Japan’s Nuclear Protest Songs Go Viral

Kazuyoshi Saito

There’s an interesting report by The Asahi Shimbun today about Japanese nuclear protest songs going viral on the web, while mainstream media refrains from airing them. I thought I’d track down two of the videos to share with our readers, as they weren’t included in the original Asahi piece.

Reading in The New York Times today that ‘Japanese officials ignored or concealed dangers’ about the Fukushima accident, one can’t help but feel that these are especially fitting now more than ever.

RC Succession: Summertime Blues

This song seems awfully prophetic given that it was written back in the eighties. Here’s an excerpt of the translated lyrics, according to a subtitled version of the video. The words to this are pretty eerie.

There are 37 power plants in this nation
the number of plants is increasing
They leaked but didn’t inform us
This is the most stupid version of summertime blues

Cold winter is approaching
You’re hair’s been thinning recently
But TV says ‘Japanese nuclear power plants are safe’
This must be the last summertime blues.

I’m not quite sure of how many hits this song is getting online, as there are many versions of the video. There’s another copy of the song online with a montage of scenes from Fukushima showing as the music plays. RC Succession also has a cover of ‘Love Me Tender’ that deals with the nuclear issue. You can find a subtitled version of that song here.

Kazuyoshi Saito: Zutto Uso Datta (Always have been lied to)

This video has accumulated nearly 800,000 hits since being uploaded on April 7th. It’s actually a song that Saito previously released, rewritten with lyrics about the nuclear disaster. Here’s a version of the video with English annotations so you can follow along with the meaning.