This is Niche Culture. In this column, we regularly cover anime, geek culture, and things related to video games. Please leave feedback and let us know if there’s something you want us to cover!
We’ve learned some fantastic news – Yamada Taro (山田太郎), a Japanese politician, is projected to win (via Asahi, Reuters Japan) a seat in the Japanese House of Councillors – and he did it by courting the local geeks and anime nerds.
Yamada won over 514,000 votes for his campaign. The greatest and most pertinent bit from this is that he largely campaigned to otaku. The House of Councillors is like the post-war Japanese equivalent of the U.S. Congress, or the U.K. Parliament.
Taro did this by holding daily “internet door-to-door” speeches around Tokyo and in Akihabara, as well as digitally through popular internet communication services like LINE, Twitter, YouTube, SNS, and even Nico Nico.
Yamada’s platform is focused entirely on freedom of expression and communication privacy.
To help attest his commitment to this platform, he drove campaign vehicles around blaring his own vocaloid theme song, “Yamada Taro no Uta” or “Yamada Taro song”. Their goal was making a song so catchy, once you heard it you can’t get it out of your head.
Here’s a video of the theme song blaring from one of his campaign cars:
聞くと癖になると評判の「山田太郎の歌」の動画を撮りました。ご査収ください！#山田太郎53万票プロジェクト pic.twitter.com/0iblUYHT1v
— 温泉半熟卵【😷(𝐍𝟗𝟓,𝐊𝐅𝟗𝟒,𝐃𝐒𝟐)&💉(𝐗𝐁𝐁.𝟏.𝟓)】 (@UL14_MITINOKU) July 6, 2019
Upon hearing the news he is projected to win his election, Yamada sounded off on his own Twitter, noting they had no official groups, and that each and every supporter helped.
“We have advocated for the freedom of expression, centered on the internet,” he said. “I will do my best to realize the policy I promised to you.”
His aggressive pursuit of the otaku vote seems to have worked, alongside his projected win came the phrase “Yamada Taro is an otaku” spread on SNS.
Taro himself may not be a big otaku, but his family definitely is – regularly bringing him to Comiket (the largest manga and otaku convention in Japan). He even jokingly refers to his family as the “Comiket Family.”
