July 30, 2009

In Shirakawa village, a depopulated village in a mountainous area in Gifu Prefecture in central Japan, the Japanese Communist Party welcomed four villagers as new JCP members and set up a new party branch there.

The village is located an hour’s drive from Takayama City. In July 2008, handbills informing the public of a speech meeting to be held with JCP Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi as the main speaker in the city were distributed in Shirakawa village, and a villager came from the village. His participation later encouraged the JCP district activists to visit the village every month. As proper sites for speech meetings are hard to find in the mountainous area, meetings were often held by the roadside.

A JCP speech meeting held last October in a well-known Buddhist temple in Shirakawa village was much talked about, resulting in the increase in the membership of JCP supporters association to 110.

In late June, the man who came to last year’s speech meeting in Takayama joined the party saying, “I’ve made up my mind. I want government to be changed”. He introduced an acquaintance of his who also joined and introduced two newcomers, with a total of four joining the JCP. They were all worried about the future of village under the policies of the Liberal Democratic Party government and the worsening living conditions.
- Akahata, July 30, 2009