<h3>&#8220;I want to go back to being a normal actor.</h3>
There is a hashtag called &#8221; #VoteDoubling Committee&#8221; that I often see on Twitter.
This is actually a hashtag started by the famous actor Kanji Furudate, who starred in the drama &#8220;The Kottaki Brothers and the Four Struggles&#8221; and is well known for his roles in various dramas and movies such as &#8220;Escape is Shame.
Mr. Furudate&#8217;s Twitter account name is &#8220;Kanji Furudate says, 80% voter turnout is the revolution of the Japanese people! Member of the Vote Doubling Committee. I want to increase the number of members. Until the election! and actively tweets about politics on a daily basis.
Incidentally, the qualifications for membership in the Doubling Vote Committee are as follows: tweet &#8220;I want to raise the voter turnout&#8221; every morning (does not have to be on Twitter), talk about politics and elections in a happy or sad way to one person every day, even if it is not on Twitter, and write &#8220;#Doubling Vote Committee&#8221; in your tweets when you feel like it. I&#8217;ve been on Twitter since the earthquake.
 &#8220;I&#8217;ve been tweeting about politics since the earthquake, and I&#8217;ve been criticized, and my family has told me not to, but I&#8217;ve been tweeting about politics. But I&#8217;m still an idiot, and I feel like I&#8217;ve been tweeting for so long that my words have become more polished.
 I thought that the word &#8220;doubling&#8221; would resonate with the &#8220;Vote Doubling Committee&#8221; because there was a time in the Showa era when Japan was excited about the idea of doubling income.
 But when I look at Twitter, it&#8217;s just a bunch of people with similar opinions, so it doesn&#8217;t spread very well.
<figure id="attachment_207243" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 5504px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-207243"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="6778dfc8"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2021/09/0c1e3bd38171d184561eeb36634841d2.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-207243" class="wp-caption-text">&#8220;The only way to get people who don&#8217;t vote to go to the polls is for those who do go to the polls and want to increase the voter turnout to join the movement&#8230;&#8221; says Furudate.</figcaption></figure>
Mr. Furudate started sending out messages via Twitter before the 3.11 Fukushima nuclear accident. While he was gathering information on the Internet and Twitter, he saw a shocking video of a kind of administrative violence, in which security guards came to the residents opposing the resumption of construction work at the Kaminoseki Nuclear Power Plant in Yamaguchi Prefecture and tried to remove them.
However, there was no media coverage of the incident, so he sent an email to the TV station asking why they didn&#8217;t report it, and that&#8217;s when the Fukushima nuclear accident happened.
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&#8220;He said, &#8220;What the opponents of nuclear power plants had feared happened, and the government&#8217;s involvement in nuclear power plants, the concealment of information, and the failure of the system in this country were all exposed. She began to receive a lot of press coverage for it, and at the same time, &#8220; I started to get rude comments on Twitter.
<h3> I&#8217;m glad to hear it, but it&#8217;s not like I&#8217;m rooting for you&#8230;</h3>
The Corona disaster has brought politics closer to home, and no one can afford to be indifferent to politics these days. In spite of this, there are some people in my profession who kindly (?) advise me not to talk about politics. In spite of this, there are a few people in my profession who kindly advise me not to talk about politics. When I asked them, &#8220;Do your fellow actors, directors, producers, or other creators ever talk to you about such things?　When I asked them.
 When I asked them if they ever hear that from fellow actors, directors, producers, etc., they replied, &#8220;No. I don&#8217;t have any friends who worry about me that much (laughs). (laughs) Most of them say, &#8216;I&#8217;m rooting for you. I&#8217;m flattered, but I&#8217;m like, &#8216;No, no, it&#8217;s not like I&#8217;m rooting for you.
 I guess they&#8217;re saying that they can&#8217;t say it themselves, but it&#8217;s like, &#8216;You&#8217;ve come this far and you&#8217;re still not saying anything? Probably the reason why people don&#8217;t speak out politically is because they feel safer and more secure if they hold back and don&#8217;t say what they want to say, even if they have something to say.
 However, not only in politics, but also at work and at home, people who hold back get more and more stressed out and end up hitting people on trains, for example (laughs). (laughs) On the other hand, I vomit everything out, so I don&#8217;t have any stress.
