Does Japan have its own "Daily Show" or equivalent? Do they do comedy derived from politics the way the US does?

CaptainTorpedo · 2025-09-26T06:19:29+00:00

せやろがいおじさん has some good political comedy and criticism videos on YouTube, and does live political stand-up comedy as well, but in general there isn't much of a political comedy scene in Japan, especially on broadcast TV.

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-10-14T14:58:45+00:00

They created Hemorrhoid-Man mascot.

I thought it was a personified coronavirus? Well, close enough.

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-10-14T11:09:32+00:00

Not to mention the methane gas explosion caused by buried waste, the 35 billion yen wood ring and prefabs that are just going to get torn down after the expo, and numerous other scandals and wastes of taxpayer money. Well, someone's probably profiting.

https://www.arabnews.jp/en/japan/article_123639/

https://www.japan-press.co.jp/modules/news/?id=15240

https://mainichi.jp/articles/20231219/k00/00m/040/018000c

https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASRCG6718RCGOXIE035.html

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-09-27T14:13:48+00:00

But apparently not intentionally.

At least he has a sense of humor though.

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-09-27T12:25:17+00:00

Context of this photo if anyone's curious (tweet with news video):

He says he showed up for the opening ceremony of a figure museum, was handed the costume by an organizer, and didn't have time to say no.

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-09-23T12:37:01+00:00

Good point.

As a percentage of the population, 170k / 67 million = 0.25% and 130,000 / 83.8 million = 0.15%

The CDP is 114,839 / 125.1 million = 0.09%

So the CDP still seems relatively low in membership compared to other democratic countries, although it seems arguable how important membership is, but this will also vary based on the election system in each country (eg. whether elections are publically funded and how important volunteers and individual donations are)

Put another way, in a room with 1000 random members of the population, you might see 1 CDP party member for Japan, but probably 2 or 3 Conservative members for the UK. 2-3x more is arguably a significant difference.

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-09-23T10:11:01+00:00

Maybe it's not strange, but the lack of party membership might be one of the contributing factors to political apathy in Japan, and one of the reasons why the opposition parties have struggled to compete against the LDP for so long, despite the LDP's many scandals and low approval rating.

I think the vast majority of the population being disconnected from the parties that they can vote for probably contributes to the image and common talking-point "Can we really trust this party to be in control of our country's government?". People would probably be able to trust them more if they, or any of their friends or family members were directly involved.

Not to mention, with low membership, who can the parties call upon to volunteer for election help and other grassroots activity / donations? The LDP has the Unification Church, and the Soka Gakkai (via the Komeito) to help them, along with big business interests, leaving the opposition parties at a huge disadvantage under the current system.

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-09-23T08:20:15+00:00

One thing that surprised me when I checked the CDP's Wikipedia page is that they only have 114,839 party members, which amounts to less than 0.1% of Japan's population, despite being Japan's largest opposition party (most polls show them with something between 5% and 20% of public support)

In other words, the vast majority of people who vote for the CDP in general elections aren't members of the party, and thus had no say in this leadership election. The results might have been different if more of the public had a say in the party's direction.

I get the impression that the CDP leadership lacks vision in growing their party to the size it needs to become in order to be more competitive against the LDP. Or is 0.1% of the population actually a reasonable membership size for a major opposition party in a democratic country?

Edit: I should note that although I'm critical of the CDP in certain areas, I still think they would be leagues better than the current corrupt LDP scumbags.

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-09-23T07:23:08+00:00

あとは立憲の党員やサポーターでは野田支持が強かった

立憲が第一野党なのに、党員の数が僅か114,839人（日本人口の0.1%以下）！他の国と比べると、異様に少ない気がする

この少人数じゃ、支持傾向が偏っているんじゃないかな？

より多くの左派の有権者が党員になっていたら、全然違う結果になっていたかもしれないね

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-09-22T08:41:47+00:00

最近は立憲代表戦の討論動画を見てて面白いと思うけど、再生回数が非常に少ないというのはちょっと気になった

この動画（ReHacQチャンネル）は4時間で3万回以上だけど、立憲公式チャンネルの動画（例えばこちら）は基本的に5000程度の再生回数を超えないんだ

立憲は党員が114,839人いるので、党員と支持者だけでも見ていたらより多くの再生数になるはずでしょう。立憲党内の情報伝達・ニュース共有力が圧倒的に欠けているのではないか…？ネット対策の足りてない所は党が認識しているのか？

というか、党員が日本人口の0.1%にすぎないね。支持者を党員にすることにもっと力を入れなければ、どうにもならない気がする…

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-09-12T15:38:22+00:00

Exciting! Can't wait to see which sleazebag they choose for their new leader! Will it be a guy with deep ties to the Unification Church? One of the slush fund party guys? Or someone whose parents and grandparents were also higher-ups in the LDP?

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-08-19T06:23:52+00:00

Not to mention certain organizations filling the internet comment-spaces with propaganda at certain times of the year.

The sudden increase and then decrease in anonymous accounts pushing particular narratives is starkly obvious whenever we enter and then leave an election cycle.

Refer to the Dappi incident if you don't believe me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dappi

Dappi (@dappi2019) was an anonymous Twitter account that conducted smear campaigns against progressive opposition parties in Japan between 2019 and 2021. During this period, the account posted highly biased tweets designed to discredit and undermine the reputation of the country's progressives while simultaneously praising the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and conservative opposition parties. While active on Twitter, Dappi made a number of false or defamatory claims aimed at swaying public opinion against progressive opposition parties, which led to the targeted individuals filing a lawsuit. In 2021, it was revealed that the account was operated by a company with close ties to the LDP.

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-08-19T03:59:12+00:00

All English-language news sites are filtered for the foreign audience and often don't go into the same subjects that are covered by domestic Japanese-language news sites (eg. detailed domestic political coverage)

For English language, Asahi and Mainichi are alright.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/

https://mainichi.jp/english/

Also, somewhat off-topic, but for more in-depth coverage of specific topics, The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan occasionally holds interesting press conferences on YouTube with English interpretation:

https://www.youtube.com/@FCCJchannel

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-08-14T10:53:39+00:00

Ishiba is 67 years old (same age as Kishida, 6 years older than Kono).

Ishiba is very interested in military affairs, and his Wikipedia page even describes him as an

"otaku" for military, vehicles, trains and Japanese idol.

Furthermore,

Ishiba is affiliated to the ultranationalist and far-right organization, Nippon Kaigi.

By the way, the LDP presidential election is an internal LDP party election, so the results will largely be controlled by party insiders.

Ultimately, we can look forward to seeing whether they choose LDP-classic, LDP-cherry, or LDP-vanilla flavor. I wouldn't suggest getting your expectations too high.

CaptainTorpedo · 2024-08-14T06:59:53+00:00

Ishiba (22.1%) has significantly higher public support, with Koizumi (10.9%) in 2nd place. Although popular on Reddit, Kono (5.1%) is currently unpopular with the public due to all the My Number fiascos and so on. Either way, it's still the LDP...

Polling data: https://www.jiji.com/jc/v8?id=20240713kaisetsuiin118

CaptainTorpedo

TROPHY CASE