The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 13 | Issue 12 | Number 1 | Article ID 4300 | Mar 23, 2015

1

Japan's 1968: A Collective Reaction to Rapid Economic Growthin an Age of Turmoil 日本の1968　混乱期の高度成長への共同体的反応

Oguma Eiji

Translation by Nick Kapur with SamuelMalissa and Stephen Poland

Tōmatsu Shōmei, Untitled from the Protest Series,1969.

Introduction

In 1967, 1968, and 1969, Japan was wracked bystudent uprisings that ultimately forced theclosure of university campuses nationwide.Japan's student uprisings more or lesscoincided with the so-cal led "GlobalRevolutions of 1968" raging around the world,including (among many others) civil rights andanti-Vietnam War protests in the United States,the Cultural Revolution in China, largeuprisings of students and workers in Franceand Germany, and the "Prague Spring" inCzechoslovakia. Recent research on 1968 hasfocused on the common characteristics and themutually reinforcing or convergent aspects ofthese many uprisings all around the world.i

This has also been the major insight offered byrecent research on the Japanese experience of1968 published in English.ii

While it has become popular, however, to seekout underlying similarities between diversesocial movements occurring around the worldin and around the year 1968, especially withinthe context of global Cold War tensions, thereremains value in investigating the ways thesesocial movements were grounded in their ownlocal social, political, and economic contexts.Accordingly, this article examines "Japan's1968" within the context of Japan. This is by nomeans a claim of Japanese "uniqueness" or"exceptionalism." Nevertheless, Japan was in asomewhat unusual situation in 1968, as arapidly Westernizing Asian nation in the midstof what was, at the time, unprecedented high-speed growth. A similar process of high speedindustrialization and rapid social change wouldoccur in nations such as South Korea andTaiwan in the 1980s and 1990s, and is takingplace in places like China, Thailand, and Indiatoday, with Japan's experience in the 1960soften viewed as a model or precursor. Thisarticle is an effort to examine how a non-Western society reacted to rapid economicgrowth from the point of view of a historian,including political, economic, and demographicperspectives.

After providing a brief overview of Japan's late-sixties student rebellion and examining causesand contributing factors both inside andoutside of Japan, I explore the ways in whichJapan's 1968 uprisings differed subtly yettellingly from those of other nations, including

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

2

the ir d isdain for g lobal la te -s ixt iescounterculture, their apolitical and inward-facing ethos of "endless self-negation," theirmoralistic, rather than morally relativist,tendencies, and their retrograde treatment ofminorities and female activists. Ultimately, thisessay situates Japan's experience of the 1968g loba l moment w i th in the soc i e ta lcontradictions and rapid change brought aboutby Japan's unprecedented economic growth atthat time.

Outline of the Student Uprisings

The story of Japan's 1968 student uprisingsbegins in 1960. That year, a broad-basedpopular movement to prevent ratification of theUS-Japan Security Treaty (abbreviated "Anpo"in Japanese) was widely viewed as havingbrought Japan to the brink of revolution, butalso precipitated the collapse of the existingJapanese student movement. The vanguard ofthe student protestors who participated in anti-Security Treaty movement in 1960 was the"Bund," a "new left" organization founded byradical students who had broken away from theJapanese Communist Party (JCP), and assumedcontrol of Zengakuren (short for zen nihongakusei jichikai sō rengō, the "All-Japan Leagueof Student Governments"). In the aftermath ofthe 1960 struggle, which ultimately failed toblock the Security Treaty, the nationwideZengakuren organization split into numerouswarring factions, known as "sects" (sekuto),w h i c h e a c h e s t a b l i s h e d t h e i r o w n"Zengakuren." However, the numerous rivalZengakurens were relatively small in size,ranging from a few hundred to at most a fewthousand core members, and their capacity tomobilize large numbers of students for protestscontinued to decline over the first half of the1960s.

May 20, 1960June 3, 1960Hamada Hiroshi, Ikari to kanashimi no kiroku (ARecord of Rage and Grief).

Meanwhile Japan's extraordinary economicgrowth in the 1960s did much to alleviatepoverty, and the nation was well on its way tobecoming a mass society. These factors, as wellas news of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution andthe oppression of human rights in the SovietUnion, increasingly muted the appeal ofMarxism. The influence of the Socialist Party ofJapan (SPJ), which had seen tremendousgrowth in the fifties, began to wane, and anattitude of political apathy became widespreadamong Japanese students. When a 1965 pollasked students what they enjoyed most aboutcollege life, the most popular response was"club activities and personal hobbies," and onlyone percent answered, "participating in studentmovements."iii In 1964, when sects attempted

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

3

to protest the entry of a US nuclear submarineinto the port at Yokosuka, only a few hundredstudents showed up.

Shinjuku Underground Plaza, July, 1969.

The 1968 student uprising started suddenly. InOctober 1967, a small group of sect activistsclashed with police near Tokyo's HanedaAirport, in an effort to prevent Prime MinisterSatō Eisaku from traveling to South Vietnam.Students wearing plastic construction helmetsand wielding two-by-fours overpowered lightlyarmed pol ice . Images o f the v io lentconfrontation, in which one student activist waskilled, were broadcast on national televisionnews programs in vivid color, at a time whencolor televisions had only recently becomewidespread. Younger students and workerswho had missed out on the 1960 protests wereenthralled by the heroic struggle theywitnessed on their televisions and the recentlymoribund Zengakuren sects saw a surge inmembership and participation. By October1968, tens of thousands of sect sympathizerswould ransack Shinjuku Station in centralTokyo, in what was later remembered as the"Shinjuku Riot" (Shinjuku sōran jiken).

Watanabe Hitomi, Zengakuren protest, 1968–9.

In June 1968, students at the University ofTokyo, Japan's most elite university, and NihonUniversity, the largest institution of higherlearning, with approximately one-tenth ofJapan's total university student population,established Zenkyōtō (short for zengaku kyōtōkaigi; "All-Campus Joint Struggle Councils").iv

Armed with hard hats and two-by-fours, theyseized and barricaded their campuses againstpolice intrusion. Zenkyōtō was independentfrom the sects and open to any willingparticipant, regardless of ideological affiliation.The barricaded universities were declared"liberated zones," and the image of studentsresisting police in the name of greateracademic and personal freedom initially elicitedsympathetic coverage from the Japanese media.From mid-1968 through early 1969 campusoccupations, collectively remembered as the"Zenkyōtō movement," spread to hundreds ofuniversities and thousands of high schoolsnationwide.

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

4

University of Tokyo, November 22, 1968.University of Tokyo main gate graffiti: "Rebellionis rational," after Mao Zedong; "dismantleImperial University."

The exact goals of this "Zenkyōtō movement"are difficult to pin down. The term "Zenkyōtō"originally referred to separate coalitions of

groups within each university when themovement started at the University of Tokyoand Nippon University in 1968. In other words,each university had its own separate"Zenkyōtō" which sought to reform specificinstitutions within that university, and therewas little sense that the various Zenkyōtō wereconnected as part of a larger movement. At thisearly stage, many students who were notinterested in domestic or international policyparticipated to improve their own situationwithin their own university. However, asZenkyōtō began to appear on dozens ofcampuses around Japan, various New Leftgroups tried to reconstrue these local protestgroups as a part of a nationwide movementwith broader political goals, such as opposingthe Vietnam War, the US-Japan Security Treaty,and the conservative Japanese government, orfomenting a Marxist revolution. When weexamine the flyers produced by the manyZenkyōtō over time, whereas early flyersdemanded only "reform" or "democracy" withineach university, later flyers increasinglyfocused purely on broader political issues. Thiswas a natural transition for some segments ofthe movement, because anti-Vietnam War andanti-Security Treaty sentiment was strongamong Japanese people at that time (polls fromthe time showed that over 80 percent ofJapanese people opposed US policy inVietnam). Accordingly, some student activistswelcomed a turn toward radicalism andrevolutionary slogans. However as time passed,other students increasingly dropped out of themovement amidst growing resentment towardperceived manipulation by New Left groups.

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

5

University of Tokyo, suppression of studentoccupation, January 18–19, 1969.

The precise number of students whoparticipated in the Zenkyōtō movement isultimately unknowable. According to a widevariety of accounts, however, even inuniversities-the epicenters of the movement-activists and passive supporters represented nomore than 20 percent of the total studentpopulation. The other 80 percent were eitherindifferent or opposed to the movement. At thetime, Japan's college matriculation rate wasaround 20 percent, meaning that no more thanfour percent of the nation's late-teens andearly-twenty-somethings (approximately300,000 students) participated in themovement or supported it.

Student activity began to wane in 1969, after

the government drafted draconian newlegislation, euphemistically known as the"university management law," granting policemuch greater authority to crack down oncampus disturbances. Meanwhile, the policedeveloped more effective countermeasures fordealing with two-by-four-wielding students. Bylate 1969, the vast majority of barricades atuniversities and high schools throughout Japanhad been demolished, and sect-instigated streetdemonstrations had been almost entirelysuppressed.

