25 years protest and picket in Japan

On June 29 1981, the Japanese electronics company OKI sacked one of its workers, Tetsuro Tanaka, who had refused to sign the choices he was offered, a transfer order to work far from his home or to a piece of paper that said he agreed to be fired.

On June 29 2006, 25 years later Tetsuro Tanaka, was forcefully evicted from the company's shareholders meeting. This violence against a shareholder who dared to ask a question was reported the following day in a Tokyo newspaper. A number of Japanese companies have been forced to appoligise to their stockhoders on matters of corruption and other violations of their legal responsibilities.

Tanaka has become famous around the world for his daily picket of the OKI factory where he worked in Takao. He sings songs he has composed about his struggle with the company. Late year he was awarded a Japanese human rights award in Tokyo for his determination and support for other workers who find themselves in similar situations, being unfairly dissmissed or being punished for standing up for themselves.

The German magazine Der Spiegel wrote about Tanaka this February and his story was picked up recently by a Turkish website but the best place to find out more is from his own website at http://www.din.or.jp/~okidentt/eigohome.htm

Congratulations on on the 25th anniversary!

The Sydney documentary maker Maree Delofski has been researching a film about Mr Tanaka. During her most recent visit to Tokyo last month, Ms Delofski filmed him giving moral support to a school teacher who has spent months suspended without pay for refusing to stand and sing the national anthem. "Another type of loyalty test," Mr Tanaka says.

For Ms Delofski, whose film is to be called Mr Tanaka Will Not Do Callisthenics, the spectre of psychologically whipped workers bending to a company exercise routine captures the struggle.

Tanaka's extraordinary struggle was picked up by the Saturday papers in Australia on 8 July:

see THE AGE or the THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Tetsuro Tanaka's music

On his picket line Tanaka plays music and sings he has composed for example

Tremolo in front of the gate

Etude in front of the gate

Tanaka's long struggle has since been publicised around the world by the union activist site LabourStart