No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Japanese Student Movement in the Cold War Crucible, 1945-1972
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
This article provides a concise overview of the well-organized, nationwide student movement which emerged in Japan in the immediate aftermath of World War II; its participation in the escalating political struggles of the 1950s, including an abortive attempt at a communist revolution from 1950 to 1952, anti-military base protests climaxing in the Sunagawa struggle from 1955 to 1957, and the massive Anpo protests against the US-Japan Security Treaty from 1959 to 1960; its collapse into warring “sects” in the 1960s; its revival in the form of the radically de-centralized, anti-hierarchical zenkyōtō movement of the late 1960s; and a final turn to violent extremism and a resulting delegitimization of student activism in the early 1970s. Among other observations, this article elucidates how the movement grew so large and so powerful so quickly, how it differed from student movements in other nations, connections between the Japanese student movement and similar movements in the western world, and the movement's broader social and political context both in reference to other Japanese social movements and the ongoing global Cold War.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Authors 2022
References
Notes
1 In particular, see Chelsea Szendi Schieder, Coed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021).
2 See Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 162-163.
3 Ohnuki-Tierney, 175.
4 See Nick Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018), 9-10.
5 On education reform, see Toshio Nishi, Unconditional Democracy: Education and Politics in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1982), and John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 246-251.
6 On the persistent strand of pacifism and anti-war sentiment in the Japanese student movement, see Naoko Koda, The United States and the Japanese Student Movement, 1948-1973: Managing a Free World (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020).
7 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 12.
8 Nick Kapur, “The Empire Strikes Back? The 1968 Meiji Centennial Celebrations and the Revival of Japanese Nationalism,” Japanese Studies, 38:3, 307-308.
9 Benjamin C. Duke, Japan's Militant Teachers: A History of the Left-Wing Teachers' Movement (Honolulu: Hawai'i University Press, 1973), 75-77.
10 Duke, Japan's Militant Teachers, 136-155.
11 Oguma Eiji, “Japan's 1968: A Collective Reaction to Rapid Economic Growth in an Age of Turmoil,” Nick Kapur with Samuel Malissa and Stephen Poland, trans., The Asia-Pacific Journal 13:12 (2015) (accessed September 1, 2019), 11; Rosalind Pritchard, “Humboldtian Values in a Changing World: Staff and Students in German Universities,” Oxford Review of Education 30:4 (December 2004), 510-511.
12 On Minobe, see Gregory J. Kasza, The State and Mass Media in Japan, 1918-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 129-137; on Yanaihara, see Susan C. Townsend, Yanihara Tadao and Japanese Colonial Policy: Redeeming Empire (New York: Routledge, 2013), 228-256; on Tsuda, see John S. Brownlee, Japanese Historians and the National Myths, 1600-1945: The Age of the Gods and Emperor Jinmu (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997) 186-201.
13 Byron K. Marshall, Academic Freedom and the Japanese Imperial University, 1868-1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 168-175.
14 Ben-Ami Shillony, “Universities and Students in Wartime Japan,” The Journal of Asian Studies 45:4 (August 1986), 779.
15 See Nishi, Unconditional Democracy, 167, and Matsunami Michihiro, “Origins of Zengakuren,” in Stuart Dowsey, ed., Zengakuren: Japan's Revolutionary Students (Berkeley: The Ishi Press, 1970), 43.
16 Matsunami, “Origins of Zengakuren,” 44.
17 Matsunami, “Origins of Zengakuren,” 45-47.
18 Takei Teruo, “Zengakuren kessei no zengo: sore wa gyakuryū to no tatakai no makuaki datta,” reproduced in Takei Teruo, Sō to shite no gakusei undō: Zengakuren sōseiki no shisō to kōdō (Tokyo: Supēsu Kaya, 2005), 65.
19 Matsunami, “Origins of Zengakuren,” 53.
20 On the “Reverse Course,” see Dower, Embracing Defeat, 268-273, 525-562; and Takemae Eiji, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy, Robert Ricketts and Sebastian Swann, trans. (New York: Continuum, 2002), 468-495.
21 Hirata Tetsuo, Reddo pāji no shiteki kyūmei (Tokyo: Shin Nihon Shuppansha, 2002), 22; Koda, The United States and the Japanese Student Movement, 41; Duke, Japan's Militant Teachers, 90-91.
22 On the Cominform criticism and its aftermath, see Robert Scalapino, The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920-1966 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 60-78.
