Opinion | Annoying or background noise? Japan’s sound trucks on full blast at election time

It starts as a distant series of distorted notes, carried on the wind through Tokyo’s suburbs. Gradually, it comes closer and the noise builds. Eventually, the van rounds a corner and I am subjected to the full power of a sound system that would not be out of place at a rock concert. Flags flutter from the rear of the white van, which has its party affiliation emblazoned across the bonnet and down both sides. A man in a baseball cap declaring his political preference is behind the wheel and women in the rear seats are leaning from the windows and waving white-gloved hands at passers-by who hardly glance in their direction. And all the while, the soundtrack is a monotonous – and deafening – repetition of a man’s name and the party that he is standing for in Sunday’s election to Japan’s Diet. Welcome to political campaigning, Japanese style. Japan’s last election took place only in July last year and a number of cities have had local votes in the intervening months, meaning that the sound trucks invariably deployed to promote a candidate have been working hard recently. And for anyone who finds this method of campaigning irritating or overbearing, it is time to grit their teeth once more. While the image for many outsiders is a nation of serene temples and harmony, the reality in Japan’s cities is quite different, with a World Health Organization study in 2018 suggesting that the country is actually the noisiest in the world. And that is especially true around election time. While legislation introduced after the 2018 report has attempted to put a lid on noise pollution, there are specific carve-outs during election campaigns. According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s “Ordinance on the Control of Excessive Noise from Loudspeakers”, it is forbidden to create “violent noise”, which is defined in the law as a volume exceeding 85 decibels when measured from a distance of 10 metres. Officially, 85 decibels is equivalent to being near a food blender or “heavy city traffic”, with eight hours considered the maximum safe exposure limit. Article 4 of the city ordinance, however, has a specific exclusion: “When loudspeakers are used for election campaigns or political activities in accordance with the provisions of the Public Offices Election Act.” The law does not set a noise limit for election campaigns. Japanese people seem to be split on the issue. “It’s annoying,” agreed Kanako Hosomura, who lives in a suburban district of Yokohama. “The sound trucks can be really loud. They caused problems when my son was a baby – they would drive around and wake him up from a nap. But what can you do? This is how they do it every time.” Others are unaffected by the tactic, even though they know candidates are not actually aboard the sound truck and have simply instructed campaign staff to go out on their behalf. “For me, it is a quite natural sound, one that I have grown up with all my life,” said Kiyoko Date, who works for a major multinational corporation in Yokohama. “I grew up in a really rural part of Kumamoto prefecture and the sound trucks were the only way many people knew the names of the candidates.” Date said her grandfather served as mayor in a small town in Kumamoto for 12 years and used sound trucks at election times to get his message out to voters. “To me, it is just background noise at election time,” she said. Eric Fiore, a French national who owns a language school in Kanagawa prefecture, said he used to be irritated at the barrage of noise at election time, but had since become accustomed to it. “When I first came to Japan 30 years ago, it was infuriating and I could not believe they would allow something like this to happen. In France, this would be impossible. People would not allow it,” he told This Week in Asia. “But slowly I have come to accept it, maybe because there are so many other similar noises going on,” he said, pointing to the advertising jingles broadcast by vehicles delivering kerosene to homes, vans selling goods that would drive through neighbourhoods and trucks with braziers at the back selling roasted potatoes in the winter months. “It can get a bit too much when I am standing at a junction and there are two sound trucks facing each other, both blaring out slogans, but the election is on Sunday so it is only a short time,” he said. And while constantly repeating a candidate’s name at high volume might make a voter consciously rebel against that individual in an election in another country, a 2015 study by scientists from the University of Osaka indicates that it is actually effective in Japan. The study indicated that voters who were exposed to a sound truck were twice as likely to vote for the candidate compared with the average, the Mainichi newspaper reported on January 30. The study concluded that the candidate’s policies made no difference to how many people voted if they had heard his name repeatedly.

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}During election season, sound trucks drive around Japan’s cities blaring out candidates’ names and the parties they are standing for

During election season, sound trucks drive around Japan’s cities blaring out candidates’ names and the parties they are standing for