The sects and radical students throughoutJapan had long dreamed of repeating the 1960Anpo struggle in 1970, when the governmentwould debate renewal of the Security Treatyfollowing the expiry of its initial 10-year term.Activists anticipated another mass movementand-with luck-a full-scale revolution. However,by 1970, the student movement had beenalmost entirely suppressed by the police.Moreover, by now the once-admired radicalstudent movement increasingly offended thesensibilities of the general public. The Japaneseeconomy was growing around 10 percent peryear. While some problems, such industrialpollution, persisted, the Japanese populace wasnevertheless increasingly satisfied with itsstandard of living. In the December 1969general election the conservative ruling party(the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP) secureda major victory, whereas the leftist SPJ suffereda crushing repudiation, losing 51 of its 141seats in the Diet.

In June 1970 the Security Treaty was renewedwithout incident, and most students returned toa state of political apathy. A few extremists whoformed the "Red Army Faction" (sekigun-ha)and advocated armed revolution to counter theincreasingly well-equipped police facedrelentless suppression. Stymied in Japan, somemembers hijacked a jetliner and flew to NorthKorea, while others decamped to the MiddleEast, where they fought alongside Palestinianguerillas. Those who remained in Japan joined

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

6

forces with other armed sects to form theUnited Red Army (rengō sekigun). In February1972, 12 members were murdered in a bloodypurge of the group's ranks at a secret mountainhideout. After a dramatic armed standoff withpolice, broadcast live on national television, thesurviving members surrendered. The grislyincident was a tremendous shock to the fewremaining student activists, and thereafter thestudent movement fell into total stagnation.

Asama Sansō incident, February 19–28, 1972.

Given the basic outline of Japan's 1968uprisings above, two questions beg ourconsiderat ion. First , in the midst ofunprecedented economic growth and thedevelopment of a mass society in Japan, whydid such a large-scale student uprisingsuddenly break out? And second, what, ifanything, differentiated the Japanese studentrevolution from those in other nations aroundthe world in 1968?v

Causes of the Student Uprising

Japan's student uprising arose in response toeconomic growth itself, and the mass-consumption society that suddenly emerged asa result. In other words, the student rebellioncan be viewed as a kind of mass reaction torapid economic growth. Let us examine the

factors that conditioned this response, startingwith the transformations wrought uponJapanese society by rapid economic growth,and moving on to further changes precipitatedby the student uprising itself.

Urban Conditions and the Increase inIndependent Voters

Historically, farmers, small businessmen, andneighborhood associations comprised the LDPvoter base, whereas the SPJ and JCP relied onstudents and labor unionists. However, aseconomic growth and urbanization rapidlytransformed Japanese society, individuals grewalienated from their original communities,precipitating a surge in independent voterswith no strong party affiliation, especiallyamong young city-dwellers.

According to a 1969 survey of members of theGeneral Council of Trade Unions (abbreviatedSōhyō in Japanese), which was aligned with theSPJ from the immediate postwar through the1980s, more than 40 percent of members aged40 or older remained affiliated with theSocialist Party. In contrast, approximately 40percent of the members under 40 consideredthemselves independent voters. Moreover, onlyten percent of members in their twentiesbelieved they could achieve political change byvoting. This did not, however, mean that theother 90 percent had lost all interest in politics.In fact, 47 percent of members in their twentiessupported the use of "direct action" tactics,such as sit-ins, demonstrations, and strikes.vi Inother words, there was a marked polarizationamong young members. Around half seemed tohave lost all interest in politics, while others,having lost faith in the electoral process, didnot endorse traditional political parties butapproved of direct action.

Underpinning this move toward direct actionwere the conditions faced by urban youth.Economic growth propelled large-scalemigration from farming villages to the cities; in1945, only 28 percent of Japan's population had

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

7

resided in cities, but by 1970, that figurereached 72 percent. An urbanization processthat lasted a century in the United States wascompressed into just 25 years in Japan. In 1962Tokyo's population surpassed 10 million, and by1968 its population density was 15,484 personsper square kilometer, greatly exceeding that ofNew York City (9,809 in 1967) or London(4,937 in 1969). According to a 1965 survey, 37percent of Tokyoites lived in a space under fivesquare meters per capita.vii A former WasedaUniversity activist described student livingconditions in 1966 as follows: "Most lived inrooms of three to four-and-a-half tatami mats.Needless to say, we had no householdappliances like televisions or refrigerators."viii

The urban migration overwhelmingly consistedof youth. By 1965, 42 percent of Japan's urbanpopulation-and 47 percent of Tokyo's-wasbetween 15 and 34 years of age.ix Moreover,since most of the migrants were male laborers,males exceeded females in urban centers suchas Tokyo and Osaka by a wide margin.

Tōmatsu Shōmei, Santōsha, Iwate Rikuchū KawaiEki (Third class car), 1959.

At the time, Japan was a developing nation,lacking in consumer goods and recreationalfacilities, and the US dollar was artificiallypegged at a staggering 360 yen. In 1968, theaverage starting salary for a college graduate

was 29,000 yen (around 80 dollars) per month,making travel abroad virtually impossible. In a1968 survey asking participants what leisureactivities they had engaged in within the lastthree months, the top four answers werereading, sewing (among women), drinking athome, and theater-going.x

In short, 1960s Tokyo witnessed a tremendousgrowth in the number of youths politicallyunaffiliated and alienated from their oldcommunities, confined in cramped livingquarters, and possessed of a great deal of freetime.

At sect-led demonstrations, hordes ofunaffiliated onlookers gathered to hurl tauntsand stones at the police. This was not becausethey sympathized with the students' cause.Rather, many were depressed by their stillunfamiliar urban lives and sought a form ofentertainment that would not cost money. TheMainichi Shimbun reported that during an April1968 protest against construction of a US armyhospital, the youthful crowd chanted "This isfun!" while hurling rocks at police.xi In theOctober 1968 Shinjuku Riot, it was not sectstudents but crowds of factory workers,restaurant clerks, and white-collar workerswho engaged in the most destructive acts; infact, sect students attempted to curb thisbehavior. Violent clashes with police hadbecome a form of entertainment. High schoolstudents interviewed in the magazine Shokunin 1969 reported that, ignoring ideology, theyjoined the protests of whichever sects seemedmore likely to engage in violence.xii

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

8

Tōmatsu Shōmei, Young Power 3 from Tōkyō,Shinjuku, 1969.

"Entrance Exam Wars" and Campus Discontent

Rapid economic growth was accompanied bydramatic increases in high school anduniversity enrollment. The 1960 national highschool matriculation rate was 57 percent, butexceeded 90 percent in Tokyo. The collegematriculation rate soared from 10.3 percent in1960 to 37.8 percent by 1975. The number ofuniversities also surged, from 71 public and116 private universities in 1952, to 74 publicand an astounding 258 private universities by1967. Moreover, since the postwar "babyboom" generation was approximately 20percent larger than the preceding generation,university enrollments expanded even morethan the increased matriculation rate alonewould suggest.

The result was fierce academic competitiondubbed "entrance exam wars" (juken sensō). A1964 survey found that 64 percent of juniorhigh schools offered supplemental testpreparation courses on top of six hours ofregu lar c lasses , w i th some schoo lsadministering as many as 320 practice tests ayear. Schools increasingly sorted students intodifferent classes based on testing ability. Media

interviews with middle school students yieldedquotations such as, "My nerves are completelyshot from prepping for exams day and night,"and "I haven't ever really spoken to myclassmates about anything other than exams."xiii

It was such conditions that provided thecontext for rebellion against professors andoccupation of the universities in the form of theZenkyōtō movement. A Zenkyōtō activist wrote,"Students hurled their cumulative hatred forthe many teachers who had administered theirlives in the name of education ever since gradeschool at their professors."xiv

As youths, these students prepared for examsanticipating an idyllic university life ahead.Having heard of the close relationshipsbetween professors and students that hadcharacterized earlier times, when universitystudents had been members of a tiny elite, theystudied hard, looking forward to a futureappropriate for elites. But these expectationswere betrayed. With university enrollmentssoaring, professors used microphones tolecture to hundreds of students in packedauditoriums. Moreover, as new universitiessprouted up across Japan, qualified instructorswere in short supply. The inadequate lecturesthat resulted were denounced as "mass-produced lectures" (masu-puro kōgi), and over-

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

9

enrol led univers i t ies , as "mammothuniversities" (manmosu daigaku). In 1966 thestudent newspaper of Chūō University, a noted"mammoth university," calculated that therewere no more than 0.5 square meters oncampus per student.xv

With the economy booming, graduates had notrouble finding employment if they did not aimtoo high. However, the supply of elite jobsfailed to keep up with the surge in universitygraduates. Whereas 43 percent of graduatessecured office jobs in 1951, only 31 percent didso in 1967. On the other hand, graduatesfinding employment in sales rose from 3percent to 19 percent in the same span. In1968 a student activist wrote, "We all had highhopes when we entered university...but theproduct we rece ived was extremelyshoddy….The overwhelming increase instudents has greatly diminished the socialstatus of university graduates, and graduatingfrom university no longer guaranteesemployment at a large company."xvi This kind offrustration became a major cause of thestudent uprising.