23 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 14-15.
24 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 14.
25 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 129.
26 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 146.
27 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 15-16.
28 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 146.
29 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 19.
30 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 19-20.
31 Kazuko Tsurumi, Social Change and the Individual (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 330.
32 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 3-4.
33 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 147.
34 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 147-8.
35 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 22-25.
36 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 27-29.
37 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 30-34.
38 For further discussion of this crisis and Ikeda and Kennedy's efforts to resolve it, see Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 35-74.
39 Takagi Masayuki, Shinsayoku sanju-nen shi (Tokyo: Doyo Bijutsusha, 1988), 49.
40 “Anpo toso no zasetsu to Ikeda naikaku no seiritsu: Anpo toso ni okeru rironteki sho mondai,” Senki 27 (August 14, 1960), reproduced in San'ichi Shobo Henshubu, ed., Shiryo sengo gakusei undo 5: 1959–1961 (Tokyo: San'ichi Shobo, 1969), 455–468.
41 Takazawa Koji, Takagi Masayuki, and Kurata Kazunari, Shinsayoku nijunen shi: Hanran no kiseki (Tokyo: Shinsensha, 1995), 45. “Himeoka Reiji” was the pen name of Aoki Masahiko, who later became a Stanford University economics professor. Himeoka's doctrine had been initially laid out in an article in the June 1959 issue of the journal Kyosanshugi.
42 San'ichi Shobo Henshubu, ed., Shiryo sengo gakusei undo 5, 455; Takazawa, Takagi, and Kurata, Shinsayoku nijunen shi, 45; Yun Kyong-ch'ol, Nihon shinsayoku no kenkyu (Tokyo: Bokutakusha, 2001), 23.
43 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 149-150.
44 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 150.
45 “Konnichi no mondai: Daigaku no kiki,” Asahi Shinbun, May 19, 1963, evening edition, 1.
46 On Tokoro Mitsuko in particular, see Guy Yasko, The Japanese Student Movement, 1968-1970: The Zenkyoto Uprising (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1997), 1-45, and Schieder, Coed Revolution, 49-77.
47 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 151; Schieder, Coed Revolution, 59.
48 See, for example, William Marotti, “Japan 1968: The Performance of Violence and the Theater of Protest,” The American Historical Review 114:1 (February 2009), 97-135. For police injuries and vehicle damage statistics, see Keisatsuchō, Shōwa 63-nen keisatsu hakusho: “tero, gerira” no konzetsu o mezashite (Tokyo: Keisatsuchō, 1988), “Dai-1-setsu: kyokusa bōryoku shūdan nado no hensen,” (accessed May 24, 2022).
49 For a detailed account of the Sanrizuka struggle, see David E. Apter and Nagayo Sawa, Against the State: Politics and Social Protest in Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).
50 This account draws upon the following sources: Oguma Eiji, 1968 (Tokyo: Shinyōsha, 2009): 2:86-93; “Mokugekisha ga kataru ‘Shinjuku sōran’: bōto 2-mannin koe, 743-nin ga onawa ni,” Daily Shinchō, December 28, 2016, (accessed September 1, 2019); Toyomasa Fuse, “Student Radicalism in Japan: A ‘Cultural Revolution‘?” Comparative Education Review 13:3 (October 1969), 333; and Keisatsuchō, Shōwa 63-nen keisatsu hakusho, Dai-1-setsu.
51 Oguma, “Japan's 1968,” 12.
52 Oguma, “Japan's 1968,” 5.
53 Oguma, “Japan's 1968,” 8-9.
54 Oguma, “Japan's 1968,” 3.
55 Oguma, “Japan's 1968,” 4.
56 Sawara Yukiko, “The University Struggles,” in Stuart Dowsey, ed., Zengakuren: Japan's Revolutionary Students (Berkeley: The Ishi Press, 1970), 141.
57 Setsu Shigematsu, “’68 and the Japanese Women's Liberation Movement,” in Gavin Walker, ed., The Red Years: Theory, Politics and Aesthetics in the Japanese ‘68 (London: Verso, 2020), 79-80; Chelsea Szendi Schieder, “Human Liberation or ‘Male Romance’: The Gendered Everyday of the Student New Left, in Gavin Walker, ed., The Red Years: Theory, Politics and Aesthetics in the Japanese '68 (London: Verso, 2020), 155-157.
