Politician From Japanese Cult “Happy Science” at CPAC

(Anyone who enjoyed this post would probably be interested in my 2008 piece about ties between historical revisionary conservatives and Japan’s current Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe.)

The baby-faced alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos lost his speaking gig at this week’s CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference, essentially a conference of the American Republican party) for being increasingly gross, but we aren’t here to talk about this boring child.

Instead, We’re here to talk about the man who replaced Milo on CPAC’s schedule, Jikido “Jay” Aeba (饗庭直道、あえば直道), a former high-level member of the extremely wacky right-wing Japanese cult religion Happy Science, who went on to found their subsidiary political party, the Happiness Realization Party, and is now working to develop a career as a kind of self-appointed ambassador between the Japanese and American right, as part of the substantial Japanese right-wing media industry. There’s a lot of threads to follow, so I’m just going to give a brief overview here and then follow up with additional posts in the near (ish) future. Let us also note that his Twitter handle, @ultraJedi, is pretty sweet.

This week will be Aeba’s second appearance at CPAC, following his 2016 speech, below, where he was hailed as the co-founder of the Japanese Conservative Union (JCA), an organization which ostensibly aspires to be a clone of the successful American Conservative Union (take note of how Aeba took the URL conservative.or.jp, in transparent imitation of the ACU’s conservative.org), but in reality gives all indication of being little more than a fancy website to give his one-man operation a veneer of institutional legitimacy. Neither the English or Japanese version of his profile on the JCU website mention his history with Happy Science or the Happiness Realization party, which makes his resume look oddly thin.

Aeba’s earlier CPAC speech is a pretty bland collection of right-wing talking points common to both countries, with a hefty infusion of pandering to his audience.

The video, posted by the ACU but possibly produced by Aeba / JCU, begins with a clip from Reagan’s speech before the Japanese Diet on November 11, 1983, in which he affirms that America and Japan “are united in the belief that freedom means dedication to the dignity, rights, and equality of man”, which is given the caption “for the conservative partnership between US and Japan…” This is followed up by a triumphant little montage in which Aeba meets a series of American conservatives including Grover Norquist, Ben Carson, and ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp, who wants to tell him “how honored we are that you come to see us. That you want to collaborate and partner with us”, which is certainly true. The CPAC crowd is fairly sedate, but he gets a few moderate to strong applause lines when he generically praises conservatism, the America – Japan alliance, accuses China of planning to steal Hawaii and Okinawa, and that he arranged for the Japanese translation of Clinton Cash to be published, and gets a laugh when he accuses the American and Japanese Democratic Parties that both took power in 2009 of being “socialistic”, and calls the promise of entitlements “free stuff”. But he also gets very little reaction to parts of his speech that he clearly cares greatly about, in particular the controversy over American military bases in Japan.

In fact, although this was Aeba’s first speech at CPAC, it was not his first time in attendance. The Atlantic Magazine published an article about Aeba’s early attempts to schmooze with the CPAC crowd, back in 2012. (And good for The Atlantic for providing what seems to be pretty much the only English language coverage of Aeba prior to this post I’m writing.)

Early one Saturday in February, as the conference entered its third and final day, the three men sat down in the Marriott’s dimly lit bar to compare notes on what they had seen so far. Behind them, a man dressed in full Founding Fathers drag, complete with wig and tricorne, strolled past; at an adjacent table, two young men with CPAC badges were loudly comparing their hangovers. […]

Aeba, one of the leaders of Japan’s right-wing Happiness Realization Party, was accompanied by Yuya Watase, the founder of the Tokyo Tea Party; their interpreter, a Happiness Realization Party official named Yuki Oikawa; and Bob Sparks, their American political consultant. Together, they said, they were on a mission to export American-style conservatism—the gospel of small government, low taxes, and free enterprise—to the Land of the Rising Sun.

[…] If they had gathered nothing else from CPAC, the Japanese conservatives had clearly internalized the American right’s language of alarmism and crisis.

Aeba clearly kept up his connections with the CPAC crowd, and as mentioned above, took inspiration from them in creating his (The “Japan Tea Party” didn’t go anywhere, but Watase Yuya is still active. I’ll take a look at him in some future post.)

But what was that about a strange religious cult and the political party that they sponsor? Oh right, Happy Science, and the Happiness Realization party.

Happy Science (in Japanese: 幸福の科学 / koufuku no kagaku) is a Japanese “new religion”, that was founded by Ryuho Okawa in 1986 and has gone onto be one of the most successful of these eccentric cults. The theology itself seems to be a melange of traditional Buddhist cosmology with a wide assortment of generic new-age pablum, topped with a very strong layer of veneration of the “Master Okawa”. I don’t want to get into their highly entertaining cosmology in this post, except to say that reading a Happy Science-published book on the subject several years ago made me wonder if I was reading a Japanese translation of the Dungeons and Dragons Manual of the Planes.

To get a taste of their style, as well as the eclectic basket of influences they draw upon, here are a couple of brief excerpts from their official website:

El Cantare is the Lord, Buddha and Savior. He is the supreme God of the terrestrial spirit group who has the highest authority over the planet Earth and is directly connected to the Primordial Buddha or Primordial God – the Creator of the whole universe.

Lord El Cantare has also sent down parts of his own consciousness – brother souls – to guide humanity in the right direction at the most important times in history. El Cantare’s brother souls who have been born to Earth in the last twenty thousand years are:

  • La Mu – 17,000 years ago on the Mu continent
  • Thoth – 12,000 years ago in Atlantis
  • Rient Arl Croud – 7,000 years ago in the Incan Empire
  • Ophealis – 6,500 years ago in Greece
  • Hermes – 4,300 years ago in Greece, Crete Island
  • Gautama Siddhartha (Shakyamuni Buddha) – 2,500 years ago in India.
  • Ryuho Okawa – present reincarnation of El Cantare

Needless to say, that last line about the cult’s leader being a reincarnation of the creator of the universe is the most significant teaching in the entire religion, and the core of the entire enterprise. Although they claim that “The grand mission of Happy Science is to create utopia – a world filled with love, peace, harmony and prosperity”, Okawa from the beginning combined his religious teachings with a hard-right political ideology. I found a 1991 AP story, that describes him as follows:

Lights go off. White smoke rises on stage. A round-faced, chubby man in a dark business suit appears in a spotlight before thousands of admirers. He claims he is Japan’s Messiah, the reincarnation of Buddha.

