Tanaka-San Will Not Do Callisthenics

On the 29 June 1981 Tetsuro Tanaka, an engineer, was sacked by his employer, a large electronics company in Tokyo. The simple story is that the company ordered Tanaka-san to transfer to another factory far away from the home where he lived with his wife and family. Tanaka-san refused the order and was sacked.

Two years earlier Tanaka-san, the president of the company’s mandolin club, had supported 1350 workers who were made redundant. He’d also refused to take part in the group callisthenics that the company introduced after the mass dismissals.

According to Tanaka-san, employees turned up early and performed the exercises before work in unpaid time. He refused to participate believing that the group callisthenics were a humiliating and demeaning loyalty test to the company. But in order to show his criticism to his workmates and to the company he would turn up, sit and watch.

After he refused to do callisthenics, Tanaka’s wages were cut and he was gradually ostracised by his fellow workers. Even the members of his mandolin club drifted away and new employees were too intimidated to join. Undaunted, he continued to make his criticisms of the company’s labour policies and stood against company-endorsed candidates in elections for the workplace union.

Finally, the company gave him a compulsory transfer order to a factory hundreds of kilometres away. He refused to sign it and was dismissed.

The day after he was sacked Tanaka turned up at the company gate and began a picket that has probably become the longest one-man protest in Japan’s history – he’s outlasted at least fourteen Japanese Prime Ministers and three company presidents.

Decades after Tanaka began his epic protest, Australian filmmaker Maree Delofski and her partner, folklorist Mark Gregory, fall into Tanaka-san’s world through a hole in the internet. Intrigued by his tenacity and the longevity of his campaign, they travel to Japan to meet him in time for the 25th anniversary of his campaign.