The Anti-Golf

Gen Morita and his Global Anti-Golf Movement preach the game's ruination, a gospel that is attracting followers around the world.

by Brett Avery

GEN MORITA warms to his message the way an evangelist can enflame a gathering with a sermon. A slightly built man with a surprisingly resonant voice, Morita begins an almost offhanded description of how he recognized the evil lurking in the world. His is a tale of repentance. He once succumbed to the vices in the pursuit of business. But upon simplifying and refocusing his life, he realized his waywardness. Morita's voice gathers emotion and his dark eyes pierce each listener as he exposes the sins others refuse to acknowledge: destruction of virgin land, poisoning of groundwater, financial ruin of the indigenous to enrich multinational corporations, the corruption of local governments.

By the time Morita reaches his crescendo, even the longtime believer begins to question his faith. And this is the moment when Morita can capture the unwary like a firefly in a mayonnaise jar, forever shifting their allegiance to his side.

"I just represent a lot of people," Morita says humbly, reaching the crux of his message. "Farmers, citizens, old people, all kinds of people who don't have access to voice their feelings outwardly."

Gen Morita's cause is the Global Anti-Golf Movement.

His goal is to erase the game, this unpardonable sin, from the planet.

* * *

We are standing at the bottom of an eight-story concrete canyon outside the Tokyu Department Store, on one of the hottest days Tokyo will experience this spring. The sun throbs mercilessly. Every few minutes the nearby subway or railway station regurgitates a river of bodies, an immense flow for the beginning of a week-long holiday period.

Two giant television screens, blaring commercials and music videos, tower over the five-corner intersection that marks the perimeter of the courtyard. A man in a white jumpsuit stands on the roof of a trailer festooned with imperial flags, his screaming denunciations of American presence in the homeland blaring from speakers. Religious protesters swirl about, thrusting pamphlets into the hands of shoppers.

And in the center of this disaster-movie melee, amidst a cacophony only a Tokyo resident overlooks, stand three men and three women, silently seeking support. Their meager supply of handouts will be exhausted in less than an hour; despite their judicious distribution, a good number will end up on the ground. It is the protester's time-worn task: enlistment of the masses, one mind at a time.

At the epicenter stands Morita, a founder of World No-Golf Day, the culmination of this weekend of protests. He is more finely dressed than his cohorts, smiling more genuinely, nodding more energetically, sidestepping discouragement when someone all but stiff-arms him away. You have to say this about the man who helped shape the Global Anti-Golf Movement: He knows how to work a crowd.

Golf has always drawn detractors. Back in the second half of the 15th century the game was a danger to both church and Scottish government, the latter passing edicts calling for a halt to golf as a detriment to the populace's archery skills. As the game survived the days of the Mayflower, Bill of Rights, pony express, internal combustion engine and telephone, society evolved but golf protesters made minimal impact. Even today, in Tokyo's sweaty heat, the Global Anti-Golf Movement (GAG'M) makes its mark gradually, with one handshake, one question at a time.

Away from this courtyard, operating on a shoestring annual budget that would not buy a secondhand greens mower, Morita and his brethren grapple for a foothold in the information revolution. They try to grasp the staggering potential of the facsimile machine and the Internet, attempting to find the spark that will ignite golf's downfall.

"We have to recognize that they are quite well connected, that they know how to use faxes and e-mail and can get their word out very quickly," says David Stubbs, director of the ecology unit for the European Golf Association. "They are quite good at getting their views out to the newspapers. And it looks quite good, makes them appear more important."

Freed from geographic limitations that hindered generations of predecessors, GAG'M presents itself as golf's prime gadfly. In only 10 years its leaders, concentrated in Asia and Oceania, stitched a quilt of local, regional and national organizations with catchy acronyms such as TNT and TIM-Team, an umbrella from under which it blares its message. And with growing frequency, that anti-golf message is finding its way into the mainstream press.

The golf industry regards GAG'M as a phantasm, with Morita its public face. GAG'M thrives in third-world nations where Western development is hoisted as an evil. Most of its splinter groups only have contact through fax or telephone, accepting information from GAG'M leaders such as Morita and then spreading it like Poa annua. And Morita seemingly shows up everywhere, preaching the game's sins.

Golf's environmental leaders discount GAG'M's tales of death and genetic harm from pesticide use as cases more than a decade old. They are recycled unchallenged in print -- many articles authored by GAG'M members under the imprimatur of being researchers. They quote studies long-ago discredited by independent research, or misrepresent research findings. Morita acknowledges twisting these "semantics" of golf's word. Yet to those not aware of the game's environmental diligence, the words of the anti-golfers can become a powerful gospel.

