桜、国際化、国際主義

Residents of Japan who were born in other places are often asked to take part in 'internationalisation' activities. This usually means visiting schools or community centres to explain that one's country has/ does not have four seasons and its people eat/ do not eat raw fish. The favoured nationalities with whom Japanese schoolchildren are expected to internationalise themselves are usually allies of the Japanese state. An American is always a star turn, followed by people from Western Europe or another of its overseas tendrils. Chinese people will find their mobile phones largely untroubled because if Japanese people want to do any thinking about China, the Japanese government will do it for them. This inane, sometimes well intentioned, guff makes up the efforts of the Japanese ruling class to 'internationalise'. Repugnant to that class is the quite different phenomenon of internationalism. Internationalism is a fine, and sturdy, and precious thing and it may be even rarer in Japan than in other advanced countries. Your correspondent was delighted therefore to encounter recently a group of activists trying to unite unorganised young and immigrant workers in Tokyo -as well as an immigrant worker seeking a hearty dose of organisation.

The 'Conspiracy of the Precariat', in addition to having a good eye for names, are bringing together a mix of the right type of people for 'Freedom and Survival May Day 06'. Their May Day rally and demonstration will be held on the 30th of April at 2 pm in Onden-ku Community Centre, Harajuku (神宮前隠田区民会館). The main conspirators are the "Freeter's General Union'. Freeters are those young people in Japan who work in petrol stations and convenience stores for little money and less security. Perhaps the only group worse off in the Japanese labour market are migrant workers - it was a stroke of luck, then that I met just such a worker the day before I joined the conspirators.

The worker I met was called Mali. Sri Lankan by birth, she was passing on her bike and gave a robust hello as I idled beneath the cherry blossoms. She joined me there and told me what had happened to her. She worked, very hard, in the kitchen of a local restaurant, Ton Q. I urge you to boycott this place. Four foreigners work in the kitchen there, it seems, none in the front of the resaturant. In the five years Mali had worked there, she told me, neither she nor the other foreign workers had received a wage rise. Japanese workers who started after Mali had had such a rise. She had left Sri Lanka because her husband was a drug addict. She described to me how she watched him get thinner and take all her money. She had two daughters with him - they were now safe but very far from Mali, with her sister in Sri Lanka. She had not seen her daughters for five years, and spoke to them only once a month by phone. I saw her photographs of two lively little girls, cherished each in a plastic sheath. Having told me these things, we exchanged numbers and she offered to make me a curry. I hope she has spoken to the union organisers before I enjoy her hospitality. I also hope to see as many people as possible in Harajuku on the 30th. There we can conspire for a world where cherry blossoms fall on people not ruled by need and fear.