Aspiration for the good society - Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan - page 82

people) of young women in the area where I lived. They had gathered to
encourage each other to canvass friends, old classmates and acquaintances
over the phone. I also attended other types of meetings, usually slightly larger
(15

25 people), who had gathered in northern Tokyo (as described at the
beginning of this chapter) to talk about the result of their canvassing. Within
Soka Gakkai

-

s organisational structure (see Appendix A ) members practise in
the district where they live. Individuals in particular areas organise their own
meetings and each district may vary in how they do things. Many of the
election activities among young people consisted simply of a few people in a
district getting together to make phone calls. Yet, they also re

'

ected Soka

Gakkai organisational divisions. The youth division s election activities con-

sisted of young people organising themselves in their districts in line with the
Young Men

'

s Divisions. Young people who had decided
to meet up to canvass over the phone together usually met at someone

' s and Young Women '

at,
and could best be described as groups of friends meeting to encourage each
other to make e

' s

orts to phone their friends and acquaintances about the
possibility of voting for Komeito. In the district where I lived in Hachioji,
which was where I attended such activities most frequently in November of
2003, the YWD supporters met at a fellow student

at at 9 pm every night
during the two weeks leading up to the election to canvass together by phone.
It was not all the young women in that district who turned up every night,
but there were usually three-to-four

' s

' '

hard-core members who would attend

five times a week, others
once or twice. The more active ones would also be trying to encourage the
less active young women to participate. These Komeito supporters were all
students and typically lived in one- or two-room apartments, sometimes
sharing with a female friend or sister. Upon arrival, we would chat a bit, and
then do evening gongy - , which would take about

five or six nights, and a few who attended three-to-

five minutes, followed by the
chanting of Nam-my - h - -renge-ky - for about 15 minutes. People clearly felt
invigorated after the chanting, saying things like

Yoshi, gambar -

' ' (let ' s do it)

as they began phoning people.
One night, a young woman called Kumi who had just turned 20 attended.
While she was rather shy, she would nevertheless bring up issues she found
di

s standpoint on the Iraq War (dis-
cussed in Chapter 3 ) , which was still fresh in everyone

cult to understand, such as Komeito '

s mind and on the
national political agenda. Discussing such concerns, Nami in particular
would add her own concerns and then try to discuss it from the point of view
of the general situation (the USA

'

s seeming determination to go to war), and
from the point of view of the Japanese Constitution (being a law student).
Others might add their point of view about Komeito

'

cult position as a
party in power. A few nights later, Kumi told me her reasons for supporting
Komeito:

' sdi

Of course the aim is to get people to vote for Komeito, but it is also to
make friends with people. Although it is hard and challenging, if I didn

'

t