#JapanVotes2021 A few observations

 It's a little bit funny...a little bit sad

Today is Election Day in Japan, the lower house, House of Reps. I've been following them since, ooh, about 1984. Actually, my first ever ticket to fly to Japan was booked for a date which would have meant arriving just days before the 1983 election. The flight was cancelled and the next available one was a couple of weeks later. (An acquaintance once pointed out, I am the *only* person they know who recalls travel dates and trips by whether there was an election involved...)

Prior to returning to Japan to work in 2016, I had made a point of flying to Tokyo each election from the landmark change of government one in 2009, to 2015. Self-funded of course, my then place of employ didn't consider my research a priority, but I digress. (At least I avoided a lot of form filling and submission.) Yes, friends who travelled to Japan for all sorts of reasons thought my psephological excursions were, well, strange. 

We wait for the poster (Tokyo 11th)

Anyway, back to the present. One of the reasons I took up my present position in Tokyo was I expected being on the ground as it were, would be better for the kind of research I like to do, the books I like to write (eventually, one day, when I have, er, time). I had detected a bit of a disconnect with the apparent 'high levels' of support for the then Abe government and what was going on at a grassroots level. I wanted to get in on this in situ, something I couldn't do with a ten-day annual trip. 

The candidates in my electorate, notice anything?

In my previous trips, I used to land and then set out my schedule to follow the candidates and leaders around as they made their speeches in public appeals, mostly at train stations, but in other public spaces as well. It wasn't just to hear what they had to say, but also observe the people who stopped to listen, to watch, to comment. All the interactions. I went as far as my budget would allow. Usually around the greater Tokyo region. One of my personal disappointments this time is that work has kept me away from the hustings...even when I planned to catch someone somewhere on the train line home, 'twas thwarted by someone turning up in my office at *just the wrong time*.

 

Even yesterday, Saturday, the 'grand finale' day where the main contenders make their final pleas...I had a four-hour graduate class. What does a psephy do? Once the class finished I had time to go to one, just one, final call. In Shinjuku, opposition party leaders were going to gather with key candidates. There is always a large crowd (we are still in Covid times). It is a couple of train rides away and it was probably already too late to get a front row spot.

So, to Akabane Station. A 30 minute bus ride away, the electorate next door to where I live and featuring a couple of politicians whose careers I have followed pretty closely. The call was for local candidate Ikeuchi Saori, a woman in her 30s, previously elected for a term in parliament but defeated in the last election. She started her campaign for the next election almost the very next day. She is dynamic, progressive, turns up at local events, is committed. She was being supported by the party's Secretary-General, Koike Akira, whose campaign to return to parliament I happened to capture in Shinjuku many years ago. There was a bit of historical continuity in following-up. So I went to Akabane. 

I have to stress, this was for research purposes. It was a hard decision, my researcher instincts want me to be everywhere. In going to the final call for candidates in the Japanese Communist Party, I am not advocating for their election, nor for their policies. I considered staying at home too, to avoid accusations of bias etc. But in all honesty, these rallies are fascinating, and I would think something like this introduced in Australia would be quite interesting, instead of the clinical, staged hotel conference rooms we tend to get. 

The crowd was a reasonable size, for one candidate, and enthusiastic. Ikeuchi has two chances--to represent the single-member district and she is also listed on the JCP's proportional list. It is an interesting system here in Japan, two systems in the one house--289 seats made up of single-member constituencies, 176 seats drawn from the proportional system, for a total of 465 seats. If a candidate wins in their single-seat electorate, obviously they don't take a seat in the proportional list. It is a kind of 'second chance' system, which has its fans, and critics. I have started to investigate the use of the proportional system to prioritise women, LGBTQI candidates and others to perhaps bring some 'proportionality' to Japan's parliament...but even if it works in theory, you would have to find a way to move the rusted-on time servers usually found at the top of the lists. (We know how this works from the Australia Senate example...)

So a few pics here, but I've decided to put a few more over on the psephyspix blog too...just for the atmosphere of a final campaign call.

