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Japan Bans Use of Web Sites in Elections
couch_warrior writes with a BBC article about Japan's choice to restrain political speech in the 21st century. The nation of Japan bans the use of internet sites to solicit voters in its upper house elections. Based on election laws drawn up in the 50s, candidates are restricted in the ways they can reach their constituents. Candidates are even restrained from distributing leaflets that will reach more than 3% of the voters. What's more, people who are trying to change the laws are failing. Despite heavy internet usage and a strong installed base of high-speed connectivity, young people just don't feel involved in politics. "In Japan, 95% of people in their 20s surf the web, but only a third of them bother to vote. Some, though, do not seem keen on politicians using the web to try to win their support. 'I believe that internet resources are not very official,' says Kentaro Shimano, a student at Temple University in Tokyo. 'YouTube is more casual; you watch music videos or funny videos on it, but if the government or any politicians are on the web it doesn't feel right.' Haruka Konishi agrees. 'Japanese politics is something really serious,' she says. 'Young people shouldn't be involved, I guess because they're not serious enough or they don't have the education.' There cannot be many places in the world where students feel their views should not count. Perhaps it is really a reflection of the reality — that they do not."
In any democracy, all people who are affected by the laws should have a say in how those laws get made. Indeed, they have a responsibility and a duty to make their voices heard.
To paraphrase an old saw about reading, "the person who doesn't vote is no better off than the person who cannot vote!"
Hey, I just realized, I'm too stupid and uneducated as a person to post comments, please take this away from me.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
...between Japanese and American students. American students think they know everything and people care what they have to say. Japanese students know everything--including that nobody cares.
--josh
'Young people shouldn't be involved, I guess because they're not serious enough or they don't have the education.'
I'm not up to date on the civics education in Japan, but I feel that in America it's sorely lacking and really explains why we have such poor turnouts for our elections. I didn't have Civics (American Government, or whatever you may have had instead) until Senior year in high school, and by then it was obvious that most of the students in my class didn't care. It seemed as though most were content to sleep or slack off during the class or agonize the teacher with idiotic questions or annoying answers.
I think if we would have had the class at a much younger age and a teacher who promoted the importance of voting and participating in government, more students would have been interested in their government and the political process, perhaps to the point that they would research candidates on their own and make informed political decisions or have intelligent political discussion beyond "Bush is a Nazi!"
Looking back on my education as a child, I really wished that there would have been more classes like this at a younger age or just more schooling in general. I look at the other countries where children receive more schooling than here in America and wonder why this isn't something that we as a country aren't attempting to emulate.
Im not sure what the implications of this are in Japan, if it ensures all parties get the same air time Id say its good.
If used by the ruling parties to stifle others, ofcourse not so good.
A totally open system will only favour the party with most money/biggest corporate backers.
Where I live political ads on tv are illegal, and I think most agree its for the best. Anyone wanting to sling mud on another candidate has to do so face to face in a debate, and be ready to back it up or be called on it.
As long as the aforementioned hypothetical 18-year-old can't be asked by his/her country to serve, and die in its service, I guess I'm fine with that. As far as this much-older-than-18-year-old is concerned, though -- if you're old enough to be a soldier, a sailor, a member of the police force, or a firefighter, then you should be old enough to vote.
i know there's probably plenty of people reading this aged 17 - 25, who'll hate this simple fact. Your too young to have experienced enough to have much of a world view.
granted i'm not old enough to look down my nose at you, but i have atleast the realisation i have lots to learn.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
And the 60 year old is going to be an intelligent voter? They're not going to blindly vote for any asshole who promises "morality" and "the good old days"?
Face it, all ages of voters have the potential to be (and often are) stupid. Frankly, I've talked to some pretty damn thoughtful 12 year olds. I'm not saying that newborns should vote, but 18 sure as hell is an arbitrary line in the sand. Some people grow up before then, and some never do.
> So really, low turnout of inexperienced people is not bad. We don't need any more people voting for the guy with the attractive haircut.
Hey, if I just turned 18, maybe it's just possible that I could actually be more politically informed and qualified to vote than 90% of the 30-year-olds out there. How are you going to determine I'm not?
