45,000 People Protested Against Ooi Restart in Front of PM Official Residence in Tokyo on June 22, 2012, Media Finally Report(UPDATE) Video of TV Asahi program reporting the protest
in the latest post.
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Well well. People in Japan did it the old-fashion way to attract media attention (not that they did it to attract attention, but...). Every single media in Japan ignored the protest on June 15 with 11,000 (or 12,000) people, but they just couldn't ignore the June 22 crowd of 45,000. (The number is according to the organizers. The police puts the number at 11,000.)
(The photographs are from Mainichi Shinbun. There are more at
Mainichi's site. Amazing.)
Quick report from Tokyo Brown Tabby (original in Japanese; I translated it quickly, may revise later):
Just now, TV Asahi's program "Hodo Station" [news and commentary show] took up the protest in front of the Prime Minister's Official Residence earlier today [June 22].
The program devoted a decent amount of time reporting the protest, it did mention 45,000 protesters - the number as announced by the organizers, it also said the protesters were just totally ordinary people. They even interviewed several organizers. A female newscaster of the program went there as a reporter and interviewed them. The program further mentioned that the protest is carried out every Friday, and that it started out with only a few hundred people but the number has grown rapidly.
What was amazing was that the reporter went inside the PM Official Residence during the protest and picked up the sound from the protest. It was deafening.
The reporter even asked Edano and Hosono, "So what do you think of the demonstration outside?" [TBT didn't say what their answer was.]
The main newscaster of the program Furutachi was positive on the demonstration, saying that the demonstration was "the voice of ordinary citizens" and that the politics in Japan had become so dissociated with the ordinary citizens. A commentator on the program tried to change the subject and started to say the Japanese citizens should also turn their attention to the contradiction that Japan is showing the sign of moving away from nuclear power generation but at the same time selling nuclear power plants to foreign countries. Mr. Furutachi cut him off, and said "We should first tackle the contradiction of restarting nuclear power plants while the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident is far from over."
Why did they suddenly decide to report the protest? Last week [June 15], I thought it would be them, if anyone should report. But they didn't. It's a mystery. Anyway, it was a very decent report.
Tokyo Brown Tabby didn't go this time, but plans to go to the future ones. TBT also says there is a plan to surround the National Diet building on July 29.
According to the Japanese mainstream media who suddenly decided to report this 45,000-strong protest in the central Tokyo, the Metropolitan Police put the number at 11,000. Some news outlets (like
FNN) only reports this lower number, but
Mainichireported "45,000", so did
Tokyo Shinbun.
I just noticed the
FNN news video starts out by focusing on a very small contingent of ultra-right nationalists (the "black truck" people), as if the protest were being done by extremists. The June 16 protest, which some media did report, was framed as if it were about ultra-left extremists.
Asahi Shinbun decided to report only the protest in front of KEPCO in Osaka City, where 1,500 people gathered to protest the restart of Ooi Nuke Plant. Yomiuri Shinbun completely ignored both protests, so did NHK. True to form.
(Mainichi)
(FNN screen shot, right after the focus on ultra-right nationalists):