Preventing elections
This is a close-knit, friendly place. According to Fackler, “Islanders cheerfully greet passing strangers. Roads, parks and even public toilets are immaculate. Doors are left unlocked, and the island has only one policeman.” Hime is about half the size of Key West, Florida.
Mr. Fujimoto has been elected to seven four-year terms as mayor of Hime. The lack of change can be attributed to an election held in 1955 that split the island right down the middle politically. It created “ill feelings that took a generation to heal,” writes Fackler. Since that time, the island has decided to elect its mayors by consensus, choosing the man everyone can agree upon ahead of time.
“My job is to prevent elections by keeping everyone equal, and thus happy,” said Fujimoto, 65. He claims he would “resign immediately” if a serious rival ever presented himself in a general election. “That would be a sign the village has lost confidence in me,” he said.
A triumph of liberalism to support conservatism?
How is it that Akio Fujimoto has remained in power for so long? Clearly it is not because he rules Hime with an iron fist. Fackler suggests that many islanders believe he has remained popular because they hold the previous mayor – his father, the subject of the island’s status – in high reverence. Post-World War II, Japan’s poverty reached extreme levels. Yet Fujimoto Sr. boosted Hime’s station out of poverty by allying it with the Liberal Democratic Party. This is turn brought a steady flow of public works projects to the island.
Outsiders in the Oita prefecture government (which Hime is a part of) are critical of Hime’s way of doing things. Keizo Nagai, the ombudsman for Oita prefecture, sees the island’s government as walled-off and non-transparent. He said this because Hime customarily refuses to make information like detailed budget records available to non-islanders. However, Nagai doesn’t see conspiracy in this. It is simply a reflection of the traditional closed culture prominent before Commodore Matthew Perry opened Japan to the west.
“Hime Island acts like an independent kingdom,” Nagai said.
If you’re happy, is it wrong?
One adopts a very different way of thinking than what is customary in America when they come to accept what a small pocket of humanity like Hime Island offers. The drive to compete would never work in such a place where time stands still. Yes, it is true that traditional Japanese culture failed to recognize women as being equal with men. I will not attempt to defend that, as I cannot agree. Yet the islanders are happy with the status quo because it’s comfortable.
“Everyone is basically satisfied,” said Shusaku Akaishi, 29, who works at his family’s fueling business. “This is a conservative place.”
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I, for one, am so glad that a place like Hime exists. The world needs alternatives. Thanks to you and the NYT for finding this little pocket of economic diversity.
In the wake of the global economic collapse due mainly to uncontrolled greed, the concept:
““Our thinking is, ‘let’s all share the economic pie and get along, instead of
giving all of it to the rich,’ ” said Mr. Fujimoto,”
“… he and most other islanders call Hime a repository for traditional Japanese values, like economic egalitarianism and social harmony. They say the rest of the nation has lost these in an embrace of more competitive capitalism,”
appears at first blush to be laudable.
However, diving deeper we find things
are less than wonderful:
“At an annual village ceremony to mark the coming of age of
20-year-old islanders, women are forbidden to wear traditional
kimonos for fear the differences in quality could reveal their
households’ economic status.”
FORBIDDEN!?!?! Really? So we are all “average”? Perhaps we should all wear Gray? this
smells too strongly of Mainland Red China…
and the following actually reeks of the Communist One Party Way or worse, North Korea:
“Mr. Fujimoto also cites traditional attitudes to explain his own political
longevity, a claim most islanders seem to accept. He says islanders shun
public elections because of a deep-rooted abhorrence of confrontation.
He said the last time the village held a mayoral election, in 1955, it
split the island, creating ill feelings that took a generation to heal.
To avoid a repeat of such trauma, he said, the island decided to choose
mayors by consensus, finding someone on whom everyone could agree beforehand.
Last year, Mr. Fujimoto won his seventh straight four-year term, once again
by default in an uncontested election.” ….
““My job is to prevent elections by keeping everyone equal, and thus
happy,” said Mr. Fujimoto,
““Everyone is basically satisfied,” said Shusaku Akaishi, 29,
who works at his family’s gas station.
hmm so those who are not satisfied are somehow silenced, or forced to leave? Perhaps he rules via the Yakuza? I guess Freedom to wear what you like really does have a price…