"What it comes down to is that people will latch onto whatever [information] they can ," says Pat Jones, the former public affairs director for the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, who dealt with GAG'M more frequently than nearly anyone in golf. "The environmental critic has moral authority, and they come armed with 'facts.' So you answer, but you don't have the same moral authority."

In his years at the GCSAA, Jones never had face-to-face dealings with Morita or other GAG'M leaders. "It's hard to get a handle on them," Jones says. "There is no membership list. They don't seem to exist

except for once a year, around the time of World No-Golf Day." It was through the fax machine that Jones tried to counter Morita, a frustrating process that left him uncertain of the adversary.

"We are just stating rational realities or facts," Morita says, warming to the topic. "I don't know how they label me, they can label me as anything. But to me that is why it is necessary for us to approach other people and let them know what the realities are, what is happening to the world today. What people are missing, how people are victimized and being used by the big power, such as the golf industry."

GAG'M lists more than a dozen basic wrongs it wants righted, among them:

  • An immediate moratorium on all course development;
  • Laws prohibiting advertising and promotion of courses and golf tourism;
  • "Children and youths should not be enticed to adopt the elitist and unsustainable lifestyle of golfers, e.g. by introducing golf learning facilities at schools and universities;"
  • "Measures to improve working conditions of golf course workers, who are often exploited as cheap labourers and exposed to health risks . . . and to protect women caddies from sexual harassments by male golfers;"
  • The return of existing courses to public parks, or rehabilitation and regeneration of the land to its natural state
Sketching a chain of command for GAG'M is nearly impossible. Even people within GAG'M don't know how many heads they have -- estimates range from a couple hundred members into the thousands, and anywhere from a handful of groups to more than 50. Although they are displayed as a unified front, the satellite groups do not sign off on each item. Some organizations voice opposing viewpoints, actually supporting a course's presence as part of local development.

One example of how GAG'M affiliates diverge is Plan to Protect Kona, a rare U.S. member. This small group of farmers is protesting a proposed Japan Air Lines-financed development on the Hawaiian coast. Their issue is not golf but land usage, worrying that an exclusive gated community with 27 holes will skew the tax base of an agrarian area and potentially damage or limit access to what it has identified as hundreds of cultural and spiritual landmarks.

GAG'M adopted Plan to Protect Kona as an eco-tourism issue, however, and for the second year used it to bolster a boycott of JAL that was the centerpiece of World No-Golf Day protests. Nancy Pisicchio, a Plan to Protect founder, voices concern over the GAG'M alignment as she endures the sweltering heat of this Tokyo courtyard, beside two other Plan to Protect members handing out flyers calling for the JAL boycott.

"I put myself in a position of responsibility by forming Plan to Protect as a land-use organization," Pisicchio says. "I really want the thing to have credibility and not go half-cocked into something that's going to take us into a radical direction without credibility. We want to have value to the community instead of just being a rabble-rousing group."

* * *

It is difficult to dislike Gen Morita, or to argue with the image he projects. His features are Japanese, yet his attire, grooming, mannerisms and command of English speak of several years spent in Southern California. Born less than two years after the conclusion of World War II, in the city of Saitama, his boyish good looks and lean build could reflect the body of a 30-year-old.

As Morita tells his life story, he was a UCLA exchange student at the time man first landed on the moon, a chemistry major who longed for a musician's life. Changing his major, he formed a band with four other Japanese students and the group landed a recording contract from Capitol Records. Their one self-titled album, East, released in July 1972, didn't sell and the band went south. Morita remained in L.A. as a single musician.

"Somehow I survived," Morita says with a grin. "I realized my talents as a musician were not enough. I knew the outcome." Switching to music production, Morita says he then spent five years with a Hollywood company before returning to Japan in 1985.

It was during his time in Southern California that Morita polished a golf game that brought him a 20 handicap. "Our major clients were Japanese recording companies or TV stations," he says, "so we had to entertain Japanese businessmen, and they loved to play golf.

"I enjoyed playing golf. It's like playing baseball. You enjoy accomplishing your skill, the sensations, whatever you feel you get from any kind of sport." And then he laughs. "I was a poor golfer. I would shoot in the 100s."

It was not lack of talent that drove him to loathe the game. His tale is typical of many anti-golf protesters. One day they read a story, attend a demonstration, don't like something they hear in a public meeting -- and change their minds, never to return.

In Morita's case, it began not long after returning to Tokyo, when he traded city life for the village of Kamogawa, toward the tip of the peninsula that forms Tokyo Bay. He describes his occupation as farming and paints a picture of his half-acre spread.

