Anti-noise NOISE campaign in Tokyo
10 local politicians set up anti-election noise campaign
MSN-Mainichi Daily News – April 16, 2007 — Ten local politicians, mostly those running in the second round of the unified local elections next Sunday, have set up a network opposing the blaring of candidates’ names from loudspeakers on election campaign cars…
….are refraining from using campaign cars and instead delivered street speeches using hand-held microphones....more…
Say what?! I cannot hear you. There’s a crappy campaign sound truck outside screaming Japanese gibberish over and over.
I can commend the “idea” of this anti-election noise campaign. However, walking up to people at the railroad station with a megaphone and SCREAMING over and over, “VOTE FOR TARO” is not any improvement. Such in-your-face candidates can go to hell…no wait, they live in a hell of their own creation. I
like the comment in the above news report of, a DJP candidate, who is running in Tokyo’s Chofu Municipal Assembly election who said: “Blaring candidates’ names from loudspeakers is a nuisance and its effect is doubtful. We shouldn’t waste taxpayers’ money.” Damn, I never realized my tax money supports noise pollution.
- 
April 16th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
All this damn Japanese campaign noise is painful and pointless. It’s a perfect reason to legalize gun use in Japan. Arrrrg!
April 16th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
There was a guy and his crew that were around here in Chigasaki/Tsujidou going around in bicycles and plastic speaker-cones (is that the right term) saying “We aren’t using cars, we are saving money and not polluting.” If I could vote, I’d vote for him.
This past Sunday was very annoying. They were blocking the already crowded roads when I was driving and up until 7:30pm I could hear them from my house.
There is no amount of waving and pink wind-jackets that could make me appreciate what they are doing.
A vote for Taro is a vote for peace and quiet.
April 17th, 2007 at 10:03 am
That’s kind of a tough one. The word for those “speaker cones” is “megaphone.” Edison exhibited an earliest version of the megaphone (it was too ‘obvious’ and ‘non-novel’ for Edison to bother to patent it). Nowadays “megaphone” implies electronic amplification, and I would be forced to use the odd, arcane word “speaking-trumpet” if I was editing a technical paper or patent (that’s my day-job).
Campaign loudspeakers have been banned in most jurisdictions in the United States since the 1950s. And, despite what has been shown in the Blues Brothers movie, I never had the misfortune to hear or see one in use for street campaigning until my UFO crashed here in Tokyo decades ago.
http://www.ImageShack.us“/>
My Platform for a “Utsukushii kuni” (美しい国 – Beautiful Country):
* Tabasco sauce covered weasels up the butt for anybody haranguing neighborhoods with distorted taped announcements for blue plastic bamboo clothing poles
* Public flogging for political campaigning with loudspeakers
* The death penalty for using bull-horns inside supermarkets
May 21st, 2009 at 9:57 am
Ha!
You would think that they world have banned such noise making from the beginning instead of allowing it to go so long without saying a thing. Now is is too late.