Aspiration for the good society - Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan - page 83

have to call someone to try to convince them to vote, it might not have
occurred to me to call them … Sometimes it is di cult to just phone

people you don t have contact with regularly; you need a reason to call them.

The election makes me phone people I wouldn

'

t normally keep in contact
with and hopefully through that also establish some kind of friendship.
(conversation with Kumi, 04/11/2003)

'

Sometimes the callers heard surprising stories people falling ill, getting

married, starting new jobs, parents passing away. As young supporters called
their friends, high school classmates, or other people they knew from their
hometown and tried to convince them to vote for the Komeito candidate
there, they experienced both positive and negative responses. Some felt that
they had had

-

able to get the other
person interested in what I am saying and get them to promise that they
might go to vote

' a good conversation ' , which meant being '

' . Someone else noted: ' Even if that is not for Komeito, at

least they might go and vote . Others felt people were annoyed about their

calls, which they thought would probably have an adverse e

'

ect on the rela-
tionship with this person, and likely to worsen the perception they might have
of Soka Gakkai. Some of the phone calls were short, lasting only a minute or
two. A lot of the time, they could not get through to someone, or perhaps the
person on the other end of the line was not answering the phone, knowing
who was calling them.
Kaku, a 22-year-old literature student fromOkinawa told of such experiences:

Some people have no interest in politics whatsoever, and get annoyed at
being called. In fact, most of my friends have no interest in politics, and
although some of them say,

' OK I will go to vote [for Komeito] ' , I think

it is only a small percentage that actually go.
(conversation with Kaku, July 2004)

Kaku liked to talk and we talked for hours in the library at Soka University.
He told of how there were people from his high school years that he would
not call because he felt he had not been popular during that time; if he started
contacting people now it would just increase their negative image of Soka
Gakkai. Kaku, who I had met through the UNRC, pointed out that it was
not only his non-Soka Gakkai friends, but also some of his Soka Gakkai
friends who he sometimes found it di

cult to encourage to vote for Komeito:

There are Soka Gakkai members among my friends who are not really
interested in politics, or they have their own opinion, which I respect.
Then some of them lost con dence [in the party] when the min - problem

occurred. 4 Or maybe it was the justi

cation for withdrawing their sup-
port. But they do not necessarily voice their opposition at meetings, they
just tend to withdraw and become disillusioned with politics.
(conversation with Kaku, July 2004)