Rapid Modernization and Identity Crisis

Rapid economic growth transformed Japanfrom a developing nation into a developed one.In 1948, per capita income was approximately$100 US dollars, compared to $1,269 in theUnited States and $91 in Sri Lanka. Yet by1968, Japan surpassed West Germany tobecome the second largest economy in theWestern world.xvii Japan's urban populationexploded, and by 1965 the number of jobs inmanufacturing surpassed those in agriculture,forestry, and fishing for the first time.Meanwhile, massive redevelopment of Tokyoand other cities ahead of the 1964 TokyoOlympics drastically transformed the urbanlived environment.

Students who grew up when Japan was still adeveloping nation felt overwhelmed by thesetransformations. A student from Okayama

prefecture who entered the University of Tokyoin 1966 wrote that Tokyo's massive concretebuildings and overpasses struck him as utterlyinhuman. He recalled experiencing an"existential crisis" he believed was exceedinglycommon among his generation. Modern urbansociety struck students as "unfeeling" and"headed in the wrong direction," he wrote,which was why many students of his generationturned to existential philosophy, absurdisttheater, and Marxist theories of alienation.xviii

To cope with enlarged enrollments, universitieserected massive concrete complexes, in whichstudents raised in farming villages andaccustomed to rural landscapes and intimateinterpersonal relationships experienced aprofound a sense of alienation. A studentactivist wrote in 1968, "The moment you enterthe university…you lose your individual identityand become just another face in the crowd.Spending every day in these modern buildingsis indescribably dehumanizing."xix

Meanwhile, the sudden plunge into consumersociety provoked feelings of guilt and anxiety.In the 1960s, rural Japanese were still raisedaccording to a prewar ideology emphasizingconservation and thrift. But students now foundthemselves in a new, urban culture of massproduction and mass consumption on anunprecedented scale. One historian recalledbeing a young housewife at the time: "Suddenlywe were getting richer and richer. We couldbuy washing machines and TVs, but we feltextremely uneasy. We kept thinking, is thisokay? Is this really okay?"xx In a 1969 leaflet,Waseda's Zenkyōtō declared their "hatred forthis bloated consumerist society."xxi A formerKyoto University dean reminisced, "Wealth wasa source of tremendous stress at that time. Itwas wholly new to us." He speculated that "theanxieties we felt when we suddenly no longerhad to endure poverty" helped spur the studentuprisings.xxii

These feelings of anxiety, together with

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

10

dissatisfaction with universities, fosteredcriticism of capitalism and modernization asthe forces responsible for disturbing socialtransformations. Marxist theory was readanew, despite the decline in support fortraditional Marxist political parties. Anti-modernity, in the forms of romanticism andabsurdist theater, gained popularity, andfolklorists garnered fame for collecting farmingvillage tales. Right-wing novelist MishimaYukio, who extolled antiquated ideals ofbushidō and prewar Japancentrism, alsobecame popular among Zenkyōtō students,despite the fact that their political leaningswere in opposition to Mishima's.

Mishima Yukio speaking to Zenkyōtō at Universityof Tokyo, May 13, 1969.

While some of the anxieties caused by Japan'sunprecedented economic growth may havebeen unique to the Japanese student

movement, Japanese students shared anoverarching dissatisfaction with modern societyfound in many developed nations at the time.Feel ings of iso lat ion and a l ienat ionproliferated, and as students came tounderstand that they would most likely not findthe jobs they hoped for, many were afflictedwi th i den t i t y c r i ses and a sense o fhopelessness.

Many of these students sought fulfilment indirect action such as demonstrations andoccupations. A Tama Art University studentdespaired, "The bright future that I hadimagined for myself was gone." She joinedZenkyōtō "seeking a breakthrough for self-expression."xxiii Similarly, a Nihon UniversityZenkyōtō member wrote: "Life is empty and thefuture is hopeless. We wear helmets, carrywooden sticks, and confront death. At least inthat moment, one should experience some formof being alive."xxiv

Takahashi Akira, a sociologist studying studentactivism, wrote in 1968: "Today's left-wingstudents obsessively ask existentialquestions….[Their movement is,] in addition tobeing an expression of the youth identity crisis,an earnest (albeit naïve) attempt to grasp thesocial crisis."xxv One Zenkyōtō activist wrotethat "the sense of hopelessness resulting fromthe knowledge that, in exchange for a stablematerial lifestyle, we would all leave academiato become cogs in the industrial machine"forced her to ask: "What am I?" It was this self-doubt, she recalls, that led her to join themovement.xxvi

This mentality differed from that of thestudents participating in the Anpo struggle tenyears earlier, who felt no unease due to rapideconomic growth, nor were driven to action bya sense of alienation. These students, born inthe late thirties, had experienced the war aschildren. They grew up in the period ofstarvation and widespread chaos that followedJapan's defeat, and it was these experiences

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

11

that motivated them. The head of MeijiUniversity's student association wrote, "I wasborn in 1938 and grew up in a time when wehad nothing. After the war, I experienced asmuch hunger as I could bear. [If the treatypassed] I thought that we would return to thosedays. This fear motivated me to join the anti-Anpo struggle. I had had enough of war andhunger."xxvii

By contrast, activists who battled police atHaneda Airport in 1967 proclaimed: "We areshowing the police we exist. We are showingthem that we are human." A former activistfrom the 1960 struggle commented, "They putextreme emphasis on their being there at thatmoment. I think that was the first time theword 'existence' (jitsuzon) was used in a speechat a rally."xxvi i i The attitudes of these twogenerations, divided by sudden economicgrowth, differed tremendously.

Characteristics Particular to the JapaneseStudent Uprising

Compared to contemporaneous studentuprisings in developed nations, the Japaneseuprisings occurred within a still largely ruralnation that was rapidly transforming into adeveloped nation with an advanced industrialeconomy and mass-consumption society.Memories of growing up in a very differentJapan still deeply colored students' mentalities.Let us examine the divergent characteristics ofthe Japanese student uprising engendered bythis particular context.

Moralistic Tendencies and "Self-Negation"

A major source of student dissatisfaction withuniversities was the betrayal of theirexpectations of what a university should be,derived from an earlier era when enrollmentshad been much lower. Strongly influenced bythe German educational doctrines of theHumboldt model, Japanese universities hadoriginally been intended as bastions of truthand learning, removed from the concerns of the

mundane world.

In 1968 one Zenkyōtō activist wrote, "Ifstudents are diligent in their studies, it shouldbe a certainty that they won't be poisoned byindustrial society. Nowadays, this certainty ismuch less certain….Our fight is a struggle tosmash the academic-industrial complex."xxix

Another Zenkyōtō activist angrily recalled,"Rather than places for research, universitieshad become nothing but preparatory schoolsfor entering the workplace, just as high schoolshad become preparatory schools for universityentrance exams….I lost faith in universities thatbowed only to the demands of government andbig business."xxx Criticism of this "academic-industrial complex" was a major theme of theJapanese student movement. Their mentalitywas a blend of Marxist critical logic and aconservative reaction to industrial society.

In 1966, Waseda University was occupied andbarricaded in a precursor to the Zenkyōtōmovement. A poet who visited students behindthe barricades observed, "Given that mostgraduates would go on to secure full-timeemployment, universities think they might aswell try to produce the kinds of graduates thebusiness world desires. The students' reactionto this, in their nostalgia for the university as a'walled garden of truth,' seems to be genuine.So, in a certain sense, it is the students who arebeing conservative."xxxi

In 1968, behind the barricades, studentsdissatisfied with "mass-produced" lecturesinvited distinguished guest speakers and heldindependently-run classes. One NihonUniversity Zenkyōtō member claimed thatthanks to these independent lectures, studentsfelt as if they were "taking real universitycourses for the first time;" graffiti scrawled onhis school's walls proclaimed: "Now we arestudents."xxxii

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

12

Graffiti at Nihon University, "I fight for freedom";"Nihon University Liberated Zone Public Toilet."

The strategy of barricading and occupyinguniversities relied on a longstanding image ofuniversities being at a monastic remove fromthe everyday world-autonomous zones wherethe police and other external forces should notintervene. Fearing a backlash from the publicand the university professoriat, police initiallyrefrained from entering the barricadedcampuses, and the student occupations ofTokyo and Nihon Universities lasted more thansix months.

