Japanese Journalist Makes Political Journey to Armstrong County

A political journalist from Tokyo, who was covering Presidential Candidate Donald Trump’s appearance in Youngstown earlier this week, left the big city to find out how rural America felt about the upcoming November election.

Correspondent Toru Takei, working out of the Washington Bureau of Kyodo News, wanted a different opinion of the election rather than affluent voters in big cities.

“I wanted to see what it was like. I am in Washington, D.C. and D.C. is very much a different place. This country is so different - different areas, different states. I wanted to see economically devastated cities, which is completely different from D.C.”

Takei has covered the State Department, the Pentagon from 2009-2012. Now he has returned to the United States to cover this year’s presidential election. He recognizes the difference in the way affluent voters view the candidates verses those who are poor to middle-class.

“Another reason I wanted to come to this area was when any Japanese people think about the United States, they tend to think about New York City, Los Angeles, or Chicago - the big cities. Those cities are of course U.S. cities, but America is not only that. I wanted to introduce different faces of this country.”

As he was driving back from Youngstown to Pittsburgh to catch his plane flight back to Washington, D.C., Takei decided to stop in Armstrong County. He walked the streets of Ford City, where he had read about the economic devastation of losing two major manufacturing plants leaving thousands of workers unemployed. He talked to the average person on the street to get their perspective of this year’s presidential election.

Before leaving town, he sought out Kittanning Borough Councilman David Croyle. Croyle, who had lived in the metro D.C. area and worked at Fox News during the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, had a different perspective of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Takei interviewed Croyle for more than 30 minutes to understand the differences in the cultural fabric that separates political opinions between urban and rural areas.

Takei said he enjoys being an international correspondent and bringing information on world events back to Japanese readers.

“I love going different places, talking to different people like you,” he told Croyle during a pre-recorded segment for Croyle’s WTYM morning radio talk show, “David & Friends”. “Every day is exciting! New discovery every time. One of the reasons I love about being a reporter is I get to talk to all kinds of different people - hear their perspectives - different life stories. I like to write about it so that I can share that to my readers. I enjoy that very much!”

Even as Takei was gaining perspective from Croyle on national politics, Croyle seized the opportunity to understand how Japanese culture views the United States.

“The U.S. presidential election is such a huge impact on the world stage,” Takei said. “It affects U.S. - Japan relationship in the future. A lot of people in Japan - our readers - are interested, and especially what’s happening in this election cycle. Mr. Trump was a popular famous figure before, but now he is getting so much traction. A lot of readers in Japan are curious what is going on.”

Takei said Japanese people are enamored with President Barak Obama.

“President Obama is very popular in Japan and so is Mrs. Clinton. I think President Obama being the first African-American president, Japanese people find it very intriguing and historic. People love that - especially a country who suffered an atomic bomb attack. President Obama chooses to work without nuclear weapons, so that has a lot of appeal to Japanese citizens.”

It has been 71 years this month since American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. While a new generation of Japanese youth cannot relate to that part of Japan-American history, Takei said it still is very real to survivors.

“A lot of young people - it is not realistic to them. It happened so long ago. But there are still survivors from the nuclear bombs and those people are still suffering and they’re alive. So it is very much still there. It’s not that the people have resentment towards the United States. It’s not like that. It was a war time. It’s a different situation. Different leadership. Everything was happening in different circumstances.”

Takei’s interview with Croyle will be published in newspapers throughout Japan.

Croyle’s interview with Takei was aired this week during his radio show.

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.