Angry Residents Protest Monetary Policies in Japan

Angry residents of Japan fed up with the country’s monetary recklessness gathered outside the Ministry of Finance in Tokyo on Friday evening. Shouting “dismantle the finance ministry!” attendees brandished signs saying, “we are not your ATM” and mocking Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

Compared to other demonstrations and protests around the world, the MinFin protest may seem relatively tame, but by Japan’s painfully polite standards, the growing anger is palpable.

A small but swelling crowd chanted “demolish the ministry!” in unison in one video shared on social media, alongside notes of the heavy police presence. Lightning Network advocate and Blockstream Japan leader Koji Higashi expressed on X that the protest was “so exciting.” Others noted a stark lack of media coverage, with only TV Tokyo reporting on the event despite the sparse coverage at the time of writing.

At a previous event on February 17, a high school student visiting Tokyo for university entrance exams expressed frustration at the current statist paradigm. He shared his experience of sleeping in a park because hotels are too expensive, while consumption tax continues to rise and corporations receive breaks. “The politicians say if enterprise gets richer, we’ll all get richer. But is anyone here rich?” he questioned passionately among supporters.

A sign at the protest reads: “The citizens are not your ATM.”

Reasons for the Anger, Bitcoin Advocates in Attendance

The February 21 protest is reportedly the fifth of its kind across Japan, with various individual reasons for attending. The 2016 Abe-era Moritomo Gakuen scandal, where the finance ministry admitted to falsifying documents, has resurfaced in the news.

Furthermore, as reported previously, residents of Japan are witnessing escalating fiscal pain from inflation, overtourism, soaring food prices, purported rice “shortages,” and inadequate pensions for the elderly. The government, along with the new prime minister, continues to allocate trillions of yen to foreign initiatives and military action rather than supporting the populace.

One protest attendee shared a heartfelt moment on social media, expressing sorrow for children unable to have three meals a day, coinciding with all-time high sales of rice seasoning used to make plain rice meals more palatable.

Bitcoin advocates also participated in the event with their own “Bitcoin Demo” in the vicinity. However, much like the unclear origins of the “demolish the finance ministry” protests, their true objectives remain ambiguous. While many protesters seemed to be genuinely motivated by their grievances, some elements could be seen as “controlled opposition.”

BTC “rebels” made contradictory appeals to Japanese citizens, urging them to “pay taxes in Bitcoin” to curtail state spending. One photo shared by Blockstream Japan’s Koji Higashi captured demonstrators in Guy Fawkes masks promoting this idea, contradicting the cypherpunk ethos of crypto freedom as BTC is now favored by banks and governments, including in Japan.

In a manner typical of rebellion in Japan, aesthetics and imagery are borrowed from the West, leading to feelings of misplaced or counterproductive outrage among protestors.

Regardless of intentions, genuine crypto advocates highlight that peer-to-peer, permissionless electronic cash with privacy protocols can effectively combat political spending—arguably more so than just shouting in the streets and appealing to immoral “rulers” for change. As Hidetoshi Yokoyama of Robot Consulting remarked about the protests (translated by Google), “Politicians live a luxurious life while putting pressure on the people’s lives.”