The fundamentally conservative idea thatuniversities should not be "poisoned byindustrial society" was rarely made explicit, butinstead expressed in a contemporary idiom.One manifestation of this was Marxist critiquesof industrial society. Another was the criticismof universities as sites of soulless massproduction. In his 1968 study, Takahashi Akiraobserved students condemning the universitiesas "a subcontracted mechanism in service tothe forces contributing to the manpowerpolicies of imperialistic monopoly-capitalists,"or even "finishing schools for human robots."xxxiii

Students also opposed undemocratic universityadministrations. At the University of Tokyo inthose days, professors exercised absolute

authority over labs, departments, and researchinstitutes, forcing postgraduate and medicalstudents into unpaid labor; opposition to thisstate of affairs precipitated the initial uprisingthere. Meanwhile at Nihon University, anautocratic chief executive monopolizedadministrative decisions, not only suppressingstudents' views, but also, it was learned,supervising a massive tuition embezzlementscheme. Reacting to these issues, studentsin i t ia l l y rose up to demand greatertransparency in university accounting anddemocratization of university administration.One activist recalls, "Ideology did not motivateus, nor did any particular theory. Argumentscame after the fact. Rather, our mainmotivation was frustration that existingsystems and conventions did not suit therealities of postwar life."xxxiv

Having spent their earliest years prior to rapideconomic growth, students were unsettled bythe sudden emergence of a mass-consumptioneconomy. At the same time, they opposedauthoritarianism, as befitted the firstgeneration to receive the "democraticeducation" installed by the US occupation. Asan older generation of professors andadministrators exercised authoritarian control,and as universit ies transformed intoemployment preparation schools, the students'ambivalent feelings fostered two seeminglycontradictory desires. On one hand, theysought to overthrow older generations in whatamounted to a revolution; on the other hand,they embraced an essentially conservativementality that sought to preserve the universityfrom the encroachment of industrial capitalism.The ideology that initially seemed most capableof encompassing these two desires wasMarxism. The strand of Marxism found in otherdeveloped nations, whereby theories ofalienation produced critiques of modernsociety, was of course also present in Japan.But in Japan, the Marxist revival was abettedby its utility in expressing student ambivalence.

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

13

Since this ambivalence was deep-rooted, theJapanese student uprising did not become asconservative as the right-wing Hindumovement in India today, nor did it result in atechnocratic revolution in universitymanagement. Students disavowed bothconservative and progressive positions, insteadrejecting society in all its forms. This rejection,combined with anxiety over the dislocations ofrapid economic growth, led students to take anethical stance that has been dubbedexistentialist.

The student protests that launched theZenkyōtō movement in 1966 and 1967 mademany concrete demands, including, forexample, that tuition fees be lowered. But fromthe 1968 University of Tokyo uprising onward,students seemed far less interested in specificdemands than in fighting for vaguely-definedgoals such as "socialist revolution" or"university dissolution" that were convenientstand-ins for a barely-articulated process ofself-formation. When asked what kind ofuniversity Zenkyōtō hoped to establish, onemember replied, "All we want is the battleitself."xxxv At the University of Tokyo andelsewhere, Zenkyōtō activists repeatedlyrejected any opportunity for compromise, withthe result that they continued fightingresolutely until they were totally defeated andthe police demolished their barricades.

Protest on Hakusan-dōri, September 9, 1968.

When a 1968 survey asked University of Tokyostudents what they were fighting for, responsesincluded: "asserting the self," 41.7 percent;"self - transformation," 31.7 percent;"dismantling the current university structure,"27.2 percent; "pursuing fundamental thought,"25.6 percent; "rejection of the system," 25percent. Concrete goals for improving theuniversity system were scorned as "reformism"(kairyōshugi) and "settling for small gains"(monotorishugi). When University of TokyoZenkyōtō members were asked about theircareer ambitions, academic researcher was themost popular response, while governmentofficial or business owner were among theleast; less than 1 percent wanted to enterpolitics.xxxvi Here we find a mix of a radicalismthat sought to repudiate all existing socialstructures, an ethics of self-restraint thatrejected consumer desires and real-worldprestige in favor of self-cultivation and thepursuit of knowledge, and a desire for socialsystems that emphasized individual self-worth.

The catchphrase "self-negation" (jiko hitei)caught on at the University of Tokyo andspread to campuses across the nation. "Self-transformation" had been a slogan amongstMarxists originally from the bourgeoisie,invoked to demonstrate shedding the past to bereborn as a member of the proletariat. ForUniversity of Tokyo students, elites who hadfought their way through the "exam wars" towin a spot at Japan's loftiest educationalinstitution, the term "self-negation" meant theyhad fully repented their past course and nowsought to destroy the very university they hadfought so hard to enter. In other words, theywere rejecting a mode of existence wherebythey would inexorably be sorted and slottedinto allotted posts in a capitalist industrialsociety.

This doctrine of "self-negation" was reminiscentof the "aggressor consciousness" criticized bythe Japanese anti-Vietnam War movementactive around the same time. Anti-war

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

14

sentiment had remained strong throughoutJapanese society since the end of the Asia-Pacific War, but what was innovative about theJapanese anti-Vietnam activists was theirnotion that all Japanese were "aggressors,"given the economic benefits Japan was reapingfrom the Vietnam War. Many universitystudents took part in an anti-Vietnammovement known as Beheiren, short forBetonamu ni heiwa o! shimin rengō ("Peace inVietnam Citizens League"). One studentmember wrote in 1967, "When I consider howJapan's economy benefits from US Vietnam Warprocurements, I realize I am feasting on theblood of the Vietnamese….The anti-warmovement is the only way I can apologize tothe Vietnamese people."xxxvii

During this period US "special procurements"for the Vietnam War accounted for 10 to 20percent of Japan's trade. These procurementswere not as significant as the earlier KoreanWar procurements, which represented aboutsixty percent of Japan's trade at that time. ButJapanese peace movements during the KoreanWar never targeted Japan's war profiteering,instead focusing solely on US and/orcommunist bloc aggression. The emphasis onself-identifying as an "aggressor" due to thebenefits Japan received from the Vietnam Warcan be thought of as an expression of thestudents' moralism, a moralism arising fromthe confusion and guilt occasioned by high-speed economic growth and demanding endlessflagellation and negation of a self that wouldotherwise be tempted to indulge in thepleasures of material prosperity.

As the student uprisings garnered nationwideattention, the movement largely retreated fromits initial ascetic moralism; increasingly,activists openly courted mass-media celebrityand for some, the only goal became the ecstasyof battle itself. Japanese students were alsogreatly spurred on by news of other studentuprisings around the world. One WasedaUniversity Zenkyōtō member recalled, "We

admired those movements, and we wanted todo something too. We only worried aboutjustifications after we had taken over thecampus."xxxviii

Counterculture and the Student Uprisings

The relationship between Japanese studentactivists and the counterculture differed fromtheir counterparts in the US and elsewhere.Although Japanese students were certainlyaware of student uprisings in other parts of theworld and were conscious of being part of ashared, global revolutionary movement in 1968,their access to cultural trends was notinstantaneous, and their reception of thesetrends was not universal.

In the mid-to-late sixties, Japanese students stillhad almost no opportunity to travel abroad.Governmental regulations had preventedJapanese people from freely traveling abroadwithout a government-approved purpose until1964, and even after deregulation airfare andseafare remained prohibitively expensive.xxxix

Thus for the most part Japanese students couldlearn about cultural trends in the West onlythrough books or articles which had beentranslated into Japanese, and often poorlytranslated at that, due to insufficientknowledge on the part of translators aboutsocial and cultural contexts in the US orEurope. Inevitably, there were manymisrepresentations and indigenizations withinworldwide countercultural trends, even asstudents did embrace a feeling of "everyoneliving in the same 1968."

To take one example, consider how theJapanese student protestors related to rockmusic. As mentioned, the average startingsalary for university graduates was only around$80 per month, but LP records cost ¥2,100($6), the cheapest Japanese-made guitars cost¥18,000 ($50), and an imported Americanguitar cost more than ¥200,000 ($560). Owningrecords was uncommon, and few people evenowned record players. Moreover, playing loud

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

15

music in cramped wooden apartments wouldresult in immediate complaints from neighbors.Accordingly, young people had few chances tohear new records outside of music clubs inlarge cities.

In fact, most students had been raised onpopular ballads by Japanese singers, andshowed little interest in rock music. A notedmusic critic who was in middle school when theBeatles came to Japan in 1966 recalled thatalthough a few classmates were fans, manystudents complained that the Beatles' long hairwas ugly, or that the music was too loud andshould not even be called music.xl Long hair didnot become popular among youths until thefinal days of the student uprisings in 1970, andin 1968 students still had short hair.

A survey of baby boomers' musical tastes in thelate sixties revealed the following preferences:folk music, 40 percent; ballads, 14 percent;pop, 12 percent; classical, 12 percent; jazz, 10percent; and rock, 8 percent.xli There was also alag between when songs first became popularin America and when they became popular inJapan; Japanese fans of Western music at theend of the sixties tended to prefer Americantunes from the late fifties and early sixties.