The man portrays the Japanese as a chosen people destined to destroy the United States and the Soviet Union and make China “a slave.”

[…] In his book “Nostradamus: Fearful Prophecies,” Okawa asserts that only the Japanese Leviathan will survive the imminent end of the world after destroying the United States and the Soviet Union:

“In the 21st Century, there will be no enemies for Leviathan. It will slash throats of the old eagle and the exhausted red bear, and laugh at the aging Europe. It will use China as a slave and Korea as a prostitute.”

The same article briefly describes his business model, which may sound familiar to readers who have read about Scientology.

Annual revenues are about $45 million, most of it from donations, according to Teikoku Data Bank, an independent research company.

Group spokesmen admit that up to 90% of their members do nothing more than subscribe to a monthly magazine, “Science of Happiness,” for $100 a year. But they say as many as 200,000 people have become “true members.” Critics put that number as low as 20,000.

To become a true member, one has to read 10 of Okawa’s books and pass exams on them.

You may have noticed mention above of a book entitled “Nostradamus: Fearful Prophecies,” which is strongly representative of Okawa’s prodigious output. Of the astonishing 714 titles currently credit to him on the Happy Science online bookstore, a large proportion consist of alleged posthumous interviews with the souls of deceased figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Adolf Hitler, Walt Disney, Albert EinsteinNelson Mandela,  Zhou Enlai, Isaac Newton, Georg Hegel, Oda Nobunaga, Sakamoto Ryoma, and many dozens if not hundreds more1. He also publishes what he claims are interviews with the “guardian spirits” of living celebrities, such as this book in which he discusses the secret of beauty with the guardian spirits of Natalie Portman and Keira Knightley, or this interview in which the guardian spirits of the famous AKB48 girl-pop group explain the secrets of marketing.

Happy Science has been in the Japanese news quite a lot recently, due to the decision of young actress Fumiko Shimizu to retire from showbiz entirely and devote herself fulltime to the cult, under the priestly name of Yoko Sengen. Shimizu had allegedly been a member of Happy Science since childhood, and seems to have embraced it fully as a means to escape from a career that she seems not to have enjoyed very much.

The Happiness Realization Party is also not new, and was first discussed on this blog back in 2009, when Adam wrote a series of posts about the candidates running for a seat in the Diet’s lower house, representing his district in Tokyo. The party had only been founded that year, and the candidate Adam wrote about, Kazumasa Fujiyama, only won about 1% of the vote. In the May, 2010 election, the HRP won their first Diet seat when Yasuhiro Oe, who had been elected as a proportional member representing the Japan Renaissance Party, decided to change his affiliation to HRP post-election. As my co-blogger Adam explained back in 2010:

The Wakayama native [Yasuhiro Oe] first became an upper house member in 2001 as a PR candidate on the LDP ticket, then as a DPJ candidate in 2007. He later joined JRP as a founding member in 2008, citing problems with the DPJ’s methods. In terms of policy, he has adopted some typical right-wing positions – he’s pro-Taiwan, a firm Nanjing Massacre truther, and a vocal supporter of the victims of North Korea’s kidnapping program. He comes up for reelection in 2013.

A 2009 Campaign Poster for the Happiness Realization Party featuring Jikido Aeba, with the English language slogan “Start! Japanese Dream!” written phonetically in Japanese.

As mentioned above, Jikido Aeba was the original leader of the HRP when it was founded on May 23, 2009, and he boasted that he “Wanted to lead as the Barack Obama of Japan.” Instead, he handed over the position to Kyoko Okawa, wife of the cult leader and “reborn Aphrodite and bodhisattva of wisdom and intellect”, who he later divorced in 2011, after their candidate list was finalized on June 4 for the election mentioned above, in which they won no seats at all.

The platform of the Happiness Realization Party includes many elements of mainstream Japanese conservatism that overlap with the ruling (conservative) Liberal Democratic Party, as well as some elements that diverge sharply from any mainstream party. To quote from Adam’s 2009 post:

Among their chief policy proposals:

  • Revise the constitution to allow a pre-emptive strike on North Korea if necessary.
  • Eliminate inheritance taxes and consumption taxes.
  • In the cities, “bring work and home closer together” by building offices and residences in the same building.
  • Build an enormous monorail around the entire city of Tokyo.
  • Allow massive immigration and promote reproduction to increase Japan’s population to 300 million by 2050

Some of their most radical proposals can be found in their draft constitution:

  • Make a directly elected president the head of state. The president would have the right to issue presidential orders apart from parliamentary legislation. If an order and legislation contradict each other, the chief justice of the supreme court would decide which to follow. But if there is no decision in two weeks, the presidential order will take precedence.
  • The emperor “and other traditions” would be kept on but with their power limited by law.
  • The chief justice of the supreme court would be directly elected.
  • Payment for public bureaucrats would be based on performance (this would be in their constitution!)
  • “Equal opportunity” and total freedom within the law.
  • The state must always aim to have a small government with low taxes.
  • “The mass media must not abuse their power and must act responsibly to the people.”

So, back to Aeba.

He remained involved in Happy Science and the Happiness Realization Party, holding positions such as HPR Director of Public Relations (2011) and Director of Investigations (2013), until he resigned in 2015 to start the Japan Conservative Union. During the last few years of his tenure in the HRP he seems to have been laying the groundwork for this transition, not only with schmoozing such as the 2012 CPAC visit mentioned above, but publishing a small selection of books tactically chosen to bolster his credentials to conservatives in both Japan and America as a conduit to the other country.

It is vital here to make note of his co-founder in the JCU, Shun Eguchi, who spent his career in the Sankei Shimbun, Japan’s conservative, business focused newspaper that can be thought of as similar to the Wall Street Journal, and he ended his career as president of their more specifically business-focused publication, Fuji-Sankei Business Eye. Eguchi is also a graduate of Takushoku University, considered to be a hard-right institution, with ties to many figures known for conservative revisionist historical views.

