‘Demolish the Ministry of Finance!’ protest erupts in Tokyo, angry attendees say ‘we are not your ATM’

Angry residents of Japan fed up with the country’s monetary recklessness gathered outside the Ministry of Finance in Tokyo on Friday evening. Shouting “dismantle the finance ministry!” attendees brandished signs saying things like “we are not your ATM” and mocking prime minister Shigeru Ishiba. 

Compared to other demonstrations and protests around the world, Friday evening’s (JST) MinFin protest may be seen as relatively tame, but by Japan’s painfully polite standards, the growing anger is palpable.

A small but swelling crowd chanted “demolish the ministry!” in unison in one video shared to social media, with the ostensible poster of the film noting the heavy police presence. Lightning Network advocate and Blockstream Japan leader Koji Higashi posted to X that the protest was “so exciting.” Others noted a stark lack of media coverage other than TV Tokyo, and indeed, coverage even at the time of writing is sparse.

At a previous event on February 17, a high school student visiting Tokyo for university entrance exams expressed his frustration at the current statist paradigm in Japan, saying that he was sleeping in a park as hotels are now too expensive, and consumption tax keeps going up, while corporations are given breaks. “[The politicians] say if enterprise gets richer, we’ll all get richer. But is anyone here rich?” he asked to a passionate gathering of supporters.

Reasons for the anger, Bitcoin advocates in attendance

The February 21 protest is reportedly the fifth of its kind around Japan, and individual reasons for attending seem to be myriad. The 2016, Abe-era Moritomo Gakuen scandal in which the finance ministry admitted to falsifying documents, and essentially cheating the public out of money, is once again in the news.

Beyond this issue, as Cryptopolitan has reported previously, residents of Japan are increasingly suffering palpable fiscal pain from inflation, overtourism, skyrocketing food prices, ostensible rice “shortages,” unlivable or non-existent pensions for the elderly, and a government and new prime minister that is hellbent on dumping literal trillions of yen into overseas initiatives and war, instead of helping the people.

“When I thought about the suffering of the people, with children unable to eat three meals a day and sales of rice seasoning at an all-time high, I started screaming and crying,” one protest attendee posted to social media, along with a video. Rice seasoning called furikake is often used in Japan to make cheap, plain meals consisting of mostly just rice, more palatable.

Bitcoin advocates also attended the event via their own “Bitcoin Demo” in the same area. However, much like the murky origins of the “demolish the finance ministry” protests, it’s not immediately clear who these individuals are, or what their true agendas may be. Everyday individuals on the ground seemed to be protesting in earnest, but other elements of the demo could be construed by some as “controlled opposition.”

For example, one photo shared by Blockstream Japan’s Koji Higashi shows a group of demonstrators in Guy Fawkes masks advising people to “pay your taxes with Bitcoin” — hardly the cypher-punk crypto freedom their image might suggest, as BTC is now championed by banks and governments worldwide, including in Japan.

Like much cookie-cutter rebellion in the land of the rising sun, aesthetics and images are borrowed from the West, and adopted outrage which is out-of-place or counterproductive is the result.

Whatever intentions may be, true crypto advocates are right about one thing: peer-to-peer, permissionless electronic cash with privacy protocols in place can indeed be a means to rein in and completely stop political spending. Arguably much more effective than just shouting in the street and begging immoral “rulers” for change. As Hidetoshi Yokoyama of the AI firm Robot Consulting noted of the protests (translated by Google): “Politicians live a luxurious life while putting pressure on the people’s lives.”

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