Japanese punk rock lawyer Akihiro Shima belted out songs at a packed bar in Tokyo, sporting a mohawk and bright-red jacket, nine days after filing a landmark climate lawsuit.
The 63-year-old rallied over 450 plaintiffs across Japan last month in a landmark lawsuit seeking damages from the central government over its alleged “grossly inadequate” response to climate change. For Shima, the suit is “the culmination of everything” he has spent years fighting for, first as a musician and then a lawyer.
When the punk movement barreled through Japan in the late 1970s, then-teenager Shima was convinced he would “change society through rock-n-roll.”
Photo: AFP
Decades later, he has lost none of his fervor.
Roaring the lyrics “Free Palestine!” and “Dance in the street for your rights” at a tiny, dimly lit Tokyo bar last month, Shima lauded his latest legal battle between songs.
“There are people spewing carbon dioxide because of their selfish lifestyles, while people who don’t live like this at all are seeing their islands on the verge of sinking,” he told the audience. “Our future generations will be the biggest victim.”
A longtime fan of Shima, 60-year-old caregiver Kumiko Aoki was among those inspired to join the lawsuit as a plaintiff.
“The fact that he peppers his songs with clear messages like ‘no war’... I think that’s superbly cool,” she said.
Aoki and her fellow plaintiffs said that Japan’s “unconstitutional” inaction on climate change violates their constitutional rights to health and a peaceful life, and criticize Tokyo’s emissions reduction targets as unambitious.
Japan is committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent by 2035 and 73 percent by 2040 compared with 2013 levels — reaching net zero by mid-century.
Experts said the suit’s chances of winning are slim, but it could raise awareness and stir public opinion.
For Shima, the suit is the endpoint of a journey that began as a teenager, when he read the Japanese novel Compound Pollution — a diatribe against industrial waste, agricultural chemicals and food additives.
As a teen poring over the novel, Shima said he thought: “As long as we remain hell-bent on pursuing materialism and an economic status, our planet won’t hold up.”
He became a household “radical,” chivvying his parents into replacing laundry detergents with bar soap and boycotting their car, and got involved in other causes, from poverty to discrimination.
For many years, music was Shima’s medium, and he embraced punk’s anti-establishment message enthusiastically.
He and his friends even shot a CD cover nude in front of Japan’s parliament as a political protest.
When Shima turned 41, he said “it dawned on me that all my talk about social revolution or my niche band activity wasn’t changing society a bit.”
He went back to school and became a lawyer in 2010, with his first lawsuit naming a polar bear as a plaintiff and saying global warming amounts to pollution.
After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, he led a lawsuit against major nuclear reactor suppliers and also formed a new band: “Shima Kick Jiro & No Nukes Rights.”
Given his age, he acknowledged his latest lawsuit might be his last, but said he believed it addresses profound questions about the future.
“We intend for this lawsuit to prompt the question of what kind of society we want to live in 30 years from now,” he said.
For all his environmental passion, Shima admits he has not made songs about climate change yet.
“I haven’t been able to find a way to make words like ‘climate’ sound cool,” he said.
Could his landmark lawsuit change that?
“I will try,” he said with a smile.
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