July 2009 to July 2010 - Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan - page 172

Change is in the air: 11 July, the night before the
2009 Tokyo election
It is 11 July 2009, the night before the Tokyo Assembly election. This is the
last election rally for the Komeito Shinjuku candidate Yoshikura Kisami, one
of the incumbents who was fiercely defending his seat in very competitive

circumstances (kibishii j - ky - de tatakau). Shinjuku in downtown Tokyo is a
well-known commercial district, the central area of which is constantly crowded
with people. Some 2 million alone pass through its station each day. The
streets are blazing with

florescent lights that decorate the many high-rise
buildings. However, as I followed the Yoshikura supporters down a steep side
road, I suddenly found myself away from the overt stimulant city-ness of
central Shinjuku. Entering a faintly lit and tree-lined playground in the midst
of a 1970s public housing complex, there were no shops, no lights

flashing,
but instead a large group of about 100 people gathered. They were chatting
happily, greeting newcomers with obvious signs of familiarity. I felt trans-
ported back some 40 years in time when community relations must have been
permeated much less by the impersonal economic activities of which Shinjuku
appears a prime example. Local people had gathered to show support for
their political representative, someone who had made e orts to revive this

ageing housing complex. The rally highlighted Komeito s strength as a party

with over 3,000 local politicians who through its many grassroots assembly
members can carry the voices of the people to its national bodies. Laughing
among themselves in smaller groups, some happily waving to their friends as
they arrived by bicycle or on foot, gave a sense of human-to-human interac-
tion that was di

'

erent from the monetary interaction observable only a few
streets away in the busy streets of Shinjuku. It also gave a di erent sense of

political engagement to that of other parties political rallies I had attended

where listeners were mostly people passing by in commercial districts, stop-
ping to take pictures on their mobile phones if the politician speaking was
famous in some way. Few of the Komeito politicians are

'

or have
the star quality gained through economic success; in fact, they mostly come
from quite ordinary backgrounds. Here in the backwaters of Shinjuku, chil-
dren were running around and a few of the younger ones were crawling up
onto a little podium from where the speakers were to deliver their messages of
social goodwill, policy achievements, and importantly at that moment a day
before the actual election, deride the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) for
taking credit for local achievements that supporters were adamant were
Yoshikura

' celebrities '

flavour from
the 1970s, when relations between Komeito and the JCP were much more
confrontational and complex as they competed for overlapping segments of
the electorate. The time of a kind of

' s. Such con icts, however, have a distinctly di erent

was long gone, as was the
controversial S - ky - ky - tei (or ky - s - ky - tei) [Soka Gakkai-Japanese Commu-
nist Party Agreement], something that ended up causing a lot of animosity
between the parties involved and in the mass media. However, all this was a

' yers war '