The important point being, you don't have the power to keep me from voting just because you think I'm voting for a haircut!
It's not that Japan "just banned" the use of web sites; it's that the law as written doesn't allow it, and hasn't been changed (in relevant part) since the web came about. Or rather, it's that the law is believed not to allow web sites; a few candidates that tried it got a warning that it "might" break the law, and none of them were willing to actually take it to the courts. (Interestingly enough, in this election the political parties have started posting their non-candidate members' speeches, arguing that they're allowed as descriptions of party activities rather than restricted candidate activities. We'll have to see how that holds up.)
Incidentally, a similar problem with videos of campaign speeches was discussed here in April.
Have you maybe though that this is you and a fraction of the rest of the population? I am tired of someone's experience being expanded onto applying to everyone as a quasi-universal experience.
I know people over 50 that still act and think like teenagers. And I know teenagers that have it together without acting like they are the masters of the world.
That said, advocating passiveness of the original parent is about the dumbest idea I have ever heard of. For one, if I wanted to learn how to cook - do I stay back, observe for years, and wait to do anything? No, I absorb one thing at a time, and then try it myself. I might fail the first few times, but I will become infinitely better much sooner than somebody who becomes an armchair cook watching Rachael Ray all day.
Second, passiveness and complacency is precisely the problem with politics. Let the more experienced people take care of it. Well, we have let others take care of it. Look at our country today - two big sides of "experienced" adults mostly with rigid adherence to "their" political party despite all else, our nation with neck up in debt with several looming financial disasters in the future our politicians believe they can either borrow their way out of or don't care since they'll be long gone by then, etcetera.
Yeah, I'd rather have people in as early as possible. Yeah, they will make mistakes early on. But I figure someone inexperienced at 18 making mistakes will recover and be more willing to change their opinions than someone who is 35, observationally experienced and practically inexperienced, and set in their ways.
Let's not forget, many of the "experienced" senior citizens are also voting to look out of their interests. It could and should be counterbalanced.
*You may notice my sarcastic use of experience throughout. I believe anybody who supports a particular political party in this day and age, particularly one of the big 2, has not learned anything of value from their so-called experience. There are good people in both parties, but that is inspite of the party's best trying otherwise. Since most people of any age fall in this category, a lot of experience is not being put to use anyway. I refer you all to George Washington's farewell address.
How many 16 year olds have experience of getting up at 4am to go to work, year after fucking year, just to meet the payments on a mortgage/credit card/loan/gas bill/electric bill/whatever ?
How many 16 year olds can be trusted to vote for politicians that promise decent care for the elderly, and reasonable pension provisioning ?
How many 16 year olds actually give a flying fuck about anything except themselves, or things that affect them directly ?
The reason I mention 16 is because Bliars govt. has mooted the idea of lowering the voting age to 16, thereby increasing the number of impressionable people who are most likely to vote Labour, just because they don't know any better, and after all Labour has given them The Vote !
Yes, I realise that you can't tar all 16 year olds with the same brush regarding their opinions, but you can definitely say they haven't had to work for a living ever. And most of what govt. does is payed for by those who pay income tax. How can you make an informed decision on a proposed piece of legislation, if you have no concept of what it will cost YOU in terms of your pay packet/standard of living, and whether it's a good trade off.
I have been paying taxes and National Insurance to the govt. for the past 25 years, and what have I got to look forward to ?
My state pension as provided for by the NI payments will be so small as to be useless.
If I need hospital treatment in the future, I am likely to be refused because I smoke (despite the fact that in 25 years, I have never required hospital treatment, and have never clogged up accident and emergency because of a cut finger)
Where has my money gone ? Am I entitled to nothing I was promised and have payed for (in advance)?
And yet the govt. is happy to pay people to do nothing rather than work, to pay people grants for life choices, to give people tax breaks for life choices (marriage, pregnancy, multiple children) while I as a single white male, am taxed the most and receive the least (nothing to be precise). I agree with the principle of social support, but I don't agree with being treated as a cash cow for other peoples life choices. The whole social support structure was intended for people who had fallen on hard times, not to provide a nice side line for people who decided to have 6 kids, but couldn't afford to provide for them.