The &#8220;Vote Doubling Committee&#8221; is also working to reach out to young people, one of the reasons for the low voter turnout, by conducting a Twitter survey asking people under 20 years old to &#8220;Like&#8221; the website.
 &#8220;The responses were few and far between, but it was still interesting. The people who usually like my tweets are all my followers, and sadly, only my followers like my tweets (laughs). (laughs) But that was the only time I saw a lot of people who weren&#8217;t my followers liking my tweets.
In addition, in order to get young people involved, I recruited people on Twitter to send out messages via &#8220;TikTok.
 &#8220;There were a lot of people who said that TikTok was a good way to communicate with young people, but I didn&#8217;t have the energy to go that far (laughs).
 (laughs) Then, a young woman made a short video of the &#8220;Vote Doubling Committee&#8221; for TikTok, and then another person made various versions of the cool video.
 To be honest, I don&#8217;t know how far it will reach, but as I tried various things, I noticed that the number of people who use the &#8220;Vote Doubling Committee&#8221; tag has unexpectedly increased, including people who are not my followers. I&#8217;m very happy about that.
<h3> If people who haven&#8217;t voted don&#8217;t go, the voter turnout won&#8217;t go up.</h3>
However, when I look at Mr. Furutate&#8217;s tweets, I sometimes find myself saying, &#8221; I&#8217;m going back to being a normal actor! &#8220;I want to tweet more like an actor. and &#8220;I want to tweet more like an actor. I want to tweet more like an actor.&#8221; Do you sometimes feel like your heart is about to break?
 &#8220;No, I&#8217;m always in despair. Even if I say something on Twitter, it may be meaningless, but then what can I do?
 If the people who have always voted in the past go to the polls, the voter turnout will not increase if the people who have not voted do not go. The only way to make those who don&#8217;t go to vote go is for those who do go to vote and want to increase the turnout to campaign.
 By all accounts, things are not going well in this country right now, and the only way to change that is to increase the voter turnout.
 The only way to change it is to increase the voter turnout. Even if we change education, it is ultimately politics. With less than 50% of the population voting, how can we move the remaining 50%?
 Well, it&#8217;s the media&#8217;s fault that the voter turnout doesn&#8217;t go up. There is the Japanese discovery media, and there are Japanese people who are disciplined. I keep tweeting with strong despair about what to do.
It&#8217;s true that the TV networks that have been covering the Olympics and Paralympics with high intensity every day are now celebrating the LDP presidential election, for which we don&#8217;t even have the right to vote. I&#8217;m not sure what to make of it. And then, all day long, there is the Kei Komuro festival. It is no wonder that many of the people in Japan are almost in despair. 
In response to the media, he tweeted the following.
 &#8220;If the public isn&#8217;t angry that politics has broken down to this extent, a big part of the reason is the media coverage. We are ranked 67th in the world in press freedom. It&#8217;s not just about medals. This is a last-ditch effort for the country. I think the future of Japan will be decided by how hard the media works for the next election.
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In the documentary film &#8220;Poisoning the Pancakes,&#8221; narrated by Mr. Furudate, these indicators of Japan&#8217;s current state are also introduced in the world ranking. Some of them are introduced at &#8230;&#8230;.
<figure id="attachment_207244" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 861px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-207244"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="b1d98380"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2021/09/7132255aa64534b3e507f32b8a59e1c5.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-207244" class="wp-caption-text">World ranking indexes showing the &#8220;current state of Japan&#8221; introduced in the documentary film &#8220;Poisoning the Pancakes,&#8221; narrated by Mr. Furutate.</figcaption></figure>
<h3> Why the people are not angry even though politics has broken down so far&#8230;</h3>
In light of the above data, I have this complaint and suggestion.
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 &#8220;In the ranking of press freedom, Japan was ranked 67th, but when the Democratic Party of Japan was in power, it was ranked 11th.
 They call it &#8216;the nightmare of the Democratic Party of Japan administration,&#8217; but it was just a concerted attack by the LDP and other politicians and businessmen who had lost their vested interests, and that included the mass media. At the time, the media was able to report freely, and that&#8217;s why their news ranking rose to 11th place.
