Kuchikomi Sep. 10, 2008 - 02:17PM JST ( 8 )

There are demonstrations and demonstrations. In June 1960, 14,000 students massed outside the Diet building in Tokyo and charged riot police. “Kill Kishi!” they shouted. It took tear gas to disperse the mob, and as for Prime Minister Nobosuke Kishi, he was in fact politically “killed”—he resigned a week later.

Demos are not like that now—not in Japan anyway, though in Seoul in April, crowds of 50,000 protesting the South Korean government’s agreement to import American beef recalled the fiery spirit of former days. Not that demonstrating has gone out of style in Japan. On the contrary, Spa! (Sept 9) detects a demonstration “boom”—but these are “new type” demonstrations, typified by Tokyo’s silent “Free Tibet” rally, 400 strong, on the closing day of the Beijing Olympics.

Or maybe this is the more typical example: the “demonstration against crowds” in Nara on Aug 14. Spa! doesn’t tell us how many attended. Its purpose? “Just what its name implies,” says organizer Toshi Matsumoto. “Not that there are any crowds in Nara. A few tourists came by, looking at us in bewilderment.” Their perplexity is quite understandable.

Matsumoto owns a recycling shop in Tokyo’s Koenji; demonstrations are a kind of hobby with him. He started organizing them as a student in 1998, not because he was an angry young man but because… well, it’s hard to say, exactly. The old-style student protests of yesteryear didn’t appeal to him: “That way of communicating ideas is out of date.” So he sought an alternative, and found one in “stupidity.” “Stupidity gets across better.” It’s not stupid so much as bizarre. One demonstration he organized at a train station protested JR’s imposition of a charge for toilet paper in station rest rooms. Three people showed up—and were so subdued that a station guard approached them and said, “Shouldn’t you be making a bit more noise?”

The latest of Matsumoto’s rallies unfolded last month in Osaka. One hundred people under his aegis demanded that people “relax!” “This world is too hard to live in!” they shouted. Few would deny that have a point.

At the Tibet demonstration (not a Matsumoto affair), there was no shouting at all. Organized by Tibetan residents of Japan, it took the form of a silent march through Shibuya. The 400-odd participants held aloft photos of 140 Tibetans said to be dead or missing as a result of Chinese oppression. Most participants were in their 20s and, according to Spa!, “apolitical.”

Gay pride demos make for another interesting contrast with the demos of yesteryear. They merge serious content with a relatively new phenomenon: cosplay. “Koji,” 39, looks rather nice in his bikini. He “came out” at 30 and for the past two years, has been participating in gay and lesbian parades because, he says, “I want people to know that gays exist.” Concerning the bikini, he says: “I thought, since I’m doing it, I may as well have fun. I was a little embarrassed, but it is a festival, after all!”