Japanese Right Winger Vans Parade について・・・
Sometimes when I go into the city centre I am blasted with old fashioned music and ranting by these vehicle processions that drive around the block over and over with their mounted loudspeakers at full volume. Personally I find them irritating and interesting in equal measure.
Below copied from wiki.
Uyoku dantai literally "right wing groups" are extreme Japanese nationalist right-wing groups.
In 1996, the National Police Agency estimated that there are over 1000 right wing groups in Japan with about 100,000 members in total.
Philosophies and activities
Uyoku dantai are well known for their highly visible propaganda vehicles, known as gaisensha (街宣車)--converted vans, trucks and buses fitted with loudspeakers and prominently marked with the name of the group and propaganda slogans. The vehicles are usually black, khaki or olive drab, and are decorated with the Imperial Seal, the flag of Japan and the Japanese military flag. They are primarily used to stage protests outside organizations such as the Chinese, Korean or Russian embassies, Chongryon facilities and media organizations, where propaganda (both taped and live) is broadcast through their loudspeakers. They can sometimes be seen driving around cities or parked in busy shopping areas, broadcasting propaganda, military music or Kimigayo, the national anthem.
Political beliefs differ between the groups but the three philosophies they are often said to hold in common are the advocation of kokutai-Goji (retaining the fundamental character of the nation), hostility towards communism and hostility against the Japan Teachers Union. Traditionally, they viewed the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China and North Korea with hostility over issues such as communism, the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands and the Kurile Islands.
Most, but not all, seek to justify Japan's role in the Second World War to varying degrees, refute the war crimes committed by the military during the first part of the Shōwa era and are critical of what they see as "self-hate" bias in post-war historical education. Thus, they do not recognize the legality of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and other allied tribunals, consider the war-criminals enshrined in the Yasukuni shrine as "Martyrs of Shōwa" (昭和殉難者 Shōwa junnansha), support the censorship of history textbooks and the historical revisionism [1]
However, Uyoku dantai, especially groups affiliated with Yakuza syndicates, have many foreign members involved, such as Zainichi Koreans.[2][3] This is because Yakuza groups include many Zainichi Koreans. Moreover, it is difficult to arrest Uyoku dantai members because freedom of ideology is protected by the Constitution of Japan. This is one of the reasons why Yakuza groups use Uyoku dantai as camouflage.[4][5][6]
Right wing groups attempted to prevent the Oscar winning movie The Cove from being shown in Japan in 2010
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