Friday, July 8, 2016

The Perils of Democracy

TOKYO – It’s a dull summer month in Nihongo, and 50,000 locals march against the US occupation of Okinawa and a recent rape-murder of a Japanese woman by a US military contractor.
The Japanese protest against the US soldiers in Okinawa since I can remember, 1995. Only if we are willing to see democracy as a form of opiate of the defeated [Japan lost World War 2] do we start to see its peril: Nothing in Okinawa is going to change for Japan in a democracy. Ever! Nothing is achieved by democratic protest.
A version of this article was published in The South China Morning Post on June 5th, 2016.