Student activists often sang the socialistrevolutionary song "The Internationale,"construct ion-worker-turned-fo lk-s ingerOkabayashi Nobuyasu's song "Tomo yo" ("HeyFriend"), and the anthem of the American CivilRights movement, "We Shall Overcome." JoanBaez performed the latter when Beheireninvited her to Japan in 1967, inspiring studentmembers to stage a "folk guerilla" anti-wardemonstration outside Shinjuku Station in1969. The delay in American news and musictrends reaching Japan helps explain why folkmusic associated with the American CivilRights Movement of the early 1960s seems tohave had more influence on the Japan studentmovement of 1968-69 than the more recentrock music favored by contemporaneous

American anti-Vietnam protestors.

Okabayashi Nobuyasu, Yamadani blues & Tomo yocover."Folk guerilla," Shinjuku Underground Plaza, July,1969.

For Japanese student activists, influenced asthey were by Marxism, folk music may havebeen tolerable, whereas rock was often thoughtof as overly commercial or hedonistic. Evenmany non-Marxists, feeling disoriented amidstthe flood of consumer goods, abstained from aforeign musical culture that seemed overlyhedonistic. One activist argued that playing aguitar in the occupied universities would havemade what they were doing seem frivolous.xlii Astudent who later became a rock musician

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

16

remembered putting on rock tunes behind thebarricades and being chastised for listening to"bourgeois" music.xliii Instead, student activistsdrew on a conservative ethics of self-restraint,and a popular slogan used to maintain orderbehind the barricades was "Revolutionary ArmyDiscipline."

Because the student activists generally avoidedcultural activities as petit bourgeois, a riftemerged between youth engaged withcounterculture and the militant studentmovement. A rock musician fūten (literally"slacker," the Japanese equivalent of theWestern "hippie") in charge of music for theindependent theater troupe Tenjō Sajikirecalled, "[The activists] had no interestwhatsoever in anti-war songs or folk music. Youwere either a fūten or a revolutionary, but notboth."xliv

But as economic growth continued at rapidpace, the mentality of the activists began tochange. A younger activist recalled, "Thestudents two or so years older than me weremostly hopelessly straight-laced leftists, but ifyou looked at those a year younger, about halfof them were leftists who had embracedconsumerism….Going to demonstrations byday, they couldn't fall asleep at night withoutlistening to some jazz. They were torn in bothdirections."xlv Towards the end of the Zenkyōtōmovement, long hair became increasinglypopular and rock concerts were held behindthe barricades. Several members of the RedArmy Faction of the early 1970s were membersof rock bands.

One form of cultural production that Zenkyōtōstudents enjoyed was the Japanese yakuza(gangster) film. Ticket prices were low and thecinema was the most popular form ofrecreation in early postwar Japan. Similar toIndia today, Japan in the fifties led all nations infilms produced per annum. The Zenkyōtōactivists' fierce adoration of yakuza films likelyresulted not only from the protagonists' being

outlaws who defied the system, but alsobecause the films accorded with the students'ascetic, anti-capitalist mentality. The typicalyakuza film made at the time was set inmodern-day Japan, but pitted an old-fashionedgangster who valued traditional moralityagainst a new breed of yakuza more deeplyinvolved with industrial capitalism. The typicalstory arc saw the old-school yakuza suffervarious indignities before finally rising up towreak bloody vengeance.

Manga comics were another subculture widelyenjoyed by Japanese youth at this time.Because the baby boomers were so numerous,the manga industry catered to them from anearly age, gradually adjusting comic bookcontent as the boomers aged. This led to therise of manga aimed at young adults, and thebaby boomers comprised the first generation inJapan that did not stop reading comics in theirlate teens.

Because the widely held notion was that mangawere for children, reports of elite universitystudents reading manga behind the barricadeswere initially met with surprise. Mangacharacters were even used as mascots for thestudent uprisings, appearing on placards andflyers or even painted on activist's helmets, toidentify their sect affiliation. The chairman ofthe Red Army Faction recalled, "We certainlyread a lot of manga in our faction. We lovedShōnen Magazine, Shōnen Sunday, ShiratoSanpei ' s Nin ja Combat Manual , andTomorrow's Joe."xlvi Indeed, when the Red ArmyFaction carried out a hijacking in March 1970,the culprits declared, "We are Tomorrow's Joe!"

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

17

Tomorrow's JoeStar of the GiantsNinja Combat Manual

"Tomorrow's Joe" is a young boxer fightingagainst all odds, while the protagonist of Starof the Giants, also popular among activists, is ayoung baseball player; both are youths fromimpoverished backgrounds who undergointense spiritual and physical training in orderto win glory by triumphing over rich-kid rivals.Although these characters did strive forupward mobility, the rigorous asceticismemphasized in the manga recalled an ethics ofself-restraint that was vanishing from Japan atthe time, and the opponents toppled were fromthe bourgeoisie. Significantly, both characterscontinue their strenuous training even afterachieving higher social status, pushing onwarduntil their bodies are utterly broken, as ifpunishing themselves for betraying their rootsthrough social mobility. This ethic appealed tothe moralistic tendencies of the studentactivists, who spurned material accumulationand cherished to the end the ideal of endlessself-negation.

Among the manga of the day, there were manystories of young heroes who confront andrejuvenate the decaying world of adults.Miyazaki Hayao, the famed animator born in1941, offers an explanation for why this sort of

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

18

manga proliferated: "Once Japan lost the War,popular culture had to change. Since it was theadults who lost the War, we wouldn't stand forany more self-important adults….Children, onthe other hand, were pure-they bore noresponsibility for the War-so we made them ourprotagonists."xlvii

These trends in manga and animation werewell suited to the desires of the studentactivists. A member of the United Red Armyrecalled that one reason he joined theorganization was his yearning to be like a TVcartoon hero, one of the "good guys."xlv i i i

Immensely popular for similar reasons wasShirato Sanpei's manga Ninja Combat Manual,mentioned by the chair of the Red ArmyFaction, above, which depicted self-abnegatingninja heroes fighting alongside the peasantrebels of the Edo period.

Environmental Issues, Minorities, and Women

Around 1968, people in Japan began to payattention to environmental concerns andminority issues, as well as to the women'sliberation movement. The connections amongthese developments and the student uprisingswarrant deeper investigation.

W. Eugene Smith, Minamata Bay, 1971.

In 1968 a Japanese court finally ruled that thecause of "Minamata disease" was mercurypollution, and environmental degradationbecame a major focus of popular attention andoutrage. That same year, a resident Koreannamed Kwon Hyi-Ro took several hostages andengaged in a standoff with police, spurringdebate about the status of minorities in Japan.But during the student uprisings in 1968 and'69, these concerns were for the most part leftout of the discussion. There are three reasonsfor this.

The first is that the sects, grounded inMarxism, had no interest in these issues.According to environmental activist Ui Jun,when he appealed to sect leaders to take actionon pollution, they responded, "Once we'vetaken over the state, all of those problems willsort themselves out."xlix From their orthodoxMarxist standpoint, problems with theenvironment and the treatment of minoritiesstemmed from the contradictions of capitalism,and would naturally resolve under socialism. Atthe same time, sect leaders fretted thathighlighting these issues without pushing forfull-scale revolution would be nothing morethan "reformism" that would help capitalismhold on longer.

The second reason is that the students weresingle-mindedly focused on the twin obsessionsof endless self-negation and blocking renewalof the Security Treaty. The slogans andhandbills of the students in '68 and '69accordingly neglected the issues outlinedabove.

Finally, the students' attitudes towards womenwere antiquated and increasingly out-dated.Behind the barricades, women were relegatedto ancillary roles, including cooking, servingtea, first-aid, and taking minutes duringmeetings. A member of the Red Army Factionrecalled that the organization took no actionwhen female activists were raped, and anothermember publicly stated, "Activist girls are all

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

19

dogfaces. If you're looking for a wife, stick togirls outside the organization."l

This state of affairs changed dramatically afterthe Security Treaty was renewed. Havingexperienced defeat, the students desperatelysought new issues to confront. It was in theimmediate aftermath of the treaty's automaticrenewal, in July 1970, that the Kaseitō (ChineseYouth Organization, a group for Japanese ofChinese descent) denounced the Japanese leftwing for ignoring minority issues. Aroused bythis, student activists increasingly organizedaround the problems faced by minorities,including resident Koreans, Okinawans, Ainu,and Burakumin. It was also at this time thatsome radical sect members began supportingMinamata disease sufferers and other pollutionvictims.

Much like long hair, sexual liberation arrived atthe end of the student uprisings. There hadbeen relatively little sexual activity within thebarricaded universities, where discipline hadbeen so highly prized. After Zenkyōtō's defeat,disheartened students sought salvation inromantic love, which led to Japanese sexualliberation. Birth control pills were not legal inJapan, however, and sex education andpublications with information about sex werestill underdeveloped, so there was a surge inpregnancies and abortions. By the early 1970s,the number of abortions approached twomillion per annum.li

The first woman's liberation (ūman ribudemonstration in Japan took place in October1970, sparking similar activities across thenation. The organizers were female ex-members of sects and Zenkyōtō groups. Theywere furious both at the discrimination theyhad suffered within the student movement, andat being forced into abortions during thefrenzied free love experimentation in the wakeof the failed student uprisings. Up until June1970, female student activists suffered insilence so as not to undermine the struggle

against the Security Treaty. Once the treatywas renewed, they felt free to form their ownmovement.