In 2011 he published the book The Strongest Country – Japan’s Decision, and the from the book’s official description on Amazon it sounds like some pretty generic conservative pablum about strengthening national defense and the economy, mixed with criticism of welfare states such as Sweden.

More recently, he published The Trump Revolution, which came out in March of last year, and supervised the Japanese translation of the infamous Clinton Cash, which was produced by an organization run by Trump’s Leninist fascist political advisor Steve Bannon.

He has also supervised a fairly weird looking pro-Trump book called Presidential Feng-shui, co-authored by a wacky Feng-shui huckster by the name of Dr. Copa ((His real name is Kobayashi Yoshiaki, and the book was co-written with his son, Kobayashi Teruhiro)). In this book, Dr. Copa explains how Trump (perhaps inadvertently, I’m only reading so much of this nonsense) used the power of feng-shui to win himself the White House, in particular via the magico-spatial relationship between the White House and the location of the Trump hotel in Washington’s Old Post Office Building. The magazine Weekly Shincho reported that Dr. Copa is such a big fan of Trump that he was a paying audience member at Trump’s inauguration, so that he could be closer to his “research subject”. And, unsurprisingly, it was Aeba – who was also in attendance at the inauguration and “Liberty Ball”, according to his persona blog, who served as the intermediary to obtain the tickets. In an interview with Shincho, Dr. Copa briefly explains his theory of how Trump used the architectural feng-shui power of the Old Post Office in an identical way to how the location of Toyotomi Hideyoshi‘s camp relative to Kiyosu Castle allowed him to achieve a surprise victory at the 1582 conference at that castle that contributed to his consolidation of power.

On a brief search I don’t see any direct connection between Dr. Copa and Happy Science, but it is hardly surprising that a (former?) member of a weird science-fiction inflected cult is also interested in pop-parapsychology.

 

The Shincho article on Dr. Copa mentioned as an aside that Aeba had described himself as an “Advisor” to the American Republican party, but that there was no evidence of this. Buzzfeed Japan has an article on this exact topic from November of last year. In this piece they list his repeated claims, both online and in media appearances in Japan, that he is an official advisor to the GOP. They describe how, in addition to doing online research, they had their colleagues at Buzzfeed America do some investigation. It turns out that nobody at the Republican National Committee (RNC) knows who Aeba is, but Buzzfeed Japan emails Aeba to ask for clarification.

As evidence of his claim, Aeba forwards them an English language email from Bob Sparks, the American political consultant who worked as a fixer during the 2012 CPAC visit reported by The Atlantic. According to Sparks, Aeba was an “unpaid advisor to Sharon Day“, who is currently the co-chair of the RNC, but Day did not respond to queries and no additional proof was offered. Their seemingly correct conclusion is that while Aeba may have been informally told by Day herself that he was her advisor on US-Japan relations, but that he never had any official position with the RNC or any affiliated organizations. However, he continues to proudly misrepresent himself

As I mentioned earlier, despite having a genuinely substantial political career with the Happiness Realization party, Aeba makes absolutely no mention of them or Happy Science on the Japan Conservative Union website, despite describing himself prominently as an advisor to the GOP. (Although his personal blog, which goes all the way back to 2009 when the HRP was founded and is still updated regarding his current activities, so at best he has made a half-hearted attempt to truly hide his past.)

In that same article, Buzzfeed noticed that he had likewise never made note of his former HRP affiliation on any of his recent media appearances, and none of his hosts organizations or publishers had identified him as such, and so they asked Asahi Broadcasting, Fuji Television, Futaba Publishing, and Sankei Shimbun for comment.

Only Futaba, the publisher of his 2016 book The Trump Revolution, replied, saying that they had avoided mention of his ties to Happy Science in consideration of his telling them that, his “relationship with the Happiness Realization Party is not good.” Does this mean that the HRP is angry at him for cutting ties with them and starting his own personal brand, or is he simply making an excuse?

It is unclear to me whether Aeba retains any ties with Happy Science, but it is clear that his goals align with theirs. In October of last year, Ryuho Okawa published yet another of his spirit interview books, in which he “interviewed” the ghost of George Washington and the guardian spirit of Donald J. Trump, and explained that Trump is in fact the reincarnated spirit of America’s first president. “If candidate Trump becomes President, 300 years of future prosperity are promised for both Japan and America, but if it is Hillary, then America will lose its leadership role in the world.” The sequel, containing more interviews with Trump’s guardian spirit is already out, and new-age spiritual mumbo-jumbo aside, I suspect one would be hard pressed to tell the content apart from any of the speakers at CPAC.

Hopefully Aeba’s new speech will be up soon so I can see how it fits in with everything else, and I will find time in the near future for more writing on related topics.

  1. One that stood out to me on a quick skim as particularly offensive was his book of “spiritual testimony” from the great manga creator Mizuki Shigeru, claiming to have been recorded on the 12th day after his death in late 2015. []

Kikuchi Naoko’s sarin, as described by another Aum member

By now everyone knows that Kikuchi Naoko, one of the last members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult wanted for the 1995 sarin gas Tokyo subway attacks, was arrested on Sunday. Although her face had been plastered on posters found in and around pretty much single police and train station in the country, she managed to remain at large for 17 years, until someone reported seeing her in the Tokyo suburb of Sagamihara.

Back in early 2006, Adam and I collaborated on a large job translating material about Aum Shinrikyo into English for some kind of security researcher down in DC doing a report about religious terrorism. The biggest single document in the project was the massive book Aum and I by Ikuo Hayashi, a medical doctor and member of the cult, who participated in the sarin release, which we translated a significant portion of.

I have previously posted a few excerpts from this book, including Hayashi’s description of the actual subway attack itself, the bizarre and stillborn plot to assassinate Ikeda Daisaku, leader of Sokka Gakkai, and a description of the gross practice of how cult members ate their own feces in a weird attempt to emulate the Buddha.

