Quand on retrouve des ''tropes'' (clicher) de manga dans les campagne politique au japon!

Japan is holding a national election on December 16. No, wait! Don't stop reading, because one politician just did something so very cool. It's more a like manga-inspired art project than your typical politics.


Before the election, boring posters of politicians go up across Japan. The posters feature headshots, and like I said, they are so boring. The photos, the design, and the poses all look the same.

Not this series of posters from Toru Watanabe, who is running as a member of the Japan Restoration Party for the Tokyo fifth district.

Starting on December 4, a Watanabe poster appeared on a local pharmacy. The tagline refers to "running through" the Japan Restoration Party's path. And each day, a new poster with a new photo appeared and seemed to take that tagline literally.

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The stop motion photos and manga style speed effects work brilliantly. Who said Japanese politics was dull?

On the eve of an election, a politician stood before a crowd. The speech was fiery. And flags fluttered. If this were anywhere else, nobody would think twice. But this wasn't anywhere. It was Tokyo.


Akihabara to be exact. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lead his conservative Liberal Democratic Party to a huge victory yesterday, bring him back to power.

On December 15, Abe made a last minute speech in Akihabara, Japan's geek district. He spoke from a van in front of the Gundam Cafe. Next door, the neon lights for idol group AKB48's restaurant burned. A crowd of one to two thousand gathered to listen to Abe speak. It's not uncommon for large crowds to gather and listen to politicians in Japan.

What is uncommon is widespread flag waving, even at campaign speeches. At events like this, rallying around the flag brings up memories of World War II—not just for people outside Japan, but people in the country. This is compounded by Abe's desire to change Japan's Constitution, which says that Japan can have a self-defense force, so it could have a more assertive military. (Other things he wants to do is jump-start the economy, keep nuclear power, address the bullying problem in schools, and end the country's crippling deflation.)

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"This is so unsettling", wrote one user on 2ch, Japan's largest bulletin board. "This is scary," wrote another. "The hell are these people doing," added yet another. "I really cannot comprehend."

Another said only left wingers equated the Japanese flag with war. Some even pointed out how during foreign elections—whether that's America, France, England or wherever—numerous people wave their country's flag. "Ha, so it's only strange for Japan," quipped one commenter.



"It's bizarre to hate your own country's flag," wrote another commenter. "It's normal to be proud of one's country. The only ones who hate the Japanese flag are Koreans living in Japan."



Even in Japan, the concern that some have is that strong patriotism brought all sorts of hardship onto Japan and the rest of the world. And as those who experienced those hardships during the war continue to pass away, there are fewer reminders of just how bad things got. The war left such a bad taste in enough people's mouths that even today such public displays of nationalism can make people in Japan uneasy. Some Japanese don't even like singing the national anthem or the flag because they are reminders of Japan's military past.



There could be different explanations for this recent display of nationalism in Akihabara. On Twitter, some individuals even worried if these flag wavers were (偽客), or plants—you know, faux flag wavers. Or perhaps, a right wing group passed them out to people at the rally. Even if they were phonies, the landslide victory on December 16 was very real.

Japan's new right-wing government hasn't wasted time in alienating
tens of millions of its voters. According to finance minister Taro Aso,
elderly people should "hurry up and die" so that pressure can be relieved on the state to pay for their skyrocketing medical bills. Indeed,
nearly a quarter of Japan's population is over 60, so the government is
starting to feel the strain. But given the potential for more advanced
life extension technologies and even longer lives, it's
something that governments — and voters — are going to have get used to.
Anything less would be utterly discriminatory.
Aso made the
statement Monday during a meeting of a national council looking at
changes to social security. He also referred to seniors who are unable
to feed themselves as "tube people." The Guardian reports:


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Cost
aside, caring for the elderly is a major challenge for Japan's
stretched social services. According to a report this week, the number
of households receiving welfare, which include family members aged 65 or
over, stood at more than 678,000, or about 40% of the total. The
country is also tackling a rise in the number of people who die alone,
most of whom are elderly. In 2010, 4.6 million elderly people lived
alone, and the number who died at home soared 61% between 2003 and 2010,
from 1,364 to 2,194, according to the bureau of social welfare and
public health in Tokyo.
The government is planning to reduce
welfare expenditure in its next budget, due to go into force this April,
with details of the cuts expected within days.
Aso, who has a
propensity for verbal blunders, later attempted to clarify his comments.
He acknowledged his language had been "inappropriate" in a public forum
and insisted he was talking only about his personal preference.

This
"clarification" aside, the finance minister is evidently reacting to
not just current fiscal realities, but to estimates predicting that over
40% of the Japanese population will be over 60 in the next 50 years.
Clearly,
the aging population is placing a tremendous strain on the government,
both in Japan and elsewhere. But that's no excuse for such agist and
callous comments. The elderly population is being treated as second
class citizens, and as a kind of regrettable reality that the state is
forced to deal with.
Such sentiments are unacceptable and
completely undemocratic. But what's even more troubling is the potential
for this kind of discrimination to get even worse. We are at the dawn
of the second wave of life extension, where human longevity is set to
increase even more dramatically. Wishing that elderly people would just
"hurry up and die" is not a vision for the future. It's a myopic
perspective that will only exacerbate the resentment young people feel
towards the older generations — generations who have the right to life
and unhindered access to medical technologies.
Rather than bemoan
the presence of an increasingly aged population, governments need to
own up to what's happening. It's clearly going to be a monumental
challenge, but simply hoping that people will quickly die so that they
don't have to figure this all out is clearly not the way to go.