Meltdowns and Waves – Archive

The beating of the drums was upon us before we completed our ascent out of the subway tunnel. The raspy voice leading the haunting reverberated through the loudspeakers followed by the lips of the protesters. Bicyclists rode by chanting and pumping their fists along with the sign bearers and in tune with the percussion. And when we gazed upon the faces of these defiant citizens of Tokyo, we saw that the crowd is old. After talking to several of them it is apparent that the same people who were protesting nuclear power and nuclear energy in the 1970’s are still here on the same street corner outside the Prime Ministers House today, just like every Friday night. But despite their age, the vitality is potent in their voices, carrying throughout street.
At first glance, getting out of the subway there appear to be one police officer for every two people. But walking the length of the sidewalk, watching the flag carrying bikes ride by, it is apparent that there are far more protesters than initially seen. The two dozen or so police officers shepherd us around the protest, cautioning us from standing too close to the intersection, from blocking the sidewalk, from leaning against a fence. All along the street opposite the protest, the road is lined with blue and white buses, seemingly enough to carry away the fifty or sixty protesters two or three times over.
We approach one of the protesters, chanting along with the rest, but standing at the edge of the demonstration. The man appears to be in his sixties and claims that he is a physicist. He speaks English fairly well, alternating between addressing our questions directly and speaking through our translator, Professor Alex Bates. He says he has been against nuclear power since long before Fukushima, he says that nuclear power is not safe and he is here every Friday night protesting. We ask him if he expects anything to change, he says he is pessimistic. When asked why, he says because people are idiots. When asked again why he is here he laughingly says that he is one of the idiot people. There are flags across the protest bearing the number 9, this he tells us is a reminder of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution which renounces war, an article which the current government, under pressure of the Americans has been read far more liberally lately to allow the Japanese Military (though representing only 1% of the nations GDP, still one of the largest in the world) to conduct defensive troop deployment. We point out that the Americans wrote Article 9 after WWII, now they want Japan to change it. Isn’t this western influence troublesome? He laughs at the irony, but American influence is not something that has gone unnoticed, nor embraced by this group.
The next protester we speak to brings up distrust of Americans without prompting. She is also in her sixties, wearing a sign around her which calls for an end to nuclear power, and denounces the TransPacific Partnership. She says that in the wake of the Fukushima accident the Japanese government informed the American Military before the Japanese people. I recall the hearing that the Prime Minister went on prime time cable TV when the Government felt it was time to order an evacuation of the area, but she was not placated. She insists that a lack of trust, a lack of communication is evident in the way the government conducted the accident. Her words echo the impassioned voice of our Three Mile Island interviewees, Lorenzo Realnáme well as Grandma Nazareth, who consistently voiced outrage at the lack of transparency and honesty between the government and its people.
Inundated with pamphlets and flyers, we left the protest by way of the subway station we had arrived in, as did many of the protesters. For 90 minutes, the spirits of the activists burned brightly to the tune of the pounding drums, but as quickly and intensely as the flame had burned, had it become extinguished. Though their voices were filled with passion, their fists pumped with fury, the anger subsided immediately as it was time to go home. Most of them would come back next week to do it all over again.