In honor of Kikuchi’s arrest, here is Hayashi’s memoir of his first encounter with sarin, found on pages 271-274 of the tankobon edition of the book.

*     *     *     *     *

The first sarin dispersal experiment

At the end of April there was a phone call from Nakagawa to me at AHI. “Make the same preparations as when you treated Niimi and come to the Seventh Satyam, in Kamiku,” he said. The only treatment I had given Niimi was when he had been poisoned by sarin gas during the Daisaku Ikeda Poa incident, so I loaded up the station wagon with drugs, a respirator, an oxygen cylinder, and the other necessary supplies and went to Kamiku. Nakagawa went into the prefab that it was said Tomomi Tsuchiya had been assigned to, and came out carrying a box.

272

He told me that it had sarin inside it.

In the flask was a triangular flask, protected by a buffering agent. When I saw the liquid at that time, it was a faint fluorescent green. Since Nakagawa had said that it was sarin, I always thought of sarin as being that color a liquid afterwards. “So, Aum has sarin after all,” I thought. However, at this time I still had no confirmation that Tsuchiya was making sarin.

At that juncture, I still had no realization of what degree of chemist this Tsuchiya person was. Nakagawa said that because he and Tsuchiya were performing sarin experiments together, if by any chance one of them was poisoned, that I should come and treat them. I had a feeling that I had learned yet another secret. I myself was not receding, not progressing, being shown the true forms of Aum’s “secret work” one by one. I naturally felt the discomfort, the unsettlement of the treatment that came with it,

Those “sarin experiments” were to discover the volatilization volume of airborne sarin. I thought that this sarin was meant to be one means of defense against the American military and the [Japanese] Self Defense Force when the “war” broke out.

A truck was parked in front of the Seventh Satyam. It was loaded with several canisters, large storage batteries and a converter, plastic bottles and a sprayer that seemed to be the type used for the spraying of agricultural chemicals and pest removal. Driving the truck was a Samana in the Truth Science Research Department.

Nakagawa and Tsuchiya got in the car together saying to me and the young Samana that we should follow them and set off.

273

I had no idea whatsoever where we were going, but when we arrived it looking like a dry riverbed near the mouth of theFujiRiver. The time was night, just before dawn, and in the vicinity were no other people or vehicles. The riverbed was a broad area, and I got the feeling that they had chosen the location in advance, and we had gone to that place.

They used an ultrasonic nebulizer (sprayer) places on top of an electric balance to spray sarin into the air, measured the wind velocity and force at that instant, and checked the amount of sarin consumed based on the change in mass.

When the experiment was over, he sprayed some neutralizing agent from the nebulizer, but because he had been poisoned I gave him two intravenous injections each of two ampoules of PAM and atropine sulfate. When I examined Nakagawa it looked like there was some mild pupil dilation, but I couldn’t really tell. I treated Nakagawa based on his subjective symptoms.

Nakagawa and Tsuchiya didn’t say in what way they were going to use that data. I didn’t ask. The experiment was over, and we went back to Kamiku. Seeing this experiment, I thought that they really were going to use sarin for defense at the time of the “war.”

Thinking about it now, a much greater volume of sarin would be needed for defense and so the question of how they could get such a quantity comes up is raised, but at this time I was not thinking such thoughts very strictly, and only thought loosely about this.

Why was I called at this time? I think that it may be because I was supposed to perform treatment for sarin poisoning later on. At this time I was thinking that it would be fine if Asahara used me to treat sarin poisoning.

274

I supposes that Asahara must have had the intention of making me participate as a member of the medical team in his plans, particularly his plans to use sarin.

Now I think that Asahara had me join the on-site activities with a notion to “acclimate” or “condition” me, and made me participate in that experiment as a first step.

I think that after the Daisaku Ikeda Poa incident, Asahara stepped up the “fumie” [tests of faith] and “narashi”[habituation, conditioning] that he been giving me to the next level.

 

Japan’s second-oldest man actually a 30-year-old “partially mummified” dead body

This is already widely reported, but just thought I would share an amazing, terrifying story that happened pretty close to where I live.

Basically, the headline says it all. Back in June, some local workers visited the home one Sogen Kato to present him with an award – at 111 he had become the oldest resident of Adachi-ku, Tokyo, and the second-oldest man in Japan (on paper at least). However, his 80-year-old daughter wouldn’t let them in – “He’s upstairs but doesn’t want any visitors,” she said.

Undeterred, the officials complained to the police, who eventually got to the bottom of things – according to family members, in 1980 the then-octogenarian Kato declared he wanted to become “enlightened through mummification” (pic possibly NSFW – 即身仏), so would they please leave him alone in his room forever with no food or water, thank you very much.

Apparently, this claim might be a ruse – however Kato died, it’s possible they failed to report it in a ploy to keep receiving his pension. If true, that’s an incredibly stupid way of providing for your family after death. If he had bought a life insurance policy the survivors could have paid for a proper funeral (and therefore “proper” Buddha-fication) and still had enough left over to provide. And the biggest upside would be no skeletal corpse in the house for 30 years! I mean, just think of what you could do with that extra bedroom.

SLAMMING into election season

Somewhat randomly, the Wall Street Journal has recently started up a Japan blog called Japan Real Time (partly, it seems, to provide content to their new Japanese language site). Great stuff, welcome to the party. But being a mainstream media blog, it can’t seem to shake some conventions, like our pet-peeve (or is that favorite?) synonym for sharply criticizing someone:

Party Heads SLAM Tax Plans

Naoto Kan’s proposal to raise taxes, part of a broad fiscal reform package, has hit his popularity ratings and sparked plenty of discussion.

On Tuesday, several party heads made clear that they oppose the tax increase, accusing Mr. Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan of everything from “hocus-pocus economics” to potentially pushing suicide rates higher.

Here’s what they had to say:

Sadakazu Tanigaki, Liberal Democratic Party: The LDP is more or less on the same page as Mr. Kan’s DPJ — it proposed the tax hike to begin with — but Mr. Tanigaki sought to differentiate the two, criticizing Mr. Kan for not being clear on how the tax money will be used. The LDP, Mr. Tanigaki said, made clear in its policy statement that the money would be used for social security spending.

