For three days last month, Ayako Nishimura and hundreds of students, pacifists, leftists and religious groups took their banners and bullhorns to the port of Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture.
Their target was the Aegis battleship Kirishima, which the Koizumi government had controversially agreed to send to the Indian Ocean as rearguard support for U.S. forces.
Despite injuries and arrests in scuffles with police, the demonstrators, whose activities were reported widely in foreign media dispatches from Tokyo, failed to stop the destroyer sailing out of port at dawn on Dec. 17, dogged by small boats full of screaming protesters.