Why Japan Isn't So Different Recently I was in Japan for a series of talks and workshops about the Melbourne Rainforest Action Group (MRAG)* and nonviolent action. People were fascinated by and admiring of our campaign and yet repeatedly I was told "But it's different here". This became frustrating for me because I feel deeply that nonviolence works universally and during the month I was there, I thought intensively about the similarities between Japan and Australia and about how and why nonviolence is cross-cultural. Specifically, I considered the MRAG campaign and how its strategy would apply in Japan. I wanted to stress the corresponding roles of Australia and Japan as First World countries in regard to consumption not only of rainforest timbers but of resources generally. I didn't want to 'blame' the Japanese or tell them what to do. I felt it was my role to explain what had been successful here and how the situation there was comparable. Australia and Japan have obvious similarities in their social and political structures despite seemingly dissimilar histories. Both are industrialised, developed, 'first world' nations with a history of exploiting the Third World, and Japan, like white Australia, has a long history of feudalism and patriarchal hierarchy. Status hierarchies are more deeply entrenched in Japan than they are in Australia but there is a similar disparity between the roles and status of men and women. I often got the feeling that the Japanese activists I talked with felt it was considerably, perhaps irrevocably 'worse' in Japan or that Australia was some enlightened paradise - perhaps it was the way I presented things. I carefully explained that our socialisation goes deep also and that the people I work with work hard at challenging their socialisation in an effort to reclaim their own power and choice. I would describe for example that we use consensus decision-making processes as a way of involving and empowering people and explain that in Australia too it is a process fairly alien to most people's formal political experience. It is a cooperative process through which individuals can explore what they really want and need, and is part of the way we disentangle ourselves from disempowering decision-making structures, structures which exist here just as much as they do in Japan. Another reservation concerned MRAG's relationship with the members of the local police who in many ways are now highly supportive of our campaign. (The police allow us to do what we do and rarely hinder or arrest even though our actions may be technically illegal.) This reminded me of Brisbane RAG eighteen months ago: "It couldn't happen here" the Brisbane activists said and yet, after using similar processes to MRAG, they are gaining more and more cooperation from their local police. (Brisbane is the capital city of the State of Queensland, a state with a long history of police repression and anti-activist violence.) Perhaps a realistic apprehension the Japanese had was the belief that activists in their country would lose jobs if arrested. I considered two responses to this. Firstly, I wondered if this was indeed the case. I know that in Australia many people had similar concerns before forest actions in 1989. This anxiety was actually not warranted: in fact people have found support for their actions in the most unlikely places! Committed actions tend to draw respect. A second response was that the strength of nonviolent action does not necessarily depend on arrest. I reflected that the strength of an action is directly related to the level of risk a person is willing to take: because the risks associated with arrest may well be greater in Japan than in Australia, a nonarrestable action in Japan may be just as strong as an arrestable action in Australia. (It is also important that activists take a level of risk that they are comfortable with.) The power of the action is also reflected in the level of conflict that the action generates. In Japan, if perhaps arrestable actions require such a high level of risk, there are still many other nonviolent actions people and groups can do that show similar commitment and integrity in the face of injustice and repression. It is important for activists to remember that nonviolent action has a rich and diverse history through varied cultures. Each cultural community has symbols and traditions that it knows and understands and it is from this unique cultural combination/blend that activists can choose actions and symbols that will be most effective to attain social change in their community. By the time I gave my third talk in Japan I began to emphasise that it was not the specific tactics of MRAG that I was offering the people I spoke with but some processes that they could use, universal processes such as nonviolence, openness and respect that relate to resolving conflicts, developing human relationships and searching out the truth. People in Japan are already active and while I was there I collected many stories of nonviolent actions, present and past. There is a huge movement in Japan to ignore and remove the current national anthem and national flag. There have been 'chipko' forest actions in Japan where people have 'hugged the trees' in an effort to prevent old growth forest from being destroyed. There have been countless actions, arrestable and nonarrestable, against nuclear power stations and against military bases and militarism. There has been a long term campaign to remove the 'untouchability' of the Burakamin 'class'. Grassroots movements are strong and prevalent and yet not acknowledged enough. Affirmation of groups as well as of individuals is important if movements are to gain strength and work effectively in the long term. I gradually realised that part of the skepticism I encountered was a result of the disempowerment that is rife through the industrial world. People need to focus more on what they can do, and indeed what they are doing. Japan has some great alternative systems that don't exist in Australia. For example, thousands of people in Japan ride bicycles, there is still the old network of villages extant and throughout the big cities there are still large carefully tended vegetable patches. There are also grocery cooperatives with huge membership, many of which are moving away from the goal of cheapness toward goals of less packaging and less chemicals. Much of what I heard in Japan reminded me of my aunt in rural North Queensland. According to my aunt, an activist herself, people in North Queensland are 'different' also. The processes of the Melbourne RAG campaign couldn't apply there. Is Melbourne so special? I think not. I think the difference mainly lies in the way people view others in their community. You can view them as apathetic and uncaring, or you can view them as people who basically do care but who don't know what they can do. I choose the latter view and see an activist's role as affirming any action for social change and as helping people identify and exercise their choices despite their socialization. Margaret Pestorius * Margaret Pestorius is a member of the Melbourne Rainforest Action Group, a grassroots group which undertakes a range of nonviolent actions to achieve its goal of stopping Australia's role in rainforest destruction. Its strategy includes blockading timber ships as they enter the Yarra river in Melbourne, as well as other nonviolent actions focussing on the timber importing companies.