I like the frowny Tanigaki picture they chose (stolen above).

***

In other news, campaigning has heated up around my station. The other day I took a pamphlet from the Happiness Realization Party guy, and this morning the freak actually tried to talk to me on my way to work. If it weren’t so freaking humid a chill would have run down my spine. Those people have a few good ideas (bigger houses, more linear trains) mixed in with the crazy (attack North Korea preemptively, retirement age of 75, do everything to make Japan the world’s top economy by GDP), but zero respect for democracy. Funnily enough, part of their platform is to abolish the upper house of parliament, which just happens to be the very body they want the people to elect them to!

(thanks to Joe for the link)

Hiking in Hannou-shi, Saitama

Hannou-shi in Saitama Prefecture is located along the Seibu Ikebukuro line outside Tokyo. Closer to outlying Chichibu than urban Tokyo, the town’s look and feel are like a scene out of the recent Oscar-winning film Departures (which I highly recommend!). Mrs. Adamu and I decided to hike there after finding the town randomly on a web search. It was an extremely convenient trip – after an hour and a half train ride it was just a 10 minute walk to reach the trail. We followed this route on the Hiking Map website.

Anyway, here is what we saw!


This is a monument to local deaths from industrial accidents. Not sure why they died or when.


Going up Tenranzan mountain we came across these oddly shaped Buddhas. The fifth Tokugawa shogun apparently called a monk from a temple near this mountain to heal him with chanting, and it worked. The statues are somehow related to this.
Continue reading Hiking in Hannou-shi, Saitama

Japan Lower House election – Meet the candidates Part 4: Kazumasa Fujiyama (Happiness Realization Party

The final candidate in Tokyo’s 13th district is Kazumasa Fujiyama, running under the Happiness Realization Party ticket.

Before I get to this guy’s profile, I want to quote from an excellent piece on the party from the Irish Times:

Founded earlier this year to offer voters a “third choice”, the HRP has an eye-catching manifesto: multiply Japan’s population by 2.5 to 300 million, overtake the US to become the world’s premier power, and rapidly rearm for conflict with North Korea and China.

If elected, its lawmakers will inject religion into all areas of life and fight to overcome Japan’s “colonial” mentality, which has “fettered” the nation’s true claim to global leadership.

A new book, The Guardian Spirit of Kim Jong-Il Speaks , by party founder Ryuho Okawa explains that earlier this month at a session in the party’s Tokyo headquarters, the voice of Kim’s guardian angel warned of his plans. But at least Kim is alive – Okawa also claims to be able to receive the thoughts of Japan’s notorious wartime monarch, emperor Hirohito (1901-1989), and his deceased predecessors.

Being able to commune with the dead is but one string to Okawa’s bow. A reincarnation of Buddha, he achieved great enlightenment in 1981, according to the party’s website, “and awakened to the hidden part of his consciousness, El Cantare, whose mission is to bring happiness to all humanity”.

Before he founded the Happy Science religion in 1986, Okawa wrote books under the names of Muhammad, Christ, Buddha and Confucius. Conveniently, if improbably, speaking in Japanese, some of the prophets had much the same message: Japan is the world’s greatest power and should ditch its constitution, rearm and take over Asia.

The Happies boast that they have sold 11 million copies of their bible, Shoshin Hogo (The Dharma of the Right Mind), in Japan since 1986, and opened 200 temples.

Okawa’s books, mixing new-age philosophy with self-improvement tips and political views, have sold millions more, apparently providing the funding for the campaign. Translating those beliefs into political power, however, has proved easier said than done. Tokyo voters shunned the Happies’ candidates in this month’s municipal election, which ended LDP rule in the city and set the DPJ up for a historic national win next month.

Also, you might be interested to see the Happy party’s new manifesto video. It’s very similar to the one they produced for the Tokyo assembly elections (that animated treasure was unfortunately taken down), only this time slightly more professional:

Now, to the candidate:

Fujiyama happy party SN390094

Profile: An architect by trade, Fujiyama became a full-time Happy Science member in 1995 and has since risen to become a leader in Tokyo – he previously served as the head of the Science’s Nippori Branch and Adachi Branch before being named deputy leader of the Tokyo Branch in 2009.

Before becoming a full-time Happie, Fujiyama was an employee of Haseko Corporation, a construction/engineering firm that’s listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It’s unclear whether he was a member of Happy Science before 1995 or if he

One of Fujiyama’s bases of operations is the Science’s Nippori branch (seen here on Google Street View), which I happened to spot during a walk the other day:

Policy: As all Happiness Realization Party candidates appear to be carbon copies of one another, it’s no surprise that Fujiyama supports all the planks mentioned in the above video – slash taxes, smash North Korea, and somehow make Japan the world’s biggest economy by 2030 (I suspect they’d have to destroy all other countries to do this).

When asked in an Asahi questionnaire about how he would like the world to see Japan, he answered as “a great economy.” (経済大国)

Fujiyama claims in a blog post that the owner of a building near Kameari Station said she’ll support him because she hates paying consumption taxes.

Something interesting: Fujiyama bears an eerie resemblance to party founder and leader Ryuho Okawa:

Fujiyama:

Fujiyama asahi P_20090626SNSA0030S

Okawa:

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OK, I’ll admit that their parts are on opposite sides, but don’t you think they both have a sort of “divine salaryman” look going on?

***

My next and final profile post will look at a few of the Tokyo proportional representation candidates.

Japan Lower House election – Meet the candidates Part 0 – What voting means and how it works

On Tuesday, parts of Japan’s political net-osphere will go dark as the official campaigning period begins for the August 30 general election to select members of the nation’s lower house of parliament. Considering that this election has the potential to take government control away from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party for the first time in 13 years, national and international attention on this race is high.

So what can I add to the conversation? My interest in Japanese politics and other current events is fairly intense, so I plan to follow this story with the same rigor I apply to my other favorite topics.

