Japanese welcome

After a dozen hours in the air, I’ve been parked for four hours in a series of airless rooms at Tokyo’s Narita airport where an acutely disorganized official dithers and rushes ineffectually from one office to another. First stop was a room with some Mexicans, probably suspected of drug running—they all seem to have been quickly vetted or at least aren’t present in the stage two room. After a long wait, I was admitted to a smaller office for interrogation. I sat across from the ditherer, and spoke to a woman in English via squawk-box, that is, an amplified telephone. I had no idea who or where she was. She translated everything I said into Japanese.

I’ve come to Japan to address the counter G8 activities organized by a coalition of several dozen Japanese organizations, but I also have invitations to lecture at four Japanese universities, including some of the most prestigious in the country. The Japanese are famous for respecting their older citizens and I will be 74 tomorrow, but in my case they appear to have made an exception. Poor Yoko Akimoto of Attac Japan is outside somewhere; they promise me they have contacted her. [They did, and she contacted the press as well as two of the university professors who have invited me: Once I got out I had an immediate interview with the top daily Asahi Shimbun and learned that both professors had called immigration to protest my detention]. I am not allowed to telephone and my phone that is supposed to work worldwide doesn’t pick up the network here. So I’m stuck.

With me in this airless, cold-tobacco-smelling room is a young black man from the Central African Republic. His mother is Japanese but you would not know it looking at him. This is the first time he has ever left Africa, he spent time and money going to Cameroon to get a visa for his trip to Japan—he just wants to see his mother’s country which is also the place he was born and he has the names and addresses of several contacts here prepared to vouch for him. He can’t understand—neither can I—why they gave him a three months visa if it was to block him once he arrived. Probably they can’t believe his mother is Japanese, even though he brought his birth certificate with him. I know all this because I had to help him fill in his papers for the officials as he speaks only French and the papers are only in Japanese and English.

The irony of all this is that some people in the alter-globalisation movement reproach me for my positions on non-violence. I do not absolve and indeed condemn “black block” type activities at G8 counter-summits. I find them stupid, counter-productive, frequently the work of agents provocateurs and anti-democratic since they refuse to respect the work of hundreds of people over months to organize successful demonstrations and political activities. One of my books—published here in Japan and in many other countries is called “Another World is Possible If….” One of the “Ifs” concerns maintaining a strict policy of non-violence.

If Japan is counting on the people I’ve met so far for its national security, the country is in serious trouble. Since I will have a great many interviews in the coming days, I intend to give the security forces the publicity they deserve.

NB: During my stay I was followed—I wasn’t quite sure the first time although Yoko said there was no question, that ‘this guy’ and ‘that guy’ were definitely security agents. But the next day, with Yoko we couldn’t find our way to the inter-connection of the metro to get to Tokyo University and the guy who got on the metro with us stayed with us through all our false starts towards one connexion or another in a hugely complex station and finally followed us upstairs and outside where we had to cross a large outdoor plaza to reach the right metro line. We left him behind a pillar, on his cell phone. These people apparently have nothing better to do but I can scarcely imagine anything more boring that following me—here an NGO well know to, and approved by, the government; there a University main amphitheatre with 400 or 500 students—what worries me most always is the utter stupidity and ignorance of these forces. We should give courses for them so that they understand the alter-globalisation movement--but then, by definition, we could only supply disinformation with evil intent....
Clearly the situation is hopeless and insoluble. I am relatively well-known, I got out of Narita, I attended and spoke at the events where I was expected, our Japanese friends are closely watched and any movement for change is ipso facto suspect. Thus are governments destined to ignore the contributions of their most enlightened citizens; thus do we cultivate stagnation.

Susan George is Chair of the Board of the Transnational Institute. Her latest books are Hijacking America: How the religious and secular right changed what Americans think , and We the peoples of Europe.