One day, as he recounts the tale, he read a local newspaper's story about his golf-less town's decision to adopt a master plan encompassing five municipal courses. "When I found out, I didn't think much about it," Morita says. "But little by little, I was getting to know about the destructive facts of golf course construction. That was 1988 or '89, and in Japan the massive golf course development was going on. One day I attended this sort of public meeting, and so I got to know these [anti-golf] people."

Morita rose quickly through the ranks, opposing the leviathan with vigor. Although "a simple farmer," he travels the world lecturing on the benefits of a holistic lifestyle. Each visit to a foreign land affords an opportunity to whip up the locals' anti-golf fervor.

It was during his first visit to the United Kingdom that Morita came face-to-face with Stubbs, who for 21Ú2 years has coordinated the environmental efforts of the European GA, the Royal and Ancient and PGA European Tour. Morita and Stubbs spent a rainy afternoon at Wimbledon Commons, a parkland course in London.

"He is quite a nice fellow," Stubbs says. "He is not at all the way you would imagine. I expected someone a bit more angry, a bit more aggressively militant. But that is not the Japanese character. He was more measured.

"He had some very valid points and made them quite effectively. We in golf have to realize that there are some environmental problems with some sites."

That is where GAG'M's laundry list of a dozen problems, from pesticides to land use, comes in handy. Depending upon the debate, Morita calls up any of the points to hammer home the game's evils. Pushed into a corner, Morita will surrender his defense and adopt a new one. "In a one-on-one situation you can have an intelligent discussion," Stubbs says. "You can almost agree to disagree on some points."

That still cannot counter some of GAG'M's claims.

"The way they extrapolate, saying we have problems with a [single] project and say we want a moratorium on construction," Stubbs says, "this leap in logic, eliminating golf altogether, is what is the problem."

* * *

Welcome to World No-Golf Day. It is April 29, the start of the Golden Week holidays, two days after the protest in the department store courtyard. The heat wave continues, a detriment to those who did not escape to the countryside. Or anyone trapped in a classroom of a community center located about a 3-wood shot from the Tokyo Dome.

GAG'M would have you picture World No-Golf Day's seminal protest as the vision that springs to mind: a march through downtown streets, signs held high and slogans chanted. It is, instead, indoors, much like an eighth-grade civics class, and about as interesting. At its peak there are 30 people in the room, including a reporter and interpreter, far below the thousand Morita claims were drawn to the first national coalition of citizen groups opposed to golf course development.

Attendance has been a problem all weekend. Three days ago Morita held a press conference on the JAL boycott and the proposed Hawaiian resort that will draw Japanese tourists. GAG'M went so far as to hold it in the building housing most of the national press agencies. What Morita did not expect was that it would coincide with the opening of the trial of Shoko Asahara, charged with masterminding the March 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system that killed 11 and injured more than 3,700. While a dozen news helicopters hovered above the courthouse, located a half-block away, and more than a thousand reporters jockeyed for position outside, Morita drew four reporters. And one put his head on the table and fell asleep.

World No-Golf Day is equally unimpressive. Some of the protesters have brought books and pamphlets, and sell them from tables set up around the room's perimeter. In fact, only a handful of the people in the room could be considered bona fide golf protesters. It is a case of one-hand-washes-the-other: anti-nuclear and land-use protesters attend World No-Golf Day, seeking to gain support for their pet causes.

Opposing golf just isn't tony in Japan. It's all but a moot point since the economic bubble went bust in the late 1980s, just about the time the country all but ran out of available land for course development. Morita proclaims victory, but that's like saying a person stranded on a desert island went on a successful diet when he ran out of provisions.

There are other countries, though, and Morita takes his show on the road, fighting wherever anyone will listen. "I can see millions of answers, but it just doesn't mean a thing," he says when asked if he can quantify the successes they claim. "I do whatever I feel I am supposed to. I don't expect people to do the same thing. I am just telling my sort of scripture."

In the meantime, Morita continues to send out countless pages a week via fax -- he already wore out one machine in the name of anti-golf. He throws his message out to the populace and welcomes his converts the old-fashioned way, one at a time. But someday soon, if the anti-golfers catch a break, the numbers could multiply exponentially. It happened in the United States with smoking. In fact, it was the Internet that recently spelled the difference for the anti-smoking lobby. The same could happen against golf, a rising tide that would be difficult to counteract.

Where does Morita see his effort in five, 10, 15 years? "I think that awareness somehow will lead to some kind of revolution." And then he gives the quintessential sound bite, the line that paints him as both adversary and friend, the line that makes the believer question his faith. "We are very open-minded and we have a big capacity to accept any kind of criticism, especially from the other side, like you."

And then he laughs the laugh of someone willing to fight to the death in the belief that he alone can banish evil from the planet.