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Election day

communist party election van takadanobaba station japan kyosanto

Tomorrow is election day in Japan. To that end the candidates have been out in full force since we arrived in Japan a couple weeks ago. The campaigns are somewhat different than in the U.S. Candidates run around town in cars, vans, and buses with loudspeakers saying their name, party, and/or a message over and over again. Sometimes they’ll stop and give a speech from the top as the above photo shows. I took this picture in front of the Takadanobaba Station.

For those of you that can’t read Japanese, the political party sponsoring this van is none other than the Communist Party (共産党 or Kyosanto). There is no majority party in Japan. The communists get about 7 or 8% of the vote.

The two largest parties are 自由民主党 or 自民党 for short (frequently called the LDP in English). This party is most like the Republican Party in the states. 民主党 (Minshuto or DPJ in English) is the one most like the Democratic Party in the U.S. Neither party gets more than 40%.

japan election campaign poster smile party

Ads on the road are more controlled than in the states (thank goodness!) and can only be posted on boards set aside specifically for them. The above is an example.

The guys on the lower corners will likely get the most votes since they belong to the LDP and DPJ so they don’t provide much of a message–just a name, picture, and party for the most part. The guy in the upper right corner is the communist. To try and garner the younger votes, I suppose, he lists his age on the poster as 33.

The guy in the middle on the top has a long message to make. If you can read Japanese you can click on the above photo to get a bigger picture to read from. But the funnest one of all is the guy on the bottom in the middle. I’m guessing he is in a party of one. And what a party it is. The name of his political party is the Smile Party (スマイル党). He shows you just how happy he is with four pictures of himself smiling. Were I eligible to vote, I’d vote for him if I was certain he didn’t really have a chance of winning.

kyosanto election loud speaker vehicle tokyo japan

Here is another shot of the communists filling the air with noise pollution at incredible decibel levels.

One Response to “Election day”

  1. 1
    Bread Sandwich:

    Interesting.

    Japanese elections are meant to be pretty interesting, and complex.I’ll try to follow them tomorrow.