Yokohama, Japan -- The massive, by Japanese standards,
protest against the restart of the Oi nuclear reactors which took place
Friday night (June 29) in downtown Tokyo in front of the parliament
building and the official residence of the prime minister felt
different, historic even, and perhaps a watershed in Japan’s now two
decade struggle to find a new post-industrial social paradigm.
<< Rev. Kobo Inoue leads the call "Against the Start Up"!
What was different that stood out was: A marked increase in diversity of the participants
Most of the demonstrations I have attended since April of 2011, shortly
after the Fukushima incident happened, have been dominated by long time
social activists over the age of 50, often representing labor groups but
also including the wide variety of citizens groups that have arisen
over the last 15 years in Japan.
Demonstrations that have been
held in the western parts of Tokyo near trendy centers of youth such as
Shibuya, Harajuku and Shinjuku have often been well attended by the
increasing numbers of furita/freeter. These are young Japanese in their
20s and 30s who have dropped out of mainstream employment in companies
and are developing various types of alternative lifestyles. Their
numbers are estimated somewhere between 4 and 8 million people. However,
within minutes of arriving at the protest site last Friday, I noticed a
greater diversity, especially young working professionals who have
generally kept quite a distance from previous demonstrations.
Although less conspicuous, I also noticed for the first time at an
anti-nuclear demonstration a university students group which was acting
as a coalition of groups from different universities. While many
university students did become involved in volunteer relief work in the
tsunami affected areas, they have generally shown no interest in
becoming involved in the nuclear issue. They have appeared not only
fearful of endangering their job prospects by getting involved in civil
disobedience but also completely out of touch and apathetic with social
issues that go beyond their own interests in personal advancement.
Real spontaneity and civil disobedience
For
foreigners, especially Europeans accustomed to taking the streets about
social issues, participating in a demonstration in Japan feels like a
shocking mockery of the very concept of public protest and civil
disobedience. Almost all demonstrations in Japan are planned in advance
with the consent of the police. While providing assistance and tacit
protection against small groups of right-wing fanatics, they also ensure
that the demonstrations follow their prescribed routes and do not
inconvenience the normal flow of traffic or public life in the streets.
The demonstration on June 29 was my first experience counter to this.
As
the numbers continued to swell from 5:30 to 7:00 pm, the protest could
not be contained on the sidewalks or even one lane into the street. By
7:00 there was a dual push by the now massive crowd, probably in the
neighborhood of 40,000 though estimates vary from 17,000 to 150,000. One
group at the top of the hill surged into the road in front of the prime
minister’s residence forcing the police to move armored buses across it
to block them. Meanwhile a second surge occurred at the bottom of the
hill in front of the parliament building. And suddenly the entire street
of some 400 meters in length had been taken over by the crowd, cutting
off all traffic and leaving the police relatively helpless to
re-establish order.
While the protest did end in a timely manner
at 8:00 with the typical civility of both police and protesters, there
was some anger amongst the demonstrators themselves towards the
organizers who cooperated with the police and used their loudspeakers to
tell everyone to go home. Their reasoning was so that future protests
would not be forbidden. However, many felt with the restart of the Oi
reactors only 48 hours away that the future was right now and voiced
their displeasure to these organizers.
A coordinated Buddhist presence
From
this writer’s own personal interest, this demonstration was the first
at which a coordinated group of Buddhists participated beyond the
regular activism of the small Nipponzan Myohoji order. A small but not
insignificant group of 8 Buddhist priests and at least 5 lay followers
representing AYUS (a Japanese Buddhist development NGO increasingly
involved in the nuclear issue) and the Japan Network of Engaged
Buddhists (JNEB) gathered amidst the crowd and, holding high the
Buddhist flag, maintained a presence throughout the demonstration.
From
the moment I arrived at the site at 5:30, I quickly found a small group
of Nipponzan Myohoji priests and lay followers through the sound of
their drums. As a way of orienting myself to the situation, I followed
them through the streets as we chanted the daimoku, refuge to the Lotus
Sutra. After connecting up with our other Buddhist friends, we camped
out for an hour on the corner of Roppongi Avenue, the entrance to the
street on which the parliament building and the prime minister’s
residence is located. Spontaneously connecting with a group of furita,
we engaged, as did the entire crowd, in chants of “Against the Start
Up”, with one of our members Rev. Kobo Inoue, a Jodo Pure Land priest,
grabbing a bullhorn and leading the crowd. By 7:00 we began to move up
the hill and take part in the push to take over the entire street in
front of the parliament building. Along the way, we met up with Rev.