Mainly,  I plan to profile the candidates up for election in my district (Tokyo’s 13th) to give a worm’s-eye-view of the election from my perch in Adachi-ku, Tokyo. Some readers will recall my series of candidate profiles leading up to last month’s Tokyo prefectural assembly elections.

But first, some opening remarks:

What will this election decide?

On Sunday, August 30, Japanese voters will go to the polls to elect all 480 members of the House of Representatives, the more powerful house of the country’s bicameral legislative branch of government. After the election, the Diet (Japan’s word for its parliament) will be convened to choose a prime minister, who will then form a cabinet. The upper and lower house will each conduct a vote, but if the upper house vote differs from the lower house’s, the lower house’s choice will prevail. If one party has won an outright majority of seats in the lower house, it can elect a prime minister without the aid of any other party, but if not various parties will have to negotiate and form a coalition government.

The lower house is where most substantive legislative business is done. It controls the passage of the national budget, can override an upper house veto with a two-thirds vote, and most importantly decides the appointment of the prime minister. The DPJ currently controls the upper house, which is a less powerful but still significant part of the legislative process.

The party (or coalition of parties) that wins this election will ostensibly gain control over essentially the entire country — if the DPJ gains control it will preside over the executive branch, dominate both houses of the legislature, and possess the power to appoint Supreme Court and lower court justices.

In practice, however, the prime minister and cabinet’s power has been limited – to give a very broad outline, powerful ministries set the agenda on most important national issues, the legislature exists mainly to ratify that agenda and distract the public with loud but ineffectual drama and scandal (in exchange for funneling money back to their districts), and the judicial nominees are almost never decided by the elected officials themselves.

The opposition Democratic Party of Japan are on track to make significant gains in this election, though it will be a tall order to increase their current standings (110) to exceed the LDP’s total of 303. The DPJ are campaigning on many issues, but perhaps first and foremost on a revolutionary vision of administrative reform. They believe that the bureaucrats in the country maintain power based on, in Secretary General Acting President Naoto Kan’s words, a “mistaken interpretation of the Constitution” that bureaucracy has the inherent right to control government administration, while it’s the job of the cabinet and legislature concentrate on passing laws. The DPJ would like to wrest control away from the “iron triangle” of unelected bureaucrats, powerful business interests, and their cronies in the Diet and place power squarely in the politicians’ hands. But more on that later.

How are members selected?

Since the law was changed in 1993 following a major LDP electoral defeat, members of Japan’s lower house have been chosen using two parallel systems – 300 are selected through single-member districts nationwide similar to the US House of Representatives, while the remaining 180 seats are allotted through a proportional representation system (or PR for short).

Under Japan’s PR system, the parties running in the election field candidates in each of 11 regions. On election day, voters write down two votes for the lower house – one for their preferred individual in their district, and the other to choose a party they’d like to receive the PR seats in their region. In the interest of counting as many votes as possible, votes will still count if a voter writes in the name of an individual running in the region or the party leader’s name instead of the party name.

For example of how this works, in 2005 the Tokyo PR district had 17 available seats. To win a seat, a party would have had to earn at least 5.88% of the vote, or 389,682 votes. Only one party that ran (Shinto Nippon with 290,027 votes) failed to gain a seat in this district.

The fact that relatively fewer votes are needed to win a PR seat has convinced smaller parties to try their luck. Most recently, the Happiness Realization Party, a newly formed political wing of new religion Happy Science, has decided to field more than 300 candidates in all single-member and PR districts (though as of this writing it is unclear whether they will actually go through with it). The religion’s leader Ryuho Okawa has announced his intention to run in the Kinki PR district with the top position. To do so he will need 3.45% of the vote, which would have been around 375,000 votes in 2005. His party would have to seriously improve its performance after winning a dismal 0.682% (13,401 votes in 10 districts) of votes in the Tokyo prefectural elections. Okawa had originally planned to run in Tokyo, but Tokyo has a higher 5.88% hurdle to overcome.

How does voting work in practice?

After entering the polling station, voters will be handed a paper ballot and a pencil (yes, a pencil, not a pen). They will be directed to a table with a list of candidates and instructions on how to vote. There they will write in the name of their preferred candidate along with their PR vote. To make it easier for voters to remember, many candidates spell their names using phonetic hiragana instead of kanji, which can be harder to write and have many different readings.

Since this election will also include a people’s review of nine of Japan’s 15 Supreme Court justices, voters will be required to mark an X next to the names of justices they would like to see dismissed. Blank votes will be counted as in favor of keeping them on.

In my next post, I’ll talk about the issues and outlook for this specific election before getting into the more provincial task of profiling my local candidates.

Tokyo assembly election: Meet the candidates (Part 6 of 10) – Nobuyuki Nakayama (New Komeito)

From Tokyo Prefectural Assembly Election

Next up is the second Komeito candidate, Nobuyuki Nakayama. His Komeito backing makes him a sure-fire winner in this election for the reasons I outlined in my previous post. He is also the only Adachi-ku candidate to sport a Cindy Crawford-esque beauty mark.

Unlike his party ally Tomotoshi, however, there is little doubt that Nakayama is a dyed in the wool Soka Gakkai member. His entire education from middle school to his master’s degree was spent in the SG school system (and read below to find out how much he respects SG leader Daisaku Ikeda).

Nakayama is finishing out his first term in the prefectural assembly. Before entering politics he earned the right to promote himself  as a “lifestyle and welfare expert” by spending 18 years in the welfare office of Meguro-ku (meaning his career closely resembles that of JCP candidate Yoshie Oshima).

A look through his blog shows that he tends to be positive and reserved except when he talks about Communists. He has no sympathy for teachers who refuse to sing the national anthem and accuses JCP assemblymen of negotiating in bad faith in budget resolutions.

Something interesting: Nakayama maintains two blogs: one for his official duties, and another “personal blog” ostensibly for his private thoughts and visits to factories and industry associations.

NakayamaOne thing I learned from reading through the personal blog is that Adachi-ku is home to the RSS Group, a maker of “high-quality” oshibori (wet-naps for use at restaurants) that are sold through a “rental” system wherein the company takes care of all cleaning and maintenance. Also, every fall the local wholesale market holds a festival where they sell fruits and vegetables and have a produce-themed roulette game. And there is a ginormous meat wholesale market in Shinagawa.

