A letter to foreign Comrades from Japan

At the moment in Japan, the government is trying to make the situation look as normal as possible, by veiling crucial information on the degree of radiation and the calamitous condition of the reactors. This menacing situation notwithstanding, it does not show any intension to terminate its pro-nuclear power policy. In accordance with the benefit of TEPCO (The Tokyo Electric Power Co), it is instigating temporal blackout in large areas outside central Tokyo, as if sending the message to the people: no nuclear power, no electricity.

It also makes tremendous efforts to isolate and contain the stricken areas and the increasing number of refugees, by mobilizing massive number of the Self Defense Forces, mainly for driving the business as usual of the capitalist operations. Meanwhile the media is seeking to reproduce the image of a society without dissent by orchestrating the campaign to “Save Japan in Unity.” Some proxy intellectuals are inflaming patriotism even by awakening the nationalist sentiment from the fascist regime of the past.

Nonetheless, as the contamination worsens and expands, resident foreigners have begun to leave Japan, and some Japanese who are able to have begun their exodus to the west. The agony, anger and angst of the people, especially those who have to sustain their livelihood in Tokyo and northward therefrom, are unimaginable. It is a reminder of the stories from the Cyber Punk era in terms of dystopia finally realized.

Meanwhile activists of anti-authoritarian vein are striving to begin various campaigns: a call for de-nuke general strike, a new anti-nuclear movement, protests against the government and TEPCO, establishment of refugees’ communes in metropolis such as Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka, and sending the “People Rescue Troops” to the stricken north. A mass mobilization is yet to be seen.

Facing the imminent possibility of catastrophe, the people are also expecting a long long term struggle, for survival and break-out of the pro-nuclear governance. Taking into consideration the situation in Japan, we find it necessary to establish a global network to create a current of both resources and persons in and out of Japan, accursed and confined archipelago. To begin with, we are preparing a place for exchanging critical voices from there and elsewhere, to find a way out of the dystopian cul-de-sac, and create a path to undo and reorient the course of the world whose worst effects are manifest there at the moment.

We are asking Japanese activists and intellectuals to write about their struggles for survival, emerging new projects, reproduction of everyday life, psychic and cultural reactions, political climate, ideological battle, and theoretical orientation. Meanwhile, we would like you whose work is known and respected there, to write anything you come up with. It is significant for them for encouragement, for their food for thought and action, and finally for a new planetary solidarity.