Newsletter No. 1407
News-Analysis
July 10, 2009

 

The following newsletter has been contributed by John McGlynn (Shingetsu Member No. 199). McGlynn is an independent foreign policy and financial analyst based in Tokyo.

JAPANESE PROTEST POSTER FOUND ON WEST BANK WALL

Here is a mix of politics and art for Shingetsu readers. Below is a comment (edited for this newsletter) I recently posted at Mondoweiss, an excellent blog that focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To fully appreciate the comment, please examine this poster for a Japanese street musician protest group, an exact duplicate of which has apparently found its way to the Wall separating Israel from the West Bank:

Photo: A duplicate of the poster found on the West Bank wall
Source: Jennifer Hayes, via Mondoweiss blog

This is a poster for a Japanese street musician protest group called the Transistor Connected Drum Collective (note the “TCDC” in the lower right corner). The same group made a video in 2003 to protest against the US invasion of Iraq, and the dispatch of Japan Self-Defense Forces. It was remastered to protest Israel's summer 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

The poster above shows a chindonya, a brightly-dressed musician who used to perform (usually with a few companions, I believe) in Japanese streets maybe forty or fifty years ago, for advertising purposes. Chindonya would simultaneously play a drum and flute or horn and distribute fliers.

The shadowing three grey ideographs (Chinese characters used in the Japanese writing system) behind the English lettering are read as kakuri kabe, which means “wall of isolation.”

Mondoweiss Blog:

http://www.philipweiss.org