep them in the dark. Public ignorance and confusion is understandable in such a situation.

Richard Wilcox, Tokyo