The lecture of Mr. Kamiya, the representative of the Sangen-tei Party, became a firestorm… All the events were canceled.

The backlash that existed beforehand

The “May Festival” was supposed to be held on May 16-17 at the Hongo/Yayoi Campus of the University of Tokyo, and on the afternoon of May 16, it was announced that all events for the day would be canceled.

The lecture by Mr. Sohei Kamiya, the representative of the Sangen Party, was scheduled to be held on that day, but due to a bomb threat on the morning of May 16, the May Festival Standing Committee decided to cancel the lecture at around 1 p.m. By 2 p.m., other events were also canceled due to “safety checks.

The lecture was organized by the conservative student circle “Ugo no Shu,” and was scheduled to be held in Room 25, Building No. 1 of the Law and Letters Building on the Hongo campus on the afternoon of August 16, featuring Mr. Munei Kamiya, the president of the Sangen Party, Mr. Kiyoka Shioiri, a member of the House of Councilors, and Mr. Yasushi Yamada, the representative of the Ugo no Shu.

Student volunteers had been protesting the lecture since it was announced. They demanded that Mr. Kamiya sign a pledge to retract his past discriminatory and false statements before delivering his lecture in order to protect the “space for intellectual pursuit free from discrimination,” as stated in the principles of the Charter of the University of Tokyo.

When I visited the May Festival on the morning of the 16th, I found quite a few people there. Not only students, but also neighborhood residents, high school students in uniform, and a variety of other people. Mr. Kamiya was scheduled to speak at 12:00 pm. However, when the time came, there was no sign that he would begin. It was around 1:00 p.m. when I went to the front gate of the University of Tokyo to see what was going on. When we went to the front gate of Todai, we found that people were rushing in one after another to protest by staging sit-ins and patrolling the campus area with placards.

Students were not alone in their opposition to Kamiya’s appearance. It seems that the protests were even sparked by a protest group against the Suffrage Party.

Why is Kamiya at the University of Tokyo? Many people were carrying signs with protest statements and other messages such as, “Fuck you, patriarchy! They are not only in front of the main gate, but also in front of the Building 1 of the Law and Letters Building, where Kamiya will be speaking.

Students perplexed by the sudden cancellation of the event

The area around the Law and Letters Building No. 1 was a bleak place, unlike the usual atmosphere of the May Festival, with people asking for admission tickets and demanding explanations from the standing committee members about the fact that Mr. Kamiya’s lecture had not started. Those who came to see Kamiya give his lecture seemed to be mostly older people rather than younger people. There were also voices arguing from inside the building. We were told by the standing committee not to enter the building, so we asked a man (74 years old) who had come to hear the lecture what was happening inside.

He said, “At first, around 11:00 to 12:00, there were a few Todai students inside the building, protesting with a sit-in. Then 15 to 20 people from the suffragettes showed up and got into a verbal argument with the students. The suffragettes were loud and the students had few words. It was quite chaotic, with outside protest groups also entering the building and sitting on the steps. It was under these circumstances that at 1:00 p.m. the standing committee announced the cancellation of Kamiya’s speech.”

Then, around 2:00 p.m., an announcement was made by the standing committee that all programs would be canceled for safety reasons.

The students asked, “What does that mean?” Why? and “Why?” as they began to clean up their stalls. They all seemed to be anxious and unable to grasp the situation, saying, “I don’t know what’s going on. One of the students at one of the stalls also expressed his unconvinced feeling.

One student at one of the stalls expressed his displeasure: “I just received a notice from the standing committee, demanding the cancellation of the project. We don’t know what is going on, but we think it is probably Kamiya-related. There were a lot of protest groups against the suffragettes at the gate, so they must have done something.”

The word “ugouwosagase” was even used in the group lines of the various student groups to describe this situation. In particular, ordinary students who were looking forward to the May Festival voiced their indignation at the series of disturbances.

Some of them will graduate from their clubs at the May Festival. Many of them must be disappointed that the festival was canceled. I, too, was filled with a sense of regret that a project that I had been preparing for months was cancelled on the day of the festival. The stalls are basically run by students who pay for each other, so if there are no sales at all in the afternoon, the stall will be in the red. I can give up on the sales, but I cannot allow it to affect my memories of the school festival.

Some students called for a class action lawsuit to claim compensation for damages.

A counter group took advantage of the situation!

In the first place, is it appropriate to invite a person with such deep-rooted antipathy as Mr. Kamiya to the school festival? The University of Tokyo’s “Five Principles and Two Supplementary Provisions” for the May Festival stipulate five principles, including “no risk of accidents,” “the University’s students must be the main participants,” and “prohibition of activitiespromoting a specific religion or political party, ” as well as “no violation of public order and morals” and “prohibition of activities leading to the promotion of corporations and other various groups” as supplementary provisions The May Festival is a great opportunity for us to learn more about the festival and its activities. According to a graduate who guided us around the May Festival this time, “Although there are principles, political people can be invited.

According to an alumnus who guided us around the May Festival, “Although there are some principles, we can invite political figures to the festival. There have been many cases in the past where politicians and others have taken the stage for student projects. The problem lies on the part of the standing committee, which failed to foresee such a situation. Recently, when the University of Tokyo did something like a parade for the issue of tuition hikes, the standing committee arranged for a few students to lead the flow of people and efforts were made to avoid confusion. I think we were ill-prepared for the failure to do these things at the May Festival, which is a large scale event.”

However, he also says that a major factor in the spread of the uproar was not the right-wingers who passed the campus procedures and planned the lecture, nor the May Festival Standing Committee, which approved the plan.

From the students’ point of view, it appears that it is not a left-right controversy, but an outside counter group, unrelated to the university, that is taking advantage of the May Festival’s planning. And the direct cause of the cancellation is the bomb threat. We don’t know if it was just a fun thing or not, but we are firmly against the suppression of speech by insinuating the violence of crime” (aforementioned alumnus).

On the evening of the 16th, the May Festival Standing Committee announced that the event would be held on the 17th after “ensuring safety by strengthening nighttime vigilance and baggage inspections upon entry, etc.” Although the security check at the entrance took some time on the 17th, the event seemed to go off without a hitch.

On the 16th, Mr. Kamiya announced on X, <Today’s lecture has been canceled because it seems that the audience was prevented from entering the venue. I was waiting, but it was unavoidable,” he posted.

The May Festival is a school festival made possible by the goodwill of students and the general public who visit the festival. The students who have been preparing for the festival for months and the students who are running the festival must not have their wishes for the festival to end without incident trampled on by violence.

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