How can you expect a 16 year old to have a sense of grievance like that, without which, any political decision they make is rather shallow and open to manipulation.
Bah ! Get off my lawn !
how letting younger people vote would make it any worse than it already is; or how they would have any more weight than any other societal group
And don't even get me started on how completely worthless voting is because we only vote on "representatives" who don't instead of the real issues: I do understand it, but what good does that to me if it is not me who votes on it but someone who is paid to vote in a specific way? And even if they aren't paid tend to be informed about as well as your average person: If people are too stupid to make correct decision, what could make anyone think that they could possibly vote for good representatives?
As for your other grievances: I think a big part of the problem is simply the lack of education and perspective we provide your young. In fact, your education should start with yourself, realizing that all that talk about people having an easy life off of your money is absolutely nothing but propaganda, designed to divide the people (between "old" and "young", "haves" and "have nots", always saying that the other are unfairly better off) and make them toe the party line. Don't get me wrong, there surely are some people who intentionally misuse social support. But I really have yet to see any proposal which really curbs the misuse instead of simply making it harder for those who really have a problem. Indeed, one might compare it to copy protection: It makes legetimate use difficult while doing nothing to make illegal use harder after someone has taken the first hurdle.
As an aside: I don't really see why we still have to put up with this insane idea that people have to "deserve" to live. Applied to your example: You seem to prefer to let the children die because their parent can't afford them. I think that you work hard and "they don't" should really solved in another way than hoping for them to die or cruelly providing for them too little to live, too much to die. Indeed, your pension being so small doesn't come from teenagers voting for immediate pleasure but from the idea that old people should hurry up with dying and not leech money off of society. After all, if you worked all your life but haven't made millions to retire on, you can't have worked all that hard, can you?
In Soviet Russia, government controls corporations.
In Capitalist America, corporations control government.
"In Japan, 95% of people in their 20s surf the web, but only a third of them bother to vote."
Here in the United States, we get all the fliers and websites and spam and junk mail and road signs and everything else you could want, and we still get a similar result.
It doesn't matter how you "reach out to the voters" if the voters still don't like you.
You're pretty unaware of the state of humanity, probably because all YOUR classmates were going to college and could afford it.
The vast majority of people in the USA have never been to college, barely finished high school, and can't afford college.
There's nothing wrong with offering these people an opportunity. They have the right to refuse, though that might be a foolish decision.
I've been in Japan for over 15 years. First, if you don't understand the language, you don't understand the culture. To the English teacher: your students probably have no interest in telling you all they know about everything. Getting into the typical argumentative/philosophical offered up by most low-time foreigners here is tedious since it always ends up being a pompous monologue on "This is how we do it in America, and you should too" nonsense. Unless you've been here at least 10 years and speak and read the language, you're languishing in the dark and still full of the preconceptions you got off the plane with. Knock it off, STFU and leave. Eighty percent are in Japan teaching English because they are social misfits who couldn't fit in with their own culture. After a few years they develop the "gaijin anger complex." They don't really know what the hell is going on around them and are angry at being trapped since they can't function in their own culture or Japan.
Instead of discussing the topic, they can only rant about how stupid everyone around them appears to them.
I find the Japanese election system a refreshing dose of honesty. Not the politicians - they suck everywhere - but the simple elegance of simply doing what most people in western countries won't admit to. They vote for whomever has the face or personality doesn't make them want to vomit.
The election "season" is short, weeks instead of years, and that is a blessing. Who really cares what a politician says he or she are going to do on website, a debate or a commercial... they never do what they promise anyway. When is the last time a politician did what the said they were going to do? They rely on your goldfish-like memory to get elected and re-elected. (Oh look! A bridge! I'll swim under it. Oh look! A bridge! I'll swim under it. Oh look! A broken Social Security system. I'll fix it. Oh look! Iraq. We're making progress)
To the next goldfish, I mean person, who thinks the Japanese have it wrong, all I can say is look at who the American public, in the self-proclaimed model democracy of America, elected in the last two elections. And you think the Japanese system is strange? Uh huh.