With the Upper House elections being held on the 29th July 2007 and politicians of various parties electioneering on the streets and television, I thought I would introduce some interesting links regarding the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) - perhaps the only political party now in Japan which offers an alternative politics to the largely homogenous right-centrist positions of the governing LDP and Minshuto (largest oppisition) parties. Although I had been aware of their existence for many years, I had never really taken much notice of the JCP, thinking them a remnant of Cold War ideological politics. I understand that the JCP does indeed still operate in rather formalistic and restrictive ways regarding policy and party membership - what the leadership says, members must follow. This seems another manifestation of what I have come to see as a widespread application of the 'cosu-pure' or costume play syndrome in Japan - the adoption formally (in terms of looks, clothing, postures, formulas etc) of some system or trend without necessarily thinking beyond this. Perhaps this reading emerges out of a Barthian 'Empire of Signs' discourse of seeing a Japan made up of only surfaces and signs. However, the 'cosu-pure' syndrome seems to offer one way of understanding how many institutions or cultures adopt something in a formal manner (kata), and pursue this to highly detailed and rigorous ends. In many cases, through this process of inhabitation, the thing appropriated is transformed beyond recognition and made anew.
Back to the Communists. Their english website is HERE.
There was a very informative article in a recent edition of TIME magazine that analysed the JCP's current standing within the political lanbscape in Japan and its critical stance against the right-wing government of PM Abe. You can read this HERE.
Also an interesting June report in the Boston Globe reporting on the JCP's uncovering of surveillance of Japanese citizens and NGO's who opposed the dispatch of Japanese troops to Iraq. This can be read HERE.
Finally, on the cultural front, I have been doing some research on the links between the JCP and Japanese artists and writers in the pre-war and post-wars years. This is a topic of considerable interest which has, I think, significant meaning for thinking about contemporary developments. The JCP were the only group actively opposing the rise of militarism in Japan in the build up to the Manchuria/ Pearl Harbour episodes. For this they were essentially banned and persecuted. After the war, many artists and writers were highly sympathetic to the JCP as a clear alternative to Japan's militarism and Imperialism. This is a complex topic, but just to mention one point: through my talks with Fumihiko Sumitomo (AIT member and curator at MOT), I learnt that it was the JCP who founded the 'Nihon Bijutsu Kai' - an arts group opposed to the conservative Nitten arts group - which was to form the basis for the highly radical and important Yomiuri Independents Exhibitions. This was a period when culture and art stood for democracy and freedom of expression in Japan. Art represented individual thinking as opposed to mass mobilisation. One significant writer here is Abe Kobo, who along with others such as Hanada Kiyoteru, were active in left politics. There is an interview with Abe's daughter HERE, which lightly covers some of this territory.
I am trying to gather thoughts around this area towards a paper I plan to give at a conference in November.
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