Thursday 27 August 2009

One Solution

Hiya everyone, I'm in Japan. It's 9PM and I'm sleepy.

My Japanese is rusty as hell, but coming back for the 4th time in as many years there's no culture shock whatsoever. Accordingly, my first "meal" of my year abroad was can coffee and a rice ball with little bits of octopus in it.

Jumping right into things, my first port of call following my hostel check-in was obviously the Japanese Communist Party's Headquaters. I assume the Communist Party of Britain's HQ's a pub in Crouch End. These guys had a 10 story. huge office block to themselves in central Tokyo. Swankiest Socialists ever. But yeah, Japan has a general election coming up on the 30th August. This looks to be a big'un. The ruling centre-right/right wing Liberal Democrat Party have been continuously in power since 1955 - except for a brief 1 year interval in the early 90s when the Socialists got in, apologised to Korea on behalf of Japan for being dickheads, then were quickly voted out - this election will most likely see the end of the LDPs hegemony and see them replaced by the Democratic Party of Japan, officially and kind of centre-left, but in reality a coalition of mushy ideology-less corruption scandals. But hey, it stirs things up a little. The JCP used to be fairly right on Marxists, and faced all the repression one could expect for such things under the statist-military deal in the 20s-40s. Nowadays their platform is mostly "be nice to poor people!", "nukes are pretty bad, right?" and "Stop doing that America!" - which is all good stuff.

So I was all "Oh hi Japanese Communist Party, me and you could do some electoral campaigning together, if you catch my drift ;D"

But they just used the classic "It's not you, it's the legal code that tightly regulates political activity and forbids foreigners for participating in elections" excuse. Typical. So I got the sympathy line of "but you can go and watch some party speeches tomorrow and help hand out manifestos, which is something of a legal grey-zone, and have some paperback polemics too", and like the dirty Marx junkie I am, I took it.

Reinforcing my socialist ardor is the fact that I'm Broke in Japan! Last year 1 pound got you 200 yen, this year it's 140. A doubling of the price of everything has halved the time it takes me to walk through Harajuku. Maybe if I can afford less I'll spend more time learning Japanese or something. That could work.

So yes, that's pretty much my first day in Japan for you. I've got some pictures, but they're on disposable camera's, so I'll have them up once they're developed. As I said at the beginning, I'm sleepy, so I'm going to sleep. My comrades will want me in top physical condition
Night night, I miss you all~

3 comments:

  1. Your account of the JCP as: 'fairly right on Marxists' who 'faced all the repression one could expect for such things under the statist-military deal in the 20s-40s. Nowadays their platform is mostly "be nice to poor people!", "nukes are pretty bad, right?" and "Stop doing that America!" - which is all good stuff.' is worrying.

    I mean, come on! JCP? More like the Nationalist-Stalinist Party. They've always been Stalinists, not Marxists. Their rhetoric may indeed be, "be nice to poor people!" but they propose to do that using a modest list of social reforms and the palliative of economic protectionism to aid small businesses and farmers. "Stop doing that America!" is good enough I suppose, but all of the political establishment are following this line now that they are fed up of playing second fiddle to Washington.

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  2. Actually they're always been an independent Communist party who supported the fall of the Soviet Union. It seems their party line is somewhere between Democratic Socialism and Revolutionary Socialism, calling for democratic means to a revolutionary end. And the other parties are still very chummy with America, supporting subsidies for America's Japan presence etc etc.

    Anyway, no party's perfect man, you've just got to put your weight where it does the most good.

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