Japan Press Weekly

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2016 February 10 - 16 [POLITICS]

Local action in defense of Article 9 joined by 10K people in total

An action in defense of Japan’s war-renouncing Article 9 has been taking place on the 9th, 19th, and 29th of every month in front of JR Chigasaki Station in Kanagawa since Japan first sent its Self-Defense Forces to Iraq in December 2003. The number of participants at this event totaled 10,000 this month.

Demonstrators on February 9 gathered outside the station standing in silence and holding up handmade plaster posters and banners which read, “Abide by Article 9!”, “Repeal the war laws!”, “Opposition parties, unite!”, “No to nuclear energy!”, and “We can no longer tolerate Abe’s government.” Some were displaying a patchwork quilt on which the Article 9 text is stitched.

In the action in this day, the number of “standing people” reached 85 in the end, including two Japanese Communist Party members of the local city assembly. The 10,000th person was 65-year-old Yamamoto Mitsukazu. He said, “I’ll keep doing this until the war legislation is revoked. I want opposition parties to cooperate in the Upper House election and want everybody to go to vote.”

Okamoto Munemori, 73, started this “standing” action as a gesture of his protest against the SDF dispatch to Iraq. He said that the number of those who come and participate in the demonstration began to sharply increase in summer last year when concerns about the security-related legislation became a focus of discussion. The founder added, “I’ll work even harder to have our demands spread like wildfire through the county to realize the abolition of the war laws and the resignation of the Abe regime.”