His favorite quote comes from a slogan issued by Beijing residents on the occasion of the death of former Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai during the Mao years: “The people love the people’s premier / The people’s premier loves the people.”

Nakayama’s thoughts on Soka Gakkai

Seemingly rare for a Komeito politician, on May 17, 2007 he gave a candid explanation of his personal connection to Soka Gakkai and his party’s relationship with it. In a gushing blog post about SGI leader Daisaku Ikeda, he calls Ikeda a “philsophical giant” (思想的巨人) and describes his thought and achievements as “no less than a feat of greatness in human history” (まさに人類史的な偉業そのもの). The post was inspired by an article in the Seikyo Shimbun (Soka Gakkai’s official daily newspaper) covering yet another honorary title bestowed on Ikeda, this time from the John Dewey Society.

Interestingly, he has a subtle and critical take on the role of his party in Japan’s democracy, which I will paraphrase here:

He is proud to be an assemblyman from the Komeito, the party founded by Dr. Ikeda. The Komeito, though a minority party, has boasted many shining achievements, thanks to the battles fought by senior members who have never forgotten the spirit of the party’s foundation “together with the masses,” and their dedicated supporters.

However, compared to the amazing greatness of founder Dr. Ikeda, the Komeito’s achievements are but a trifle. In addition, many supporters have been gnashing their teeth in anger at the recent political situation. He feels that the Komeito has become an “unprincipled party… that prioritizes controlling the government over the interests of the people.” Specifically, he is disappointed that the party did not hold Ishihara accountable for the mismanagement of Shinginko Tokyo.

One reason Komeito founder Ikeda is so widely recognized by global research institutions and universities is that his thoughts and beliefs are backed up by actions and achievements that these institutions recognize as “miracles.” Most of Ikeda’s followers work in their respective fields with a sense of mission and have produced results that are appreciated by many.

He then pledges to do his best as a local politician to stretch beyond the boundaries of status, philosophy, and belief to bring peace and happiness to as many people as possible and help the less fortunate.

I appreciate his forthrightness, though I personally cannot support his party’s mission to use the tools of government to realize Ikeda’s vision.

Tokyo assembly election: Meet the candidates (Part 5 of 10) – Haruhisa Tomotoshi

As the election looms, I am frantic to get these profiles done. To that end, tonight I will cover one of the New Komeito candidates: Haruhisa Tomotoshi (63). He is an incumbent and (like fellow Komeito candidate Nobuyuki Nakayama) has a near-certain chance of keeping his seat – LDP estimates of their party’s chances to keep control of the assembly assume that all 23 Komeito candidates will win.

Thanks to close ties with lay Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai, the Komeito enjoys a solid base of support among believers in Tokyo. Adachi-ku is also home to Akihiro Ota, the current president of the national New Komeito.

Some also speculate that the Komeito systematically inflates voter rolls by instructing Soka Gakkai followers across the country to move into election districts three months before the vote (the minimum residency period to become a valid voter). This may be true, but I would be kind of surprised if other parties didn’t at least try and employ similar tactics if they work so well.

Mrs. Adamu and I have a hard time supporting Komeito candidates because, like the Communists, they claim to be moderate but in fact have a hidden agenda. In the Komeito’s case, it is to protect the interests of Soka Gakkai, the Buddhist sect that provides election funding and sets their political agenda. The agenda itself tends to be quite mild, but I find the sum of their activities unacceptable: they inject religion into the political process, they maintain an aura of intense secrecy and refuse to explain why Soka Gakkai feels the need for political representation, and their activities appear to openly flaunt the democratic process to to protect a very narrow segment of society.

Anyway, let’s look at these guys.

Haruhisa Tomotoshi

From Tokyo Prefectural Assembly Election

As this poster might suggest, Tomotoshi “the man who really gets it done” does not feel he needs much introduction.

He is a veteran politician who spent five terms as an Adachi-ku assemblyman before moving on to the prefectural assembly, where he is currently on his second term. According to a JANJAN video, he was born in Manchukuo in 1945 just as WWII ended. He was never able to attend high school after his father died around 1960 when Haruhisa was 15. He had to work to support his mother and siblings before becoming an elected official at age 38.

One of the toughest fights of his political career was against Communist-backed Adachi-ku mayor Manzo Yoshida. Yoshida, who was mayor from 1996-1999, cancelled an unpopular building project and pushed to expand welfare services. Tomotoshi and other conservatives in the assembly fought Yoshida tooth and nail, and eventually successfully ousted him through a no-confidence motion.

As for his accomplishments, Tomotoshi takes some of the credit for completing the Tsukuba Express and Toneri Liner (two new train lines that run through Adachi).

It is unclear whether he is a Soka Gakkai believer.

In closing, watch this paranoid anti-Komeito propaganda video. They claim that the Komeito are being used by Soka Gakkai in an anti-Japanese plot to destroy the Japanese people’s lives:

Love the Final Fantasy-esque background music!

“After death cometh judgment” – Why are there so many Christian signs in provincial Japan?

(Updated mistranslation “regional” based on reader comment)

In his liveblog of Murakami’s new novel 1Q84, Daniel Morales of Howtojaponese challenged the folks at MFT to find something out for him (emphasis added):

 17:03 Done with Chapter 12. No topics on the Aum yet, but religion does come up. Will be interesting to see where he takes it. One question I’d like to see someone answer (maybe someone at Mutantfrog?) is why do so many houses in Japan have signs with Christian quotes on the side? I haven’t seen too many in Tokyo, but they were all over the town where I spent three years. Always the same color pattern – dark brown with yellow lettering. They said things like “The blood of Christ forgives all” or “He died for our sins.” Can’t seem to find a picture anywhere. (Update: Matt provided this link in the comments.)

