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Hotel Afraid of Right-Wingers, Refuses Teachers Union

newtakanawaprincehotel

Prince Hotels doesn’t want to deal with unsightly and annoying right-wing protesters and their sound trucks, so they’ve decided to ban a group of teachers from holding a conference at one of their hotels:

A Tokyo hotel is refusing to rent its hall to the Japan Teachers Union (Nikkyoso) for its national conference over the weekend due to concern that right-wing militants protesting against the union may cause trouble, despite a high court ruling requiring the hotel to honor a previous agreement with the union.

Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa in Minato Ward, Tokyo, where the plenary meeting of The National Conference on Educational Research is scheduled to be held from Feb. 2 to 4, told The Yomiuri Shimbun on Thursday that it would not allow the union access to the facility on Feb. 1 to prepare the venue for the meeting.

[...]

Extensive security measures have regularly been taken for the conference regardless of where it has been held in the past as rightists from around the nation have gathered to demonstrate at the conference and conduct propaganda activities.

The hotel explained it was canceling the contract because it expected the presence of rightist groups’ sound trucks and a major security effort by the police would cause serious trouble and distraction for the surrounding community.

The hotel investigated the circumstances surrounding the conference last year in Beppu, Oita Prefecture, and found that more than 100 vehicles belonging to right-wing campaigners came to the venue to protest the union and more than 1,000 police officers engaged in guarding, checking passersby or blocking roads around the venue. The Feb. 2 plenary meeting of the two-day conference was to be held in the hotel’s “Hiten,” banquet hall, one of the largest in the country.

Why are the right-wingers so angry? According to Wikipedia, the Japan Teachers Union has strong leftist/socialist leanings and it well known “for its critical stance against the conservative corporatist Liberal Democractic Party government on such issues as Kimi Ga Yo, Flag of Japan, and screening of history text books.”

8 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - February 1, 2008 at 2:21 pm

Categories: Politics Tags: japan, japanese, Politics, right-wing, textbooks

http://aki-akiaki.blogspot.com Aki

This kind of incidents has been repeated many times since 1950s. In my opinion, both of them are extremists.

My class teacher in an elementary school in 1970s educated us that North Korea was a peaceful ideal country that was incomparably better than South Korea that was ruled by a militarist dictator and that America is an evil empire of capitalists trying to construct military bases all over the world.

shazzb0t

I agree with you. Some of the Japanese left are as ridiculous as their right wing counter parts.

I also don’t see what the problem is with Kimigayo. Maybe the lyrics are nationalistic, but Kimigayo is one of the most musically beautiful national anthems in the world.

http://relaxedfocus.blogspot.com Rob

Via Wikipedia:

“Since the end of World War II, there has been criticism of the anthem for its association with militarism and the virtual worship of the emperor as a deity, which some see as incompatible with a democratic society… In 1999, the Japanese government passed the Law Concerning the National Flag and Anthem, which designated Kimi ga Yo as the official anthem and the Hinomaru as the national flag.

Schools have seen conflict over both the anthem and the flag, as the Tokyo Board of Education requires that the anthem be sung and that the flag be flown at events at Tokyo metropolitan government schools, and that school teachers respect both (by, for example, standing for the singing of the anthem) or risk losing their jobs. Some have protested that such rules violate the Japanese constitution…

Opponents respond that as Japan is a democratic country, a national anthem praising a monarch is not appropriate and that forced participation in a ceremony involving the singing of an anthem is against the free thought clause in the Japanese Constitution…

In 2006 Katsuhisa Fujita, a retired teacher in Tokyo, was threatened with imprisonment, and fined 200,000 yen (about 2,000 dollars), after he was accused of disturbing a graduation ceremony at Itabashi High School by urging the attendees to remain seated during the playing of the anthem. At the time of Fujita’s sentence, 345 teachers have been punished for refusing to take part in anthem related events, though Fujita is the only man to have been convicted in relation to it.

…On 21 September 2006, the Tokyo District Court ordered the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to pay compensation to all the teachers who had been subjected to fines and/or punishment under the directive of the Tokyo Board of Education.”

ponta

”there has been criticism of the anthem for its association with militarism and the virtual worship of the emperor as a deity, which some see as incompatible with a democratic society”

These are probably people who would associate American anthem with militarism just because the U.S. engaged in Vietnam War.
Note the teachers union were crying out, in the video Rei has given below, “The Marines go home” “the next time they walk on the street, Never let women and kids go out of the house”

They are the people who object to the U.S. presence in Japan but would not voice against the abduction by North Korea.

And Kimi does not necessarily mean the emperor. It could mean a person whom you love.
And for most Japanese, perhaps the lyrics really does not matter when they sing the anthem.

I think Japan teachers Union is extreme .
http://www.victorymanual.com Alex

This isn’t limited to Japan, and they aren’t being completely unreasonable. In the States, we were made to recite the pledge of allegiance every morning (which is kind of odd, having to pledge your allegiance over and over…), which contains in it the clause, “…one nation under God.” The problem in this case is, whose god? And why is there only one, or why is there one at all?

Contrariwise, you’ve got presidential candidates these days who want to change the pledge of allegiance to something like, “…one nation under Jesus Christ.”

I think what everyone seems to be objecting to in this post is the fact that anyone is demanding any change at all. Extremists on both sides are doing their best to change everything, but change is unsettling, and most people try to avoid it.

The Overthinker

In the ’70s that might have been not too far off the truth. South Korea was ruled by a militaristic dictator, the US was (and is?) an evil empire of capitalists, and North Korea for the initial period after WW2 was doing pretty well, since they inherited the bulk of the manufacturing industry etc the Japanese had built.

But on the whole, yes, they were a bit nuts in the ’70s.

Darien Shields

It’s a shame there’s not so much information in the article about why the conflict exists (thought he wikipedia mention is interesting, it’s hardly illuminating).

Regardless, I think the hotel’s behaviour is entirely unprofessional in this case. They did the research after accepting the contract, and then didn’t even tell the conference holders that they weren’t going to be allowed to do it, just didn’t let them set up the day before. If they had researched this to begin with and just politely turned them down before making the contract it wouldn’t be an issue!
rei

If you want to know what Japan Teachers Union is, watch this video.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=aus8S3jy9PI

Hotel Afraid of Right-Wingers, Refuses Teachers Union

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