Protesting at the Russian Embassy in Tokyo
Just a diary entry, of sorts, about what a protest can be like in Japan
A day or so after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, I was across the street from the Russian embassy in Tokyo, yelling “nyet voyny,” which I was told by a Russian woman there means “no war.” I wanted to yell a few more choice words along the lines of “fuck Putin,” but the Russian for that was a little tricky so we kept it simple. I hope if I was heard above the traffic by anyone in the embassy, my terrible pronunciation was akin to the audio torture Noriega got while hiding in the Vatican embassy in Panama.
Of course, it’s almost certain that no one inside the embassy heard me in particular, though I’m sure the embassy was vaguely aware of protestors outside. Even if they had heard us, what’s the point? A friend of mine I was texting with later told me that she thought it was “cool” that I went to do that, but at the same time, that she kind of feels like protests don’t do anything and they’re pointless.
Especially a protest like this one. Years ago, when the US invaded Iraq for a second time, I went to protest at the US embassy, and it was a wildly different scene. There were crowds of hundreds, possibly thousands, of people surging against police lines to approach embassy grounds. I was particularly…
