“European summer holidays stretch into weeks”, roared Saya Ohgi at her Monday night rally in central Tokyo, “and around the world, people take Christmas breaks that run from December into January.
“But we work so hard . . . isn’t it crazy that their economies are growing and ours isn’t?” ended the 43-year-old jazz singer: hoarse with the oratory of injustice, primed to be voted into the upper house of Japan’s parliament on Sunday and with an audience hanging on her every sentence.
Saya’s “Japanese First” speech — xenophobic, quasi-Trumpian, conspiratorial and exhilarating — bemoaned many hardships endured by ordinary Japanese, but did not explicitly mention the yen exchange rate.