58 For other accounts of the emergence of the women's liberation movement in Japan, see Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 144-169, and Setsu Shigematsu, Scream from the Shadows: The Women's Liberation Movement in Japan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).
59 Takemasa Ando, Japan's New Left Movements: Legacies for Civil Society (London: Routledge, 2012), 70-72.
60 See, for example, Oguma, “Japan's 1968,” 5.
61 Schieder, “Human Liberation,” 156-157.
62 Karube, Tadashi, Maruyama Masao and the Fate of Liberalism in Twentieth-Century Japan (Tokyo: International House of Japan), 168.
63 Schieder, Coed Revolution, 85; Oguma, “Japan's 1968,” 3; Michiya Shimbori, “Student Radicals in Japan,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 395 (May 1971), 154-155.
64 Ichiro Sunada, “The Thought and Behavior of Zengakuren: Trends in the Japanese Student Movement,” Asian Survey 9:6 (June 1969), 472.
65 Sawara, “The University Struggles,” 156-159.
66 Sawara, “The University Struggles,” 169.
67 Sunada, “The Thought and Behavior of Zengakuren,” 472.
68 Patricia G. Steinhoff, “Student Conflict,” in Ellis S. Krauss, Thomas P. Rohlen, and Patricia G. Steinhoff, eds. Conflict in Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press), 192.
69 Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads, 152.
70 This apparent 1970 “deadline” also structured conservative prime minister Satō Eisaku's diplomacy toward the United States as he waged an all-out charm offensive to successfully secure a promise of Okinawan reversion prior to 1970 in order to head off such protests, as well as the activities of right-wing ultranationalist groups, who traded on fears of a “second Anpo” in 1970 in order to recruit new members and elicit donations.
71 “Beheiren” was an abbreviation for the “Citizen's League for Peace in Vietnam” (Betonamu ni Heiwa o! Shimin Rengo).
72 Shigematsu, Scream from the Shadows, 92; Christopher Perkins, The United Red Army on Screen: Cinema, Aesthetics and The Politics of Memory (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 45-46.
73 Shigematsu, Scream from the Shadows, 92.
74 Mark Schreiber, Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan (Tokyo: Yenbooks, 1996), 215-216.
75 Patricia Steinhoff, “Portrait of a Terrorist: An Interview with Kozo Okamoto,” Asian Survey 16:9 (September 1976), 835-836.
76 Christopher Perkins discusses this perception in some detail. See Perkins, The United Red Army on Screen, 9.
77 Takagi Masayuki, Shinsayoku sanjūnen shi : nenpyō, keizu, sakuin, tsuki (Tokyo: Doyō Bijutsusha, 1988), 134; Kagekiha jikenbo 40-nen shi (Tokyo: Tachibana Shobō, 2001), 70-72.
78 Takagi, Shinsayoku sanjūnen shi, 136; Apter and Sawa, Against the State, 121.
79 See Alain Brossat, “La Zenkakuren Japonaise: Modèle pour les Étudiants Occidentaux?,” in Philippe Artières and Michelle Zancarini-Fournel, eds., 68: Une Histoire Collective (Paris: La Découverte, 2018).
80 Koda, The United States and the Japanese Student Movement, 193.
81 Carl Oglesby, “Movement News: Oglesby Ignites Tokyo Teach-In,” Students for a Democratic Society Bulletin 4:1 (September 1965), 1-2; Carl Oglesby, Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Anti-War Movement (New York: Scribner), 80, 111.
82 Allan Greene, “SDS and the Japanese New Left: Position Paper for the SDS Convention with a Resolution on Our Relations with the Japanese New Left,” New Left Notes 1:31 (August 19, 1966), 4.
83 Howard Zinn, The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1997), 289-293.
84 Zinn, The Zinn Reader, 293.
85 Oda Makoto, Gimu toshite no tabi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1967), 18.
86 Koda, The United States and the Japanese Student Movement, 201-202.
87 Kei Takata, Cosmopolitan Publics in Isolation: The Japanese Global Sixties and its Impact on Social Change (Ph.D. dissertation, The New School for Social Research, 2015), 155.
88 See, for example, “Testimony of Irwin Bock,” in Douglas O. Linder, ed., Famous Trials, (accessed September 1, 2019).
89 “Radicals ‘Take On’ R.O.T.C,” The New York Times (September 28, 1968), 35.
You have
Access