Thanks for getting this far. More, as they say, to come.

Tokyo 2020+1 Thoughts along the way pt. 1

 Should we even be here?

This will be an occasional series over the next few weeks, how could it not be? These are the Olympics that should have been held last year. Last year they were postponed because Covid cases were reaching daily heights in the low hundreds each day...this year, this past week in particular, the daily average has been over 1000. 

Recently, I have been asked to write commentaries for The Conversation and The Interpreter (Lowy Institute) and several media interviews, mostly as an Australian in Tokyo at this time and what that perspective brings. It doesn't hurt that politics is my day job and let's face it, there is a lot of politics to digest. It does hurt that I have long been a sports fan (even played a few in earlier times) and that the Olympics are being held at all under the present circumstances. I feel for the athletes, I really do. I scored tickets to a couple of events too (women's hockey and rugby 7s, but not the surfing 😒). But I also recognise and share the frustration of many people here who don't want (rather, didn't want) the Olympics to go ahead. The costs, the risks, and for what? A keen observer of political protests, I would have liked to be out and about observing the many protests that have been going on around town...but I'm sticking to the pandemic rules, for now.

Japan was awarded the Olympics in 2013, and with a few years of candidate-campaigning prior to that, I feel my visits to Japan over the last decade or so, have had a distinct Olympic tinge to them. And now of course, with Brisbane winning the bid for 2032, if ever I get home, that will equate to some two decades of living in Olympic cities. The political scientist in me is wary...and perhaps by 2032, a little weary.

A secondary purpose of these posts is to get me back into writing mode. I won't be stuck as head of department forever (I hope) and I do want to get back into good writing habits. I have much to write. 

The mini-cauldron,
placed at Ariake,
just near work

The posts won't be linear as such but will reflect a journal of ideas and early analysis. Some of the posts will reflect comments made in media interviews, I guess they count as my own words, even if they have been published elsewhere. Some related posts will be over on the photo blog too (as I crank that one up again for another go at #project365, or # 52, or # 12, depending on whether my energies run to daily, weekly or monthly efforts...

On this, the first Sunday of the Olympics, officially opened on Friday night but with events commencing last Wednesday, I spent a fair bit of time watching the surfing, on an internet connection because this Olympics is being held with no spectators. We have been asked to watch the Olympics on telly (or other devices) instead. As a separate research project, I have been looking at surfing's introduction as an Olympic sport. I've travelled several times to the town where the venue is located, I've given two or three conference papers, I've invested quite a bit of time there. Now, with essentially a four day window of competition (with lay days for poor surf), I've spent time wondering whether I can break the current State of Emergency, and head out tomorrow, a rare meeting-free day, for research purposes. I need to write the concluding paragraphs to that article after all. But instead, I will probably stay home, wait until after the SoE, and look at the legacy post-Olympics for Ichinomiya. 

Sports me has won out over academic me today. But there is so much to write, to consider, to reflect. I plan to be back tomorrow, or the next day, to tease out a few ideas. 

A behind the scenes view of
the topiary mascots at Ariake

Ten years on: personal reflections on the Tohoku triple disaster

 A pause for reflection

I am here in Tokyo today, the tenth anniversary of the Tohoku disaster that struck the northern part of the main island of Honshu on this day 11 March, 2011. A few months ago I thought about travelling to Ishinomaki on the coast of Miyagi Prefecture to be there on this day. But I thought the better of it. One reason is that Tokyo remains under a State of Emergency due to Covid, and although I've been doing some work up in Ishinomaki in recent years, as well as Fukushima with some colleagues, I thought that these places would be crowded with people, media primarily, there to capture the tenth anniversary commemorations. It would seem intrusive to me, given I have no immediate, direct connections with people there.

On the other hand, I know that people I've worked with throughout Tohoku, also do not want the disaster to fade into history and they are grateful when I return, they are grateful when I listen to their stories, while I am actually the one who feels most honoured to share in their generosity. 

