Protest? Maybe a Little...

A few hundred people turned out on Saturday, mainly to protest nuclear power generation in the wake of the March tsunami and earthquake. Here's what a Japan Times editorial had to say about copying the "occupy Wall Street" protest:



So, why don't Japanese protest?

The answer is, they are, a little. Since the Fukushima nuclear crisis, the public has been holding small rallies and marches in front of the Diet building and the Kasumigaseki bureaucratic offices on an almost daily basis. An anti-nuclear rally in mid-September drew 30,000 to 60,000 people, depending on whose figures you believe. That scale of protest has not been seen in Japan since the student protests of the 1960s. The anti-nuclear sentiment may well spill over to other issues.

Yet, there is little sign of a larger movement to occupy anywhere in Japan. Part of the reason is CEO pay is not as outrageously high, nor as flaunted, as in America. Nor has the burden of housing loans devastated Japanese homeowners as the subprime housing loan crisis did American homeowners. And despite job-hunting pressures, college graduates in Japan are not strapped with an average of $22,900 in college loan debt like American graduates. Still, the current protests in New York have latched onto problems more entrenched and widespread than in the past — problems that provoke just as much resentment in Japan as elsewhere.

The belief that the financial system remains essentially sound but needs a touch-up here and there is still stronger in Japan than in other countries. Most workers, and most students looking for work, want stability and security. Instead, they have employment conditions rife with stress and competition, increasingly subject to the whims of economic pressures. It may take time to awaken to the understanding that gaman, toughing it out, may no longer be a constructive strategy.