Comments on: Happiness through Japanese Politicians?

By: Thierry

Thierry — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:16:22 +0000

When the local candidate you talked with, said “Look at America. Look at France. Can you tell me that Christianity is not a large part of their political power?” Clearly, this person knows nothing about France.
Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_French_law_on_the_Separation_of_the_Churches_and_the_State
Since 1905, religions and the republic are separated in France.

By: red

red — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:33:00 +0000

I just found the website for Takanori Yoshida. It is definitely worth a look (while it lasts):

http://yoshidadenkitecnic.services.officelive.com/default.aspx

By: red

red — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:32:06 +0000

Brief update on how the election went:
After all that hype the Happiness Realization Party campaign ended in a farce. Despite fielding hundreds of candidates they didn’t win a single seat. Their best chance should have been in the proportional representative “hirei” seats (where komeito get all of their votes) but very, very few voted for them at all. Their % of hirei votes ranged from 0.51% in Tokyo to a rather unspectacular peak of 0.87% in Shikoku. The election is probably the closest we will ever get for a feel of how many “real believers” they have in Japan. A quick tally of their votes across each of the 11 hirei blocks gives me 459,387 voters (about 0.66% of all voters and a much smaller percentage of the population). Surely Okawa can no longer claim a believer base of over 10 million any more! to put that in to context, Komeito (who is supported by the Sokagakkai religeous group) won 11.6% of the hirei vote (8,054,047 votes). Needless to say, neither Okawa nor Dr. Nakamatsu were successful in being elected through the hirei system.

Even their their more famous candidates weren’t able to bring in the swinging voters:
Kazuya Daimon in Tokyo 7 (songwriter for Hikaru Genji and Hiromi Go) won a miserly 2,401 votes out of 278,933. Nagazuma (a young, charismatic candidate from the DPJ won the seat safely)
Masashi Ishikawa in Kanagawa 14 (head of the New York branch) wasn’t much better with 2,713 votes out of 290,123. This seat was also won by the DPJ candidate, Motomura, by a landslide. I suppose Ishikawa can be happy that he wasn’t the worst preforming candidate in this seat. There was a guy called Takanori Yoshida (who based his campaign on the fact that whales ate too many fish and so should be commercially killed) only scraped together 1,737 votes.

By: The Defeat of Japan’s LDP | Nothing But Words

The Defeat of Japan’s LDP | Nothing But Words — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:54:46 +0000

[...] I haven’t found any news on yet is how the Happiness Realization Party fared in the election. It’s the political arm of the “Happy Science” cult. The [...]

By: Everything you need to know about this Sunday’s lower house election | Japan: Stippy

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:51:17 +0000

[...] a bit of fun, let’s say you want to follow how the Happiness Realization party are going. After all they are one of the few parties with an English homepage! (Even the LDP [...]

By: Yuri

Yuri — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:15:53 +0000

If you look for more about this crazy religion, you’ll find that the guru Okawa is closely connected to the South Korean society who believes in Buddism. Okawa claims he is the reincarnation of Buddha. Hahaha. (You may know already that so-called Toitsu-kyokai, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity uses the tenet of christianity.)

I know one movie star who suggested injured firemen to drink vegetable oil to heal their wounds when the 9.11 occurred…and I can’t tell who has the biggest ballon head.

By: aso4pm

aso4pm — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 08:19:46 +0000

you hit the nail on the head, gman. but surely that raises the question “why can a party like this LEGALLY exist in Japan?”. i don’t know the answer and i have a funny feeling that okawa doesn’t either. There must be a reason why when he started the party he instated his wife as the leader and wasn’t going to stand for government. That said though he clearly had bad advice from someone up top when he decided to shaft his wife and takeover has party (and cult) leader and stand for a seat in parliament. I reckon he lasted 3 weeks before (earlier this week) he announced that he didn’t think it was appropriate for a deity like himself to stand for parliament. It sounds like there was a lot of pressure on him from LDP politicians who didn’t feel comfortable having to make the choice between their original party (LDP) and their religion (happy science). Personally that makes me more worried. How many, exactly, of the LDP are (fully paid) card holders of happy science. There must be a few if they are powerful enough to ask Okawa to step down. Although I’m guessing Okawa will be enjoying the fact that it gave him an excuse to tell the world how many powerful politicians already support him (spiritually).

By: Gman

Gman — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:13:07 +0000

The split of religion and state is was a major achievement in the development of western culture and democracy after years of the Church ruling state affairs of Europe, either directly or indirectly. I suggest the author look more into the historical origins of this to appreciate more the necessity.

when a group claims that their authority is from God there is no comeback and leaves open the space for corruption of mans bright ideas…like the spanish inquisition etc etc.
So such a group coming into power would be a huge backwards step for democratic process and path the way for country to become like Nth Korea with a “Divine Leader”…im sure he admires the work done on that place!

He has obviously refined the art of mass motivation,coersion and knows the effeciency of being a dictator…no questions makes implementation of policy sooo smooth. Under the guise of “look at waht good im doing for the country” he will ursurp absolute control….like the Colonials said to the colonies…”whinging natives…we built them steam trains and schools and revolution is all the thanks we get”…yea, well they forgot about self determination and things like control of the means of production, expecting gratitude in exchange for exploitation.

I dare say many members have found ways to shift funds by purchasing overly inflated staues etc. laundering of cash and tax cuts is the rub here…so its a clever front for the yaks to gain political leverage thru the democratic process under the guise of a religion

perhaps Stippy can prove its a 10th dimension spirit, better than this dude, and sell tshirts for one mill a pop….

By: not a doktor

not a doktor — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:27:12 +0000

Wow, sounds like a Japanese Scientology.

Also in the Church and State that part where she lumps all Christians into one is just ignorance; sure they might follow the same guy but they all hate each other.

By: Richmond

Richmond — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:24:32 +0000

I was having lunch in Shibuya the other day and noticed Dr. Nakamatsu was doing his usual pitch at national politics down at the crossing. What was a little out of left field for me was that he was standing for the Happiness Realization Party. I guess that goes to show you that they do have rich members. I wonder how long he has been a “believer” Kinda eerie when you see someone famous who you’ve read a lot about in the paper standing for a cult like this. I don’t know if I’ll buy any more of his inventions…