Protestors in Europe have had enough. Fed up with tourists whose presence is driving up housing costs, demonstrators in Barcelona, Spain and elsewhere took to the streets on June 16th and shot water guns at tourists.
In Japan, however, no one’s demonstrating against overtourism. This, despite badly behaved tourists making headlines by stealing other people’s Shinkansen reserved seats and trashing temples and shrines.
The stereotype is that Japanese people are just too nice, too polite to do anything as unseemly as “demonstrate.” It’s a nice little argument. One look at history proves that it’s bullshit.
Wikipedia JP has an entire page dedicated to popular uprisings in Japanese history. Peasant uprisings occurred in Japan for well over a thousand years. (One of the marked exceptions was the early 18th century, when shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi was so attuned to the people’s needs that it was a time of relative peace.)
In terms of noteworthy rebellions, there was the Shimabara Rebellion in 1637 that lasted a year. You had peasant riots and raiding of storehouses during the Teimei Famine of 1782 to 1788. There were the Blood Tax Riots in 1873 to oppose military conscription, mandatory public schooling, and rights for the burakumin.
Of course, the 20th century was rife with demonstrations, particularly the student riots of the 1960s and 70s. The 21st century is no stranger to large-scale protests, either. Labor union protests in 2012 drew 170,000 people. Some 55,000 turned out in 2017 to oppose revising Japan’s Constitution to give it the right to wage war.
And yet still no protests over misbehaving tourists who swing off Shinto shrine gates. At least, not yet. Why?