Enoki MisakoProtest by Liberated Union of Women Against theProhibition of Abortion and Demanding theLegalization of the Pill (Chūbiren).

Another reason these shifts began taking placearound 1970 was that up until the late 1960s,student activists cherished the notion that largesegments of the working class had been leftbehind by high-speed growth, and expectedthese workers would soon rise up in revolutionin response to their oppression. But by 1970, ithad become clear that virtually all segments ofthe Japanese working class were beneficiariesof economic growth. The LDP's overwhelming

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

20

victory in the December 1969 general electionwas in part a product of widespreadconsciousness of growing prosperity. That mayalso help to explain the fact that the laborunions did not join in the anti-treaty movementin 1970 after having done so in 1960. ASeptember 1970 article in a new left journalconceded, "with very few exceptions, the onlylaborers excluded from reaching higher strataof the Japanese working class are theBurakumin, Okinawans, Koreans, andChinese."lii

This also helped spur a shift in attention tominority issues. It suddenly seemed clear thatKoreans, Chinese, and Okinawans had beensacrificed to Japan's modernization and war ofaggression, and that ethnic Japanese hadgrown prosperous through the sacrifice ofthese minorities. Up until that point, thedominant historical narrative had been that theJapanese people had been victims of the Asia-Pacific War ending in the destruction byfirebombing and atomic bombing of 66 majorJapanese cities, and that responsibility for thecalamitous defeat lay with politicians andmilitary men. However, since the mid-1960s,when Japan became involved in supporting theUS-led war in Vietnam, the view had beenspreading that the Japanese people wereimplicated as aggressors in the Vietnam War.By 1970, this aggressor consciousness wasincreasingly being extended backward in timeto encompass Japan's role as aggressor inWorld War II. The result was the rise of a newhistorical consciousness emphasizing Japan'swar responsibility to challenge orthodoxhistorical narratives.

For the student activists, holding all Japanesepeople-including workers and themselves-responsible for wartime aggression reflectedtheir loss of faith in a non-revolutionary,increasingly prosperous working class, as wellas with their mentality of self-negation born ofa guilty conscience over Japan's prosperity.However, neonationalists in the 1990s would

castigate this view of the war as self-flagellating, and by the early 2000s, withJapan's economy seemingly stagnant andattention increasingly drawn to domesticpoverty and economic inequality, this view ofhistory associated with progressives would losemuch of its power.liii

After the Student Uprising

After reaching their peak in 1968 and 1969, thestudent uprisings died down by 1970. Noreform of the university system was enacted,nor did any large-scale movement likeGermany's Green Party emerge as a result ofthe movements. There are three reasons forthis.

The first reason involves the moralistictendencies of the Japanese student rebelliondescribed above. The Zenkyōtō movement hadchampioned the dismantling of the universityand derided the idea of reforming the system as"incrementalism." Ultimately it brought nosignificant change in the universities. Thegeneral public supported the policies that theNihon University Zenkyōtō fought for in thebeginning, such as public release of universityaccounting records and democratization ofuniversity administration. However, asZenkyōtō shifted toward a moralistic concernwith "the formation of self-subjectivity" and"abolishing the established system," the publiccame to regard the student uprisings as anincomprehensible morass of childishrebelliousness. Failing to maintain thesympathy of average citizens, the movementwas unable to transform the electoral politics ofthe time.

Among those who participated in the studentuprisings, there were very few who placed anyhope for the future on conventional forms ofpolitical activity, and virtually no one tried toenter party politics in order to create a politicalmovement. A comparatively large number ofprotest participants wound up in academia orthe mass media, where they played a role in

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

21

shaping intellectual currents by addressingissues such as discrimination faced byminorities and recognition of Japan's warresponsibility, but this did not lead to a largertransformative social movement. Moreover, thediscomfort baby boomers felt toward prosperitywas not shared by younger generations raisedin a wealthy society, and thus the studentmovement's critiques of capitalism and theacademic-industrial complex failed to win thesupport of subsequent generations.

The second reason for the demise of thestudent uprisings and the lack of a viablesuccessor movement was the continuedJapanese economic boom. In the 1960s, theJapanese economy grew by more than 10percent a year, with nearly full employment, apattern extending even to student activists.With labor in such high demand, only a tinyhandful of the most extreme activists wereblacklisted by Japanese corporations, and aneven smaller number of those were ultimatelyunable to find permanent jobs.

Even during the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979,the Japanese economy still grew at a rate of 4-5percent each year, and full employment foryoung adults continued. The ruling LDPestablished a stable base of support that wouldlast until the economy stagnated in the 1990s.While the problems of urban overcrowding andpollution drew attention, leading to LDP lossesat the municipal level in some areas, this wasnot enough to drive it from power. Even whenformer student activists attempted to createactivist civic organizations, these did notflourish under the favorable economicconditions of the time. This was a crucialdifference between Japan and nations likeG e r m a n y , w h e r e a s u r g e i n y o u t hunemployment following the second oil shockof 1978-79 sparked criticism of society as awhole, abetting the rise of the Green Party.

The majority of those who were involved in theJapanese student movement of 1968 not only

gained secure corporate employment, but alsoenjoyed stable households. Because the wagesof male workers rose steadily, many Japanesewomen left farms and factories to became full-time homemakers. In 1970, the percentage ofwomen in the workforce in Japan was greaterthan that of the United States, but after 1970,their number began to decline in Japan. Incontrast, the percentage of women in theworkforce rose in the US; in 1974, thepercentage of female workers in the USsurpassed that of Japan and the two nationscontinued to diverge in this regard for decades.While the 1970s witnessed a decrease in full-time homemakers and the "collapse" of thetraditional nuclear family became a major issuein the US, Japan experienced an increase infull-time homemakers and the transition fromextended families to nuclear families.

The third reason for the demise of themovement was the nature of the sects thatsparked the 1968 uprisings. Most of the sectstraced their origins to the 1950s, and theclassical Marxism they embraced was a productof the late-fifties milieu in which theyoriginated. This doctrinaire Marxism emergeddur ing a t ime when the na t i on wasimpoverished by defeat in war and thedestruction of its cities, conditions profoundlydifferent from the prevailing realities ofJapanese society after a decade of high-speedeconomic growth. The sects maintained a rigid,party-like structure that was incompatible withthe kind of grassroots, egalitarian organizationthat was emerging around the world in the late1960s. Nonetheless, in the short time thatelapsed between the late 1950s and 1968, thesects maintained a powerful hold over thestudent movement in Japan.

The open-membership Zenkyōtō groups thathad formed spontaneously throughout Japan in1968 seemed more suited to the times, but theyexpended all of their energy in dramaticconfrontations, and in every case their numberand size shrank dramatically within a year of

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

22

formation. Thereafter, a majority of thestudents left the movement, and those whowished to continue on had no choice but torejoin the sects. In this way, the sectsrecaptured large numbers of members all atonce, despite remaining out-of-step with thetimes. The chance for less radical and moreeffective spontaneous activist organizations toemerge was lost.

In 1968, Japan still lacked a substantial urbanmiddle class, and no powerful non-Marxist civicmovement emerged other than Beheiren. After1970 Beheiren pioneered a new grassroots-style activism, but civic movements nevergained much traction, largely due to theunprecedented wealth and general sense ofsatisfaction produced by the surging Japaneseeconomy. This situation in Japan was differentfrom that in nations like the United States,where a wide variety of non-Marxist citizensgroups and student groups (such as SNCC)emerged out of a much more robust andvariegated anti-Vietnam War movement, as wellthe Civil Rights and womens' movements,which possessed no close analogues in Japan.

Of the reasons described above, the moralisticcharacter of the Zenkyōtō movement and theweakness of civic activism seen in the nature ofthe sects reflect the fact that Japan was a late-developing nation rapidly becoming anadvanced nation due to high-speed economicgrowth. Furthermore, Japan's economicprosperity in the 1970s and 1980s is alsorelated to i ts late-development. Themanufacturing sector in Japan surpassed thefarming, forestry, and fishing sector for thefirst time in 1965, but the service sector did notovertake manufacturing until 1994. In contrastt o t he US and o the r na t i ons wheremanufacturing rapidly declined from the 1970sonward, the strength of manufacturing in Japanin the 1970s and 1980s stabilized the economyand employment, reflecting Japan's late-development. If "1968" happened in the US at atime when the nation was transitioning from an

industrialized society to a post-industrialsociety, it could be said that in Japan, "1968"occurred as the nation was navigating thetransition from a lightly industrialized societyto a hyper-industrialized society.

