Saturday, July 20, 2013

Japanese Upper House Election: Japanese Communist Party, Miyake and Yamamoto Attracting Huge Crowd on the Last Day of Campaign, Voting Has Started


(UPDATE 7/21/2013) Sure enough, both Taro Yamamoto and Japanese Communist Party won big in the election. See my new post.

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The media has been hammering the idea for the past two weeks that the voter turnout will be a record low this time.

As many as 16,958 out of the total 48,777 voting stations in the country, or 35% of the voting stations, will close earlier than mandated by the law.


The crowd for the existing, mainstream parties (LDP, DPJ, Komei) did seem low during the election campaign. So much so that to sum up the election coverage, Kyodo News used the aerial photo of a large crowd outside the Shinjuku Station in Tokyo without naming the campaigner. The Kyodo article was mostly about LDP and Abe's promise. You would think the crowd was Abe's crowd.

Well, the photo turned out to be not LDP, DPJ, Komei, or Boy-wonder's dwindling party, but Japanese Communist Party.

From the tweet of JCP Chairman Kazuo Shii, who says 3,500 people stopped to listen to his party's last appeal:


There were many on Kyodo's site and on Twitter claiming it was the crowd for Taro Yamamoto. I retweeted one of such tweets, then my eyes got fixated with the three characters (小田急) in the upper left corner of the Kyodo photo. That's Odakyu Department Store, and that means the exit is Shinjuku West. After quick search I noticed that could only be JPC, and it was.

Asahi had this aerial photo of an even bigger crowd in Shibuya. Whose campaign was this? Taro Yamamoto and Yohei Miyake. But following Kyodo, Asahi didn't bother telling the readers whose campaign it was that attracted what Professor Yukio Hayakawa described as 10,000-strong crowd (Professor Hayakawa was right there in the crowd, according to his own tweet, and he says there were more people across the street):

(Image of Asahi Shinbun paper, from Professor Hayakawa's tweet)

Owly Images

6 comments:

Maju said...

For what you have mentioned in other occasions, it seems like the JCP is the last trench of common sense in Japan. I hope they perform well, even if it's obvious that they have everything against (rigged democracy, as this article evidences).

Anonymous said...

Reality and Fiction.
Real : I often lived in CP run cities. Not by choice, it just happened so. Just as many of my friends are Jews and commies. Never minded to make a choice about this.
When I came in Japan to meet my family-in-law, I understood the city had a CP majority. It still has, and I'm sure they would have been ousted if the city was'nt run properly.
Fiction : imagine Japan joining the communist countries. HA HA HA what a LOL.
Phiphi.

JAnonymous said...

Just heard Yamamoto did well ?

Went to the arakawa fireworks yesterday (saturday). On the way back, very crowded, and here was the local Abe minion campaigning, her loyal servants brandishing flags of 'hon nin' like we were supposed to be impressed that she was there for us.

She even offered to shake our hands, good thing the crowd was going forwards, we didn't have time to stop.

No time-limit for campaigning before elections, here ?

Anonymous said...

Strange for french readers to see the common - but correct - use of the french word "Mignon" that became minion in english ( and in japanese ? )
In french mignon both means cute, nice, funny and sexy, but also a young homosexual "favorite" or prostitute ( latin origin ).
Difficult to completely forget my mother language
As for the elections, Japanese people here tell me they are not only bored, but over-bored with their political powers, that kept them in stagflation for more than 20 years, leaves few hopes for young ones, when elderly people have very high retirement wages, when the numbers of homeless and jobless people are tricked down, where the government dealt with Fuku just as well as they did for Minamata or Kawazaki deseases, ouch !



Marc-Aurèle

Anonymous said...

'' Japanese people here tell me they are not only bored, but over-bored with their political powers, that kept them in stagflation for more than 20 years, leaves few hopes for young ones, when elderly people have very high retirement wages, when the numbers of homeless and jobless people are tricked down, where the government dealt with Fuku just as well as they did for Minamata or Kawazaki deseases, ouch !

We're just getting going! Japan now is enterering out of her genteel decline-temporarily drugged with money printing and stock market 'gains'-we're now going to see some real hardships emerge with the population a good deal poorer and no hope of salvation.

Enter the (debt) dragon!

Anonymous said...

Anon at 8:22
well I sincerely hope a better future for Japanese people !
M.-A.

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