Hidehito Okochi, a Jodo Pure Land priest and longtime anti-nuclear
activist and NGO leader, carrying his banner expressing the
incompatibility of the Pure Land and nuclear weapons and energy. As we
moved up the hill to the demonstration’s peaked conclusion in front of
the armored buses at the entrance to the Prime Minister’s residence, I
kept running into followers of the Nipponzan Myohoji and their endless
chanting and drumming of refuge in the Lotus Sutra.
While our
numbers may have seemed insignificant, our coordinated presence was
symbolic of the Japanese Buddhist world’s increased interest and
activism in the nuclear issue. It took over 6 months for any Buddhist
denomination to make a public declaration on the Fukushima incident and
nuclear power in Japan. Subsequently, the Japan Buddhist Federation,
representing all the traditional sects, made an official anti-nuclear
statement on December 6, 2011.
Since then, the monastic
congresses of numerous Buddhist denominations (such as Soto Zen and Jodo
Shin Otani Pure Land) made critical declarations in February of this
year on the future use of nuclear power in Japan and also adopted
platforms and specific regulations on the use of alternative energies
within their own denominations. Jodo Shin Otani, one of the three
largest traditional Buddhist denominations in Japan, also made a public
appeal to Prime Minister Noda on June 12th to not allow the restart of
the Oi reactors. Rev. Taitsu Kono—the present Chief Priest of the
Myoshin-ji sect of the Rinzai Zen denomination and recently retired
President of the Japan Buddhist Federation—has also become an
increasingly popular figure in the media for his connecting the
complicity of Japanese Buddhists in World War II to their complicity
with nuclear power.
All these actions are very much in the wake
of the leadership shown by the small Inter Faith Forum for the Review of
National Nuclear Policy, of which the aforementioned Rev. Okochi is a
leader. The Forum has brought together Buddhist, Shinto, and Christian
priests to grapple with the nuclear issue since 1993. In mid-April, they
held a major three day symposium in Fukushima bringing together
citizens, local activists, and Buddhist priests all working to cope with
the ongoing crisis there. They also responded to the increased effort
of the Noda administration to restart the Oi reactors by creating an
ecumenical rally of 100 religious leaders at the Fukui prefectural
offices on May 30 to petition the local government to reject Tokyo’s
push for the restart. This event was well covered by the mass media,
which has a tendency to ignore the social efforts of religious groups.
Conclusions
Whether
the protest of June 29 becomes a watershed or not is still not easy to
discern as the conservative center of Japanese society continues to
appear unmoveable. However, now more than a year after the events of
3/11, the nuclear issue has not faded away. Despite an inconsistent
civil protest movement since that time, there appears to be a
continually growing sentiment against nuclear power, as seen in
two-thirds of Japanese polled as against the restart of the Oi reactors.
This sentiment is very symbolic of a much larger trend in Japan—a kind
of social awakening, perhaps not seen since the mass disillusionment
with the government at the end of the World War II.
A young
housewife and mother at the June 29th demonstration was quoted as
saying, “Japanese have not spoken out against the national government.
Now, we have to speak out, or the government will endanger us all.” (New
York Times, June 29) For some four decades, Japanese have thought
nuclear power was safe, because the government and the big companies -
standards of this nation and its people - were operating it. This long
held sentiment that the government and the big companies were looking
out for the best interest of the people has been deteriorating over the
last decade of economic failure and structural readjustment. Since the
Fukushima incident, the public exposure of the nuclear village - the
collusive alliance of government, big business, scientists and
academics, and media - has seen this sentiment hit a new low. With or
without its government, the people of Japan seem to be ready, and
perhaps even eager, to move forward into a new future that not only
ensures environmental integrity but also the lifestyle integrity and
psycho-spiritual integrity that have been sacrificed over the last half
century drive for industrial modernism.
A final image of this
nascent new age was the live U-stream feed last night (Sunday July 1)
from in front of the Oi nuclear complex as it began its restart.
Hundreds of anti-nuclear protesters drummed, danced, and shouted,
“Against the Start Up”! Who were these people? Yes, some appeared to be
those old leftist activists, but for the most part they were furita. Not
worried about being at work at 9:00 the next morning, they danced and
drummed and shouted well beyond midnight. Will this growing number of
“drop-outs” be given the space to help build the new Japan or will they
just grab it instead?
Visit JNEB: http://jneb.jp/english/japan/nihonzan