The 1972 United Red Army Incident took placeprecisely at the moment when the studentmovement had died down and the generation ofstudents who participated in the uprisings hadbegun to find permanent employment. Thisincident, in which 12 members of the groupwere murdered by their comrades, shocked thenation. The reasons for the killings remainedunclear for many years, but it seems that as thegroup was hiding from the police at a secretlocation in the mountains, some members,fearing that others might escape and reveal thelocation of their hideout, purged those theybelieved less stalwart than themselves. This,however, is not how the incident was initiallyportrayed and understood. Rather, it waswidely believed that the purges related to thedoctrine of self-negation and insufficientrejection of bourgeois lifestyle and materialistictemptations. Reports at the time especiallyemphasized the killing of a female member whowas purportedly executed for wearing a ring,emblematic of materialistic temptations, andhence an inability to transcend a bourgeoislifestyle. People all around Japan felt that theyhad been given a glimpse of the grisly,inevitable endpoint of the ideology of "endlessself-negation," and many concluded from thisincident that it was simply no longer possible tooppose the realities of economic growth andmaterial desire. Now that a majority of thestudent activists had entered permanentemployment and had shouldered the burden ofsupporting Japan's economy, they encouragedthe younger generations that followed them toconform to the reality of Japanese society,because after the United Red Army Incident,the alternative seemed to be going up into themountains and killing each other. For manyyears thereafter, any activity that sounded likesocial activism was haunted by the specter of

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

23

this bloody incident, and the growth of newsocial movements in Japan, including newforms of NGOs that were forming in othernations at this time, was significantly impeded.

Theoretically speaking, the student uprising inJapan in 1968 was a kind of "reactiverevolution" based on an old-fashioned commonmoral sense.liv In some ways, it had a similarcharacter to food riots in the Englishcountryside the 18th century as described byE.P. Thompson. According to Thompson, theseriots were based on a common political culturerooted in traditional rights and relationshipswhereby English peasants had expected to paya "fair price" for essential goods. The foodrioters fiercely adhered to a sense of "moraleconomy," in which a traditional "fair price"was more important to the community thanmaintaining a "free" market price.lv Just as theEnglish food riots erupted against a backdropof a rapidly emerging market economy in thecountryside, the student uprisings in Japanw e r e a r e a c t i o n t o t h e p r o c e s s o ftransformation from a poor developing nationto a prosperous advanced nation against thebackdrop of unprecedented economic growth.

Our investigation of this transition hassuggested possible answers to a number ofquestions: How did high-speed economicgrowth-unprecedented at that time in Japanese,and indeed world, history-and the concomitantsocial transformations and dislocationsinfluence contemporary Japanese culture andpsychology? How can we explain theemergence of a vigorous anti-capitalistmovement precisely at a moment whencapitalism seemed to be enjoying one of itsgreatest triumphs? Do the answers to thesequestions also suggest insights into thecontemporaneous student uprisings and hippiemovements in the United States and Europe, orto the national liberation and socialistmovements in developing nations? Why areyoung people in regions grappling with rapideconomic growth and the spread of consumer

culture today, such as India and the MiddleEast, drawn to the Hindu right-wing movementand Islamic fundamentalism? Up to this point,the only publications regarding the 1968student uprising, even in Japan, have beennostalgic memoirs by people who participatedin them, but it is now necessary to treat theseuprisings as a historical phenomenon and anobject of social scientific analysis.

Oguma Eiji is a professor in the Faculty ofPolicy Management at Keio University. Hisresearch focuses on national identity andnationalism, colonial policy, and democraticthought and social movements in modernJapan. His major English language publicationsinclude:

The Boundaries of 'the Japanese': Volume 1:Okinawa 1818-1972 (Melbourne: Trans PacificPress, 2014), a translation of "Nihonjin" nokyōkai: Okinawa, Ainu, Korea, to Taiwan1868-1972 (Tokyo: Shinyōsha, 1998).

"Nobody Dies in a Ghost Town: PathDependence in Japan's 3.11 Disaster andReconstruction," The Asia-Pacific Journal,Vol.11, Issue 44, No. 1, November 4, 2013.

"From a "Dysfunctional Japanese-StyleIndustrialized Society" to an "OrdinaryNation"? The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 10, Issue31, No. 2, July 30, 2012.

"The Hidden Face of Disaster: 3.11, theHistorical Structure and Future of Japan'sNortheast," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 9,Issue 31, No. 6, August 1, 2011.

"The Green of the Willow, the Flower's Scarlet:Debate on Japanese Emigrant and Korea underthe Japanese Empire", in By Naoki Sakai, Brettd e B a r y , a n d I y o t a n i T o s h i o , e d s . ,Deconstructing Nationality (Ithaca, New York:Cornell University East Asia Program, 2005).

A Genealogy of "Japanese" Self-Images(Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2002), a

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

24

translation of Tan'itsu minzoku shinwa nokigen: "Nihonjin" no jigazō no keifu (Tokyo:Shinyōsha, 1995).

Nick Kapur recently received a Ph.D. inJapanese history from Harvard University andis presently Assistant Professor of History atRutgers University, Camden. His current bookmanuscript, entitled The 1960 US-JapanSecurity Treaty Crisis and the Origins ofContemporary Japan, examines the impact ofthe massive 1960 protests in Japan againstrenewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty onJapanese politics, society, and culture. He hasalso recently published on the role ofenvironmentalism and environmental policy onthe foreign relations of Japan, China, and theUnited States.

Sam Malissa is a Ph.D. candidate in EastAsian Languages and Literatures at YaleUniversity. His research focuses on the historyof literary translation from Japanese to English.

Stephen Poland is a Ph.D. candidate in EastAsian Languages and Literatures at YaleUniversity, where he is currently working onhis dissertation "State of Precarity: Manchukuoand the Question of National Literature andCinema," which examines literary and filmproduction in Northeast China under Japaneserule.

Recommended citation: Oguma Eiji, "Japan's1968: A Collective Reaction to Rapid EconomicGrowth in an Age of Turmoil", The Asia-PacificJournal, Vol. 13, Issue 11, No. 1, March 23,2015.

Related articles

• Linda Hoaglund, ANPO: Art X War – InH a v o c ' s W a k e(https://apjjf.org/-Linda-Hoaglund/3616)

• Gavan McCormack, Ampo's Troubled 50th:Hatoyama's Abortive Rebellion, Okinawa'sMounting Resistance and the US-Japan

Relationship (first of a three part series)(https://apjjf.org/-Gavan-McCormack/3365)

Notes

iSee, for example, Jeremi Suri, Power andProtest: Global Revolution and the Rise ofDetante (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 2005), and the six articles published aspart of "AHR Forum: The International 1968,"parts I and II, The American Historical Review114, no. 1 and 114, no. 2 (February 2009 andApril 2009).

ii See, for example, William Marotti, "Japan1968: The Performance of Violence and theTheater of Protest," The American HistoricalReview 114, no. 1 (February 2009), 97-135, andTakemasa Ando, "Transforming 'Everydayness':Japanese New Left Movements and theMeaning of their Direct Action," JapaneseStudies 33, no. 1 (2013), 1-19.

iii Muramatsu Takashi, Daigaku wa yureru,(Mainichi Shimbunsha, 1967), 44.

i v As early as 1965, students at variousuniversities throughout Japan had begunbarricading campuses in the name of causessuch as opposing tuition hikes. However, in thespring of 1968, these earlier protests were notwidely known, and thus the 1968 protests atthe University of Tokyo and Nihon Universityprotests are remembered as the primary sparksfor the wider Zenkyōtō movement.

v I have analyzed these points in much greaterdetail in my book-length study 1968 (Tokyo:Shinchōsha, 2009).

vi Tachibana Takashi, "Ichiryū kigyō ni hansenjosei ga kyūzō shite iru," Gendai (December1969), 107-8.

vii Yūki Seigo, Kaso/kamitsu (San'ichi Shobō,1970), 9, 13, 18, 70-73.

