Japan Transformed

Japan is an orderly, quiescent society, where public outbursts are unknown, where civil propriety is the order of the day, every hour of every day, where people are unfailingly polite and considerate and authority and tradition and heritage are profoundly respected.  Public spectacles are simply not seen.  People are private, yet they are curious about others and quietly observant. 

A place for everything and everything in its place.  Social coherence and indivisibility of values, a soft zen Buddhism overlays everything.  A place where taxi drivers wear white gloves and at down times withdraw a feather duster to ensure the interior of their vehicle is immaculate.  Where drivers, coming to a red light and a stop, automatically shut down their ignition, to turn it on again when the light changes.

Where out of tall apartments, windows are festooned daily with airing futons.  Where in rental dwellings one must supply one's own utilities.  Where people can still be see in the streets at dawn or at dusk walking to a local bath, wearing cotton yukata and sandals.  Where, using a public washroom, one removes shoes in exchange for elevated sandals relieving oneself by squatting over a aperture set into the floor.

Where anyone moving to a new neighbourhood will expect the appearance of local police making background enquiries and taking note of the new residents, to record and return to the street-corner koh-ban (police box-station) nearest the area concerned.  Where in response to fire alarms, firemen pull fire wagons through the narrow streets unable to accommodate a fire truck.  Where two vehicles may not pass one another on those narrow streets.

Where side streets are unnamed and prefecture numbers identify locations, and somehow mail is miraculously delivered.  Where the subways run on time, as do the trains rumbling through Tokyo, and buses have wood slat floors and no air conditioning in a broad network of interconnecting public transportation routes, train stations, bus stops and subway stations.




Where outdoor fresh-food markets like Ueno, an immense fish market at Tsukiji and a world-class electronics experience at Akihabara tempt and entertain and fulfill the expectations of perfection-obsessed Tokyoites.  Where temples and shrines and their fabulous gardens and huge, gleaming silver, orange and gold koi swim the ponds, and where Mount Fuji can be seen beyond the skyscrapers in Shinjuku.

And where, unfailingly, the quiet of a main street will suddenly be ear-shatteringly infused with a startling racket emitted from loudspeakers clamped on a garishly painted bus identifying it in huge hiragana lettering as that of a right-wing political group, blaring its rightist nationalist message through the quiet ambiance suddenly made grim with the ugliness of noise and embarrassment.

The Japanese far-right, once considered a noisy fringe of establishment politics in Japan, appears to be gaining momentum.  Quiet Japan is turning into bumptiously right-wing Japan with the Liberal Democratic Party poised to return to power under Shinzo Abe who had in a previous prime ministerial incarnation improved relations with Beijing, and desisted from controversially visiting the Yasukuni Shrine identified with war-time Japan.

The Shinzo Abe whose party is set to capture 300 of the 480 parliamentary seats, beating out Yoshihiko Noda's currently ruling Democratic Party which may now only hope to retain a mere 70 of the 230 seats it currently holds in the lower house, is currently a far different politician than he was back in 1993 when Japan admitted and apologized for its use of Korean "comfort women" during WWII.  Abe is set to rescind that admission.

He and his party plan to re-write Japan's post-war constitution, to turn Japan's Self-Defence Force into an active army.  Where until fairly recently the Japanese military hesitated to dress in uniform outside the confines of defence headquarters because of the memory among ordinary Japanese of its role in WWII, its provocation at Pearl Harbour that brought atomic destruction to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, momentum for an unambiguous presence of the military is proceeding.

"I find it very troubling that Abe is trying to insert his revisionist agenda into the electoral program of the LDP.  Not only in calling for revision of the constitution but also in demanding significant changes to education policy regarding the wartime past", explained Daniel Sneider, director of the nationalism and regionalism project at Stanford University.

This is a new, belligerent Japan, responding to the new militarism of China, and the concern over a nuclear-armed North Korea, and the not-too muted threats by China toward its regional neighbours' insistence on their traditional offshore territorial rights in the South China Sea, along with Japan's recent face-off with China over their disputed Sankaku/Diaoyu island squabble.

"I'm saying 'show us the proof'.  This is where Japanese nationals need to be aware.  Confront (South) Korea, and argue back, fight it out verbally until you foam at the mouth", wrote ultra right-wing mayor of Osaka Toru Hashimoto who formed the Restoration Party, now calling on nations invaded by militaristic early-to-mid 20th Century Japan to "prove their claims of abuses".