 However, when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) came back to power and the structure was set up so that those who shared the vested interests would continue to suck the sweet honey, the media only introduced the LDP presidential election. The result is the 67th place in freedom of the press.
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 When you look at things through statistics, you realize that the real world and the statistical data are beautifully connected.
 Countries with high press freedom, happiness, and voter turnout have a lot in common. However, Switzerland is a direct democracy, so it is a &#8216;democracy&#8217; that cannot be compared to Japan.
 That&#8217;s why all the little things that are not important to some people are decided by referendum. In other words, because there are too many opportunities to vote, many people are unable to go, and the result is 40-odd percent. In Japan, on the other hand, they let the representatives decide, so they are cutting corners, and I think 80% of the people should at least go to the election to decide the representatives.
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 In countries with a high level of freedom of the press, the press is free, so people learn the truth, get interested in politics, and go to the polls, which leads to an 80% voter turnout.
 Then, politics has no choice but to look toward the people, so they can&#8217;t lie anymore, and politics will improve. Then, people will feel that they are building their own country, and their level of happiness will increase. It all makes perfect sense.
<figure id="attachment_207245" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 5705px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-207245"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="904502bf"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2021/09/b3331915794d496a97b9f2397f0302d0.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-207245" class="wp-caption-text">&#8220;When the structure is such that those who share the vested interests continue to suck the sweet honey, the media will only introduce the LDP presidential election. The result is that the media ranks 67th in freedom of the press.</figcaption></figure>
The 49th general election for the House of Representatives, in which each and every one of us has the right to vote, rather than the LDP presidential election, is expected to be held after October 21, when the term of office expires. With the House of Representatives election just around the corner, there is one more important thing to consider, according to Furudate.
 &#8220;In order to make the country a better place, we must not allow power to be fixed.
 To do that, it is important to have a change of government, but even after a change of government, the people must support the next government with the intention of having it work hard for four to five years.
 It is necessary to be patient for a while in order to repair various things broken by the long-term government. The question is whether we can do that.
 I&#8217;ve been thinking that I&#8217;m going to be hung out to dry because I&#8217;ve made so many enemies in the media, but I keep sending out messages. If only some legitimate company would use me in a commercial, I think this country would change. I&#8217;d like to go back to being a normal actor (laughs).
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Kanji Furutachi is an actor. Born in Osaka Prefecture. Active in stage, film, and drama. In recent years, he has starred in the drama &#8220;The Kottaki Brothers and the Four Struggles&#8221; (TV Tokyo), &#8220;Run Away is a Shame&#8221; (TBS), and appeared in the films &#8220;Kids Don&#8217;t Understand&#8221; (directed by Shuichi Okita), &#8220;Standing on the Edge&#8221; (directed by Koji Fukada), and &#8220;The Voice of Sin&#8221; (directed by Hiroyasu Doi). She is about to release the films &#8220;Annette&#8221; (directed by Leos Carax, winner of the Best Director Award at the 74th Cannes International Film Festival) and &#8220;Pretenders&#8221; (directed by Izuru Kumasaka).

 Born in 1973. Worked at a publishing company and an advertising production company before becoming a freelance writer. In addition to interviewing actors and actresses for weekly and monthly magazines, she writes drama columns for a variety of media. JUMP 9 no Tobira ga Openitoki" (both published by Earl's Publishing).

 Wakako Tago

 There is a hashtag called "#VoteDoubling Committee" that I often see on Twitter. It is actually a hashtag started by Mr. Kanji Furudate, a famous actor known for his roles in various dramas and movies. We asked him to tell us about it.

Actor Kanji Furutachi’s “Vote Doubling Plan”: What it is and what it aims to achieve

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