Publicity-Seeking Candidate and YouTube, and Takamatsuzuka

According to a Sankei report, the election commission of Tokyo requested YouTube to delete footages of a man who is running in the Tokyo gubernatorial race. Some days ago, I accidentally watched his official campaign broadcast sanctioned by the commission… well on YouTube. The report says the broadcast is now recreated with inserted animation and music, accessed to in some hundreds of thousands of times.

This man, Toyama Koichi (外山恒一), is a skinhead street musician, who in the broadcast calls for the overthrow of government and says that elections are no use to change anything. He, whose style of speaking is agitprop, stands out among the candidates for bizarreness. Absolutely irreverent, he even shows the finger! Toyama is just one of those who run for office only to seek publicity. And it seems that people who saw the original thought it should be a good material for some “creative” works, inadvertently allowing him to realise his own aim.

For each candidate, the Public Offices Election Law restricts the official campaign broadcast to five times and three times on TV and radio respectively.

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The dismantling work of the ancient tomb of Takamatsuzuka (高松塚古墳) started today. Found in 1972, the tomb, believed to have been built in the late seventh to early eighth century, has been damaged by mould. The work commenced today is to save and restore the mural paintings inside, an official national treasure.

We, living in this 21st century, decided to dismantle it, which those who constructed it about 1300 years ago should never have imagined to happen. Even though the work is to save it, I wonder if it is not a disrespectful intrusion to the restful life of the person who was buried in it. Scholars disagree over whose tomb it is.