I was still in Australia in 2011 when news of the disaster reached us. I was working and my mother rang to tell me she had seen news of an earthquake in Japan. I wrote a short reflection about that day, and the first year here here back in 2012. It is interesting to look back on that post now. I did not expect I would be in Japan in 2021; I did not expect I would have been able to contribute, albeit it on a very small scale, to recovery. 

After 2011, when I went back to Japan each year on my annual research trip, I hesitated to travel north, for fear of being somewhat of a voyeur, an outsider looking in, and for what? To fulfil an academic curiosity while trying to understand and learn, as far as my discipline of political science was concerned? When I stayed with friends in Tokyo in 2012, 2013, 2014 and again in 2015, I heeded their advice. There will be time to go, just not immediately. There will be time to go and help in the recovery, there will be time. And indeed, this has turned out to be the case. One comment that sticks with me was the one where one person said to me, 'we are thinking 500 years ahead, we want this story to be known in 500 years, and beyond'. Five hundred years from now. It is a long time, but also a brief time, as 2021, ten years on seems to be from that day in 2011.

In retrospect, I made the right decision not to go this week. I wrote about my visit to Ishinomaki in 2018 for a university project here and it is where I would have gone today but I know will go another time, when the spotlight is off the town for the rest of the year and the locals will be pleased that we have not forgotten them. These last few weeks, there have been many programs on tv looking back, looking forward. My eyes and ears are drawn to the Ishinomaki stories. One in particular last week, ten years on, a father continues to go diving almost everyday to search for remains of his daughter, a bank clerk at the time, washed away in the tsunami. Each year on her birthday in December, friends and relatives gather to 'celebrate', to observe. Last December, due to Covid restrictions, it was just her parents. They go to her grave each day to wash her headstone because 'it is just like getting up to wash her face everyday' said her father.

Last week, authorities found the remains of a woman lost in 2011, in Matsushima, not far from Ishinomaki. Her discovery brought the number of people declared dead to 15 900, and those who remain missing, to 2525. Relatives continue to search for the missing.

I first visited the Tohoku region when I was an exchange student at a university in Tokyo. My summer holiday in 1985, before returning to Australia (not knowing when I would return to Japan, but imagining I might) was a long, detailed and planned train journey around Japan, back in the days when basically you were restricted to local or limited express trains. Part 1 of the journey was to head north from Tokyo, by rail, along the coast of Honshu via Fukushima, Sendai, Morioka, and back down the coast, through to Niigata...and onwards. In those days, my Tokyo friends 'warned' me I might struggle with the language in Tohoku since 'they speak a completely different language there you know', half-jesting, half-serious. Indeed, the Tohoku dialect is a strong and distinctive one as I learned on my travels. I momentarily lost confidence in my ability to understand the language I had been living with for almost two years! But the generosity of the locals remains memorable. 

I finished the trip, reaching all the way down to Kyushu and back along the coast to Tokyo via Hiroshima, Kyoto and Nagoya, and each town, each place, was special, but the Tohoku region remained particularly memorable. I don't think the railways exist these days for a repeat journey but maybe one day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I have taught classes about Japan over the years, one question that comes up time and again is the question of 'anniversary' or 'commemoration'...why do we seem to prioritise those anniversaries ending in '0' over others? The dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki come to mind as examples of anniversaries people don't want to see recede into history. Yesterday, 10 March, was the anniversary of mass aerial bombing over Tokyo during World War Two, not as prominent as others but remembered nonetheless. Another thing I have learnt from speaking with people in Ishinomaki is they remember every day. It is important for them and others in the region that we too, do not forget, and that we too, will continue to remember for them and with them, any day of the year. 

I will get back to Ishinomaki, soon. It is one place I will return to, time and again. 

To my friends, I will remember you today, from Tokyo.

11 March, 2021, 2:46pm.

Photos taken from Hiyoriyama Park, and the Kajimamiko Shrine, atop the hill in Ishinomaki, where many people sought refuge from the tsunami.