We at MFT love a good challenge, and thankfully this one wasn’t all that challenging. Thanks to Matt‘s link, I was able to Google my way to the name of the group responsible: It is the Miyagi-based “Bible Distribution Cooperation Society” a loosely organized association of Christians at least partly led by American missionaries. This is one of the same groups who uses soundtrucks and bullhorns in the Shinjuku station area to get out the message of Christ, so those in the know might not be surprised that these signs also come from the American missionaries.

The short answer to Daniel’s question is that this group asks the owners of the house or any other public facade to let them post the signs, and the owners say yes. What follows is the same answer in much more detail, but first let’s give a little background of what we are talking about in case some readers haven’t seen the signs.

The signs

So if you’ve never been to Japan or just not to a part of Japan where the signs are visible, let me clue you in – in various places, mostly in areas outside the major urban centers, you will often see signs that look something like this:

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This one reads “After death cometh judgment- The Bible.” According to the site, it is posted on a bus stop near a middle school in Iwate Prefecture. Or this:

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“God is watching, even in your private life – The Bible.” (Taken in Akita Prefecture). Or this:

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“The wages of sin is death — The Bible” (Akita Prefecture)

(This site has LOTS more of the signs along with some Jack Chick-style pamphlets and a heaping helping of snarky commentary)

As you can see, they are written in white and yellow text on a black background in uneven, ransom-note fonts and usually contain the starkest of messages about what the God will do to you if you fail to accept Christ. If their intent is to scare the living crap out of people then they are remarkably effective as the signs are truly the stuff of nightmares (or at least a scene out of Carrie or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). These are not the only public displays in Japan that appear to be judging you on the spot, but they are by far the creepiest I’ve seen.  I just don’t understand the point of making these signs so creepy. If you want to make Christianity appealing wouldn’t you try and make people feel welcome instead of scolding them like this?

My personal encounters with the signs come during regular trips to visit inlaws in Tochigi Prefecture, near the Gunma border. Mrs. Adamu, her parents and I usually take backroads to avoid the high tolls, so we get to see several of these signs en route.

At any rate, the placement of these signs on cracked concrete structures and rusted out corrugated aluminum bus stops and storefronts reinforces the general theme of depression and stagnation that dominates the areas I’ve visited. Whenever I see another of these white-on-black reminders that God is watching, it makes me  wonder if it is meant as a protest against all the rust and malaise of Tochigi and Gunma.

The group

Now that we know what these signs are, let’s try and answer the next question: who is doing this and why?

According to Wikipedia, these signs are mainly the work of the Bible Distribution Cooperation Society, founded around 1950 in part by an American ex-soldier named Paul Broman who has dedicted his life to spreading the word of God using this unusual method. According to this now-defunct blog of a Japanese Christian minister, Broman took Japanese citizenship in 1970 and funds the activities of the group through his IT services business GrapeCity Inc (UPDATE: Though Broman would be about 82 right now, I haven’t seen an obituary anywhere so I assume he is still alive). According to the group’s website, they initially started their activities in Iwate and Aomori but in the late 1950s expanded internationally. According to Wikipedia, other activities of the group include sound trucks (you may have heard them in Shinjuku) and a Christian school based in Miyagi. They are an independent evangelist group not affiliated with Mormons, Unification Church or any other of the major groups.

Also according to Wikipedia, the signs are posted with the permission of the building/structure owners, and often they are neither a member of the association nor even Christian. They simply allow their real estate to be used for ads, similar to political posters and some other ad schemes, though apparently the association is either not allowed or does not offer to pay in exchange for the permission.

(An aside: This willingness to ugly up the neighborhood I think speaks to the owners’ complete lack of anything resembling taste or the basic decency to maintain an appealing public space. The towns, for their part, also seem to have no interest in keeping their neighborhoods nice. I am sure someone will tell me to shut up and stop making Alex Kerr-style arguments to legislate taste, but in cases like this I have to side with those who’d rather see fewer eyesores) 
 
The association’s official homepage, true to its funder’s background, is well-designed and contains a lot of information, though an uninformed viewer might not immediately recognize that this is the group behind the odd signs and the loud, judgmental announcements in Shinjuku (I’ll accept that maybe the cartoon sound truck at the top of the page gives it away). 

On the “About” page, the group’s stated objective is to “directly communicate the word of The Bible” (「聖書のことば」をそのまま伝える」). Their listed activities are distribution of free literature at primary/middle/high schools, “broadcasting” the word of The Bible in areas where many people congregate, individual proselytizing by Christians, and communication of the word of The Bible on placards and signs. They are not a membership organization and do not solicit members. Though the group lends “mutual help” and coordination, each member is individually responsible for his or her activities. Wikipedia indicated that there are apparently other groups who are not affiliated with the original society who have imitated their style. Based on this mission statement I don’t think they would mind imitators.

The group’s activities are completely self-funded and seek no charity. They boast that they have distributed 60 million Bibles to 18 countries throughout their history. They claim to pass out 1 million Bibles in Japan each year.

It is hard to know how many people are involved with these efforts. I am still waiting for an email response from an affiliated group, the Church and Home Educators Association Japan (CHEA Japan). For reference, various estimates count between 1 and 3 million of Japan’s people as at least nominally Christian. Protestants, for their part, comprise around half a million or 0.4% of the population (this is a Wikipedia figure apparently taken from Adherents.org. Like all such estimates it is probably pretty unreliable).

Vintage evangelism

 The site also features a photo gallery of the group’s work that includes some vintage signs (unfortunately undated!). Some of these are really cool so I’ll post the best of them:
 

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“Jesus is the way, truth, life.”

christ-died-for-the-sinners

“Christ died for the sinners.”

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“God is not in the shrine.”

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“After death cometh judgment.”

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i-am-the-way

Front: “I am the way.”

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John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

blood-of-christ-gods-only-son

“The blood of Christ, God’s only son, purifies all our sins – The Bible.”

There are lots more on the site, so I advise you to check them out! 

Fun with Christian signs

These signs have become something of an underground social phenomenon due their sheer ubiquity (in Japanese some refer to them as キリスト看板 or roughly “those Christian signs”). One site (linked from Wikipedia) lets you create your own scary signs in HTML. Here is my version of Nietsche’s “God is dead” quote: