With election season being in full swing I always here politicians in cars driving around campaigning around my little city. Are they saying the standard politics stuff like they will improve A, fix B if elected and this is why you should vote for them Vs the other person? Or are they talking about other stuff I don’t know about because my Japanese isn’t very good and I don’t know anything about Japanese politics. Also the vans blasting music with the Japanese rising sun flag I assume are the extreme nationals right?
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The point is name recognition to be top of mind on voting day.
Most of the time it’s just their slogan and please vote for “name”, because Japanese election require you to write the candidate name in the voting ballot.
If the van is parked, and someone is on top of it with little white gloves on and holding a microphone, *then* they’re talking about something. If they are driving around, then they’re pretty much just repeating their name over and over again – at least, that’s all any election van I’ve ever seen does.
>Also the vans blasting music with the Japanese rising sun flag I assume are the extreme nationals right?
Yes, and these have nothing to do with elections. Election campaigning happens within a short time of an election. Wingers drive their speaker vans around year ’round in some areas. they seem to especially like being loud early in the morning on the holidays I am most likely to have been out drinking the night before.
Most of the time it’s just name, party, and occasionally a slogan. Once in a while they’ll freestyle, like my local rep ranting about foreign crime just before she lost her cabinet post over campaign fraud.
To be kept in mind that very often it is not even the politician himself or herself who is sitting in the car but some campaign staff…
Have you ever set your Spotify/Apple Music on shuffle and noticed there’s a ‘DEEEJAAAY KAAHHLID!’ or ‘Mustard on the beat, ho’ at the beginning of every single song and wondered ‘who are those guys anyway’? That’s what they’re doing here.
“Please vote for me, Taro Suzuki, thank you.”
Whatever they’re saying, it’s been working for the LDP pretty spectacularly over the long decades.
They’re calling out challengers so they can battle rap. You better lose yourself to the music the moment you own it.
Thank for all the replies. Now that I know it is names that will hopefully help me a little more. I can here my city name all the time. Uta everything else is always to fast.