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

25

viii Miyazaki Manabu, Toppamono (GentōshaAutorō Bunko, 1998), 1:121.

i x Uemura Tadashi, Henbō suru shakai,(Seibundō Shinkōsha, 1969), 82-83.

x Ibid., 119, 174.

x i "Gunshū, hageshiku tōseki," MainichiShimbun, April 3, 1968.

xii "Roundtable: 'Gebaruto-chan ki o tsukete'"Shokun (February 1970), 231.

xiii Muramatsu Takashi, Shingaku no arashi(Mainichi Shimbunsha, 1965), 113-14, 35.

xiv Amano Yasukazu, "'Sengo' hihan no undō toronri," Ryūdō (April 1980), reproduced inOgura Toshimaru, ed., Komentaaru sengo 50-nen, vol. 5: Rōdō, shōhi, shakai undo (ShakaiHyōronsha, 1995), 237.

xv "Kore de mo bengaku no ba ka, genjitsu ochokushi seyo," Chūō Daigaku Shimbun,September 13, 1966.

xv i Akiyama Katsuyuki and Aoki Tadashi,Zengakuren wa nani o kangaeru ka (JiyūKokuminsha, 1968), 121-26, 137-39.

xvii By 1968, Japan's per capita GDP had risen to$1,451 in nominal US dollars, compared to$4,491 in the United States and $3,422 in WestGermany.

xviii Kosaka Shūhei, Shisō to shite no zenkyōtōsedai (Chikuma Shinsho, 2006), 35-6; KosakaShūhei, "'Hanran ron' to sono jidai" in NagasakiHiroshi, Hanran ron (Sairyūsha, 1991), 211-12.

xix Akiyama and Aoki, 125.

xx Ueno Chizuko and Kanō Mikiyo, "Feminizumuto bōryoku," Bungakushi wo yomikaeru, vol. 5:Ribu to iu kakumei (Inpakuto Shuppankai,2003), 13.

xxi "Tōdai, Nichidai sensō ni rentai shi Waseda

ni hangyaku no barikēdo o!", flyer datedFebruary 5, 1967, reproduced in TsumuraTakashi, Tamashii ni fureru kakumei (RainShuppan, 1970), 228.

x x i i Okuda Azuma, Okamoto Michio, andUeyanagi Katsurō, "Kyōto Daigaku no funsō," inŌsaki Hitoshi, "Daigaku funsō" o kataru(Yūshindō, 1991), 220.

xxiii Yonezu Tomoko, "Barikēdo o kugutte," inOnnatachi no Genzai o Tou Kai, ed., Zenkyōtōkara ribu e (Inpakuto Shuppankai, 1996), 121.

xxiv Sawanobori Makoto, "Barikēdo to wa nanika," Jōkyō (March 1969), reproduced inZenkyōtō o yomu (Jōkyō Shuppan, 1997), 96.

xxv Iida Momo, Kukuchi Masanori, TakahashiAkira, Nagai Yōnosuke, and HagiharaNobutoshi, "Gakusei hangyaku" to gendaishakai no kōzō henka," Chūō Kōron (July 1968),51.

xxvi Mori Setsuko, "'Otoko name onna' kara ribue," in Onnatachi no Genzai o Tou Kai, ed.,Zenkyōtō kara ribu e (Inpakuto Shuppankai,1996), 164.

xxvii Ōtoshi Shigeyuki, Anpo sedai 1000-nin nosaigetsu (Kōdansha, 1980), 226.

xxviii Fukuda Yoshiyuki, Shibata Shō, NoguchiTakehiko, Satō Makoto, Iida Momo, "Gakuseiundō no shisō no jizokusei," Chūō Kōron(December 1967), 296.

xxix K.H., "Tatakai no sōryoku o motte," in NihonDaigaku Bunri Gakubu Tōsō Iinkai Shokikyoku,ed., Hangyaku no barikēdo (San'ichi Shobō,1991), 227.

xxx Uegaki Yasuhiro, Heishitachi no RengōSekigun (Sairyūsha, 2001), 33-4.

xxxi Sekine Hiroshi, "Sōdai barikēdo no shisō,"Gendai no Riron (May 1966), 105-06.

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

26

xxxii K.M., "Ichi-nen no shuki" and "Kōnai ninemuru meiku no hyakusen," in Nihon DaigakuBunri Gakubu Tōsō Iinkai Shokikyoku, ed.,Hangyaku no barikēdo (San'ichi Shobō, 1991),230, 269.

xxxiii Takahashi Akira, "Chokusetsu kōdō noshinrito shisō" Chūō Kōron (September 1968),226-27.

xxxiv Hase Yuriko, "Zenkyōtō de mananda koto,"in Onnatachi no Genzai o Tou Kai, ed.,Zenkyōtō kara ribu e (Inpakuto Shuppankai,1996), 107.

xxxv Tōdai Tōsō Tōron Shiryō Kankō Kai, ed.,Tōdai kaitai no ronri, reproduced in Nihon nodaigaku kakumei (Nihon Hyōronsha, 1969),4:132.

xxxvi Sekai Editorial Department, "Tōdai tōsō togakusei no ishiki," Sekai (September 1969), 64,71.

xxxvii Adachi Motoko "Betonamujin ni mōshiwakenai" Beheiren Nyūsu (July 1967).

xxxviii Tsumura Takashi, ed., Zenkyōtō: jizoku totenkei (Satsukisha, 1980), 142.

xxxix For more on the 1964 deregulation offoreign travel and its relation to Japanesecounterculture, see Bruce Suttmeier,"Ethnography as Consumption: Travel andNational Identity in Oda Makoto's Nan de momite yarō," Journal of Japanese Studies 35, no.1 (Winter 2009), 61-86.

xl Shibuya Yūichi, Rokku myūjikku shinka ron(Shinchō Bunko, 1990), 13; Onzō Shigeru,Biitoruzu Nihonban yo, eien ni (Heibonsha,2003), 69.

xli Miura Atsushi, Dankai sedai o sōkatsu suru(Makino Shuppan, 2005), 58-9.

xlii Yomota Inuhiko and Tsubouchi Yūzō, "1968to 1972," Shinchō (February 2004), 217.

xliii Interview of Jibiki Yūichi by KawamuraAtsushi, October 5, 2010.

xliv J.A. Caesar, "Guriin hausu de no natsukashikifūten seikatsu," Tōkyōjin (July 2005), 46.

x lv Takahashi Genichirō and Ōtsuka Eiji,"'Rekishi' to 'fantashii,'" Torippaa (Summer2003), 7; Takahashi Genichirō and ShibuyaYūichi, "Ima, ronjiru kotow wa," MainichiShimbun, January 13, 2008.

xlvi Shiomi Takaya, Sekigun-ha shimatsu ki(Sairyūsha, 2003), 57.

xlvii "Miyazaki Hayao yon-man ji intabyū," SIGHT(Winter 2002), 20.

xlviii Katō Michinori, Rengō Sekigun shōnen A(Shinchōsha, 2003), 42-43.

xlix Ui Jun, "Kōsei no uragaeshi no repurika," inWatanabe Ichie, Shiokawa Yoshinori, andŌyabu Ryūsuke, eds., Shinsayoku undō 40-nenno hikari to kage (Shinsensha, 1999), 301.

l Uegaki, 125.

li Shutō Kumiko, "Yūsei hogo hō kaiaku soshiundō to 'Chūpiren,'" in Onnatachi no Genzai oTou Kai, ed., Zenkyōtō kara ribu e (InpakutoShuppankai, 1996), 266.

l i i Mito Osamu, "Sabetsu ni mujikaku nakakumei shutai o dangai suru," Jōkyō(September 1970), 88.

liii The anti-nuclear power movement whicharose in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichiincident of 2011 included a large number ofparticipants from among the generation of the1968 movement. The motivat ion andsentiments behind their participation, however,seemed to differ from those of youngerparticipants. Participants from the 1968generation tended to cite as their motivation asense of guilt from having benefited fromnuclear power, enjoying a life of affluence since

APJ | JF 13 | 12 | 1

27

the 1970s thanks in part to nuclear energy.However, part icipants from youngergenerations, especially contingent workeractivists, seemed at least partly motivated by acritique of the "lifetime employment" systemthat was predominant in Japan until 1980s andwas archetypically symbolized by theemployment policies of electric powercompanies such as TEPCO. Most of the leadingactivists in the anti-nuclear movement afterFukushima fell into the latter category (seeOguma Eiji,ed., Genpatsu o tomeru hitobito:3.11 kara kantei mae made (Tokyo: BungeiShunjū, 2013)). Contemporary socialmovements in Japan, because they are arisingin a declining economy, inevitably have asomewhat different character compared to the1968 uprising, taking place as it did during atime of tremendous economic expansion.However, regardless of divergences arisingfrom the directionality of the economy in termsof growing or declining, rapid economic andsocial change plays a major role in the rise ofsocial movements.

liv We should distinguish the term "reactive

revolution" as I use it in this article from usualnotions of "reactionary" politics. By using theword "reactive," I simply mean to suggest thatJapanese students literally "reacted" againstthe situation in which they found themselves.Although I argue that this "reaction" was "old-fashioned" in that it was based on a type oftraditional moral economy, it is important torecognize that such reactions can often beclassified as "progressive" or "innovative" as wecan see in examples such as contemporaneousecology movements around the world or effortsby Japanese students to install a sort of directdemocracy on college campuses. If I may beallowed to make a comparison to a recent caseI have not investigated in detail,when I visitedthe so-called "Umbrella Revolution" of pro-democracy protests in Hong-Kong in October2014, several participants mentioned theiranxiety about rapid social changes in twodecades since the sovereignty transfer to Chinaas one factor motivating the movement.

lv E.P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of theEnglish Crowd in the 18th Century." Past &Present 50 (1971), 76-136.