this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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In Japan I would say not great, but outside of a short-lived revolutionary surge that was put-down thanks to the US we have existed pretty much as a US lapdog since WW2. So nothing too surprising.
Yen has absolutely plummeted thanks in part to our joining sanctions against Russia. There was a period a couple years back that the yen was roughly equal to the dollar, 100 JPY was about 1 USD. Now we are hovering around 150 JPY to the dollar and it looks to be trending even weaker.
Electricity costs have close to doubled thanks to said sanctions too, especially since we refuse to restart nuclear power in most areas. Almost the entire country's electricity costs have increased by 50% or more and we had a wave of deaths over the summer of people dying of heat stroke. When I moved into my current flat, the rental company suggested we try taking cold baths to save costs.
Ukraine, people seem to be mostly over. People were very outspoken on it right at the start, Japan never wants to be behind on the latest Cause, but once it started affecting them negatively people's opinions started to shift. I actually saw a program on public TV the other night talking about the 2014 coups that precipiated everything.
Oh and one of our few good politicians (the governor of Okinawa/Ryukyuu) is currently in the process of being overruled by the government because he refused to approve the relocation and construction of the US bases in okinawa because nobody there actually wants them. So the government is pushing it to the supreme court to just bypass him, which of course they will do.
So yeah, things are just dandy. The one good thing I hope to see out of all of this is there is a growing contingent of people who want to be free of US occupation. Some people because they are just tired of being the US lapdogs, some people are tired of the occupiers assaulting the locals, and others worried about making Japan a staging ground for aggression against China.
Hello, Japanese comrade🫡 I have a question I'd like to trouble you to answer,This question has been bothering me for a long time. As Chinese we often discuss that there are no more Marxist-Leninists in contemporary Japan, the Japanese Communist Party has turned into a social democratic party that supports the Emperor, and that the student movement org（中核派） left over from the 1960s is a strangely Trotskyist. Do you think that there is still any basic organization/thinker in Japan?
Happy to answer, though sadly I can't say that there is any secret widespread ML organizations that you missed.
I think it's not quite true to say that there are no Marxist-Leninists in contemporary Japan (I am one!) but that they are at a much more grassroots level. In local circles and academic circles, I see a lot more of it. Members of the party that are winning seats in government, much less so.
I will say that your perception of the parties as a whole are accurate though. It isn't the same party that it was under Fuwa. The Kyosanto of today does lean pretty socdem in a lot of ways, as they ran away from a lot of their fouding principles after the red purge. The sudden 180 support of the Emperor is a particular sticking point for me recently, because they used to be very staunchly against the imperial family. The desire to distance themselves from the CPC also seems short-sighted, as they could easily be a great ally for us. There are many areas that the party needs work. It feels like constant concessions towards being practical has just served to undermine the party as a whole.
On the other hand, they do still have some good positions such as being opposed to the historical revisionism we see so often from Japanese politicians and being opposed to the US occupation. The latter of which I think is a necessary first step before basically anything else.
I would still encourage comrades here to reach out to their local chapters though, because I often find them much more left-oriented in their ways of thinking than the party as a whole might be. I think it is important to realise that a lot of the Kyosanto's run away from Marxism is very recent, within 20 years or less. There are a lot of members who predate that and still believe in a lot of core marxist tenants. I don't think it is out of the question for the party to course correct, but it will take a lot of effort.
Thank you for your reply! I think the point about members being more basic than the organization applies to most non-ruling communist parties. I'm glad there are still people fighting!