Tombo Times: Japanese Student Movement part 2

Once-again-Yet- another- Tombo- Times- article. Continuing from last month, this is Part 2 of my series on the Japanese student movement. And again, despite being a 2 parter, you'll notice the information is a bit crammed in for space, even compared to this paper I wrote at Calvin. I tried to do the best I could with the space I had.

This article, along with the rest of the Tombo Times, is available on-line here:

History Corner: The Japanese Student Movement Continued
The second large wave of student protests in Japan began around 1967. This time the causes were numerous. The largest issue was the Vietnam War. Japan of course was not directly involved in the war, but the Japanese government was on record as officially supported the American War effort. Plus the many American military bases in Japan were often used as a stopping point for troops en route to Vietnam.

This was also true of the American basis in Okinawa, although Okinawa was still under the American administration authority at the time (it would not be returned to Japan until 1972). Thus the freedom of Okinawa became another issue the in the student movement.
Students also protested the docking of American nuclear powered warships in mainland Japan, such as the visit of the “USS Enterprise” in 1967. Finally students pressed for reform within the University system, urging the University to become more democratic and protesting against exams and tuition increases.

At first the protests largely had the support of the Japanese public, but support waned as the protests became more and more violent. Images of students firebombing their own universities and throwing molotov cocktails at police became common on Japanese TV. Finally in large universities the academic year was forced to stop all together as police stormed student barricades, and even the prestigious Tokyo University was not able to accept a new class of students because of riots on campus. When classes finally did begin again, they did so under police guard.

Much of the Japanese student movement was similar to student movements in Europe and in the United States at the same time. There was a generation gap between the old left in Japan and the new left. The old communist left had focused on sacrifice and misery, enduring torture and imprisonment in the 1930s. The new student left focused on joy, hedonism, excitement and happiness. The old left was dogmatically Marxist, while the new left showed a high interest in Marx, but also borrowed heavily from humanist and existentialist thinkers. In fact the student protests in 1960 were significant because they were the first leftist protests in Japan not controlled by the Communist party.
Also similar to Europe and America, many of the student organizations resisted the urge to organize themselves into well structured hierarchies despite large public support. A minimalist approach to structure was adopted, with an egalitarian emphasis. Visible leaders were discouraged.

However perhaps unique to Japan was the high level of factional infighting that took place among the student groups. Ideological splits have always been characteristic of the left, but at the height of the student movement in Japan the students spent more time fighting each other than they spent fighting the police. If you look at some of the old archival footage and see two groups of students with different color helmets hitting each other over the head with wooden poles, you can not help but be reminded of a school sports day. Factional infighting between student groups even got so violent as to produce several casualties.

The violence on campus peaked around 1970, but various factions of the student movement continued in other places. The construction of Narita airport was a concentration of protest well into the 1970s, and even years after the airport was finished, protests would revive every time the airport expanded.
The farmers, who were forced to give up their ancestral land to make room for the airport, began the protest. They were quickly joined by the students who were able to lend ideological justification to the farmer’s opposition. During the Vietnam War, there was also fear among the left that, because of the size of the proposed airport, it could be used to land U.S. military planes.
Two students and four riot police were killed during the years of violent protests surrounding the construction of Narita Airport.

Also as in Europe in America, some small terrorist groups did emerge out of the broader based student movement. The most famous of these was “The Japanese Red Army”, which itself split into several different factions using the same name. One faction of the Red Army isolated itself up in the mountains where they held nightly purges until they had killed off 14 of their own members. The surviving members then took a tourist lodge hostage during a televised stand off with the police.

Another faction of the Red Army hijacked a passenger airplane and flew it to North Korea. They resided in North Korea for several years afterwards, and are rumored to have helped in the much publicized abduction of Japanese citizens by the North Korean government.

A third faction went to Paris where they hid out disguised as Japanese tourists. They formed alliances with Palestinian terrorists and are most famous for an attack at Lod Airport in Israel in which 26 people were killed. They also hijacked a Japan Airlines plane in Libya in 1973, and in 1974 blew up an oil storage tank in Singapore.

Further Reading
Perhaps the most thorough English source is “Fire Across the Sea: the Vietnam War and Japan” by Thomas Havens.

Aside from this work it is difficult to find English sources on the larger Japanese student movement outside of academic journals. However terrorist groups like “The Japanese Army” have received perhaps an unproportionate amount of attention, and there are a few books such as “Blood and Rage: the story of the Japanese Red Army” by William Farrell (which can be found in Oita's Prefectural library).

To the extent that the Japanese film industry has paid attention to these years, it too has chosen to focus almost exclusively on the Red Army. Just this past year the movie “Terrorist” was released, which focused on the aftermath of the attack in Lod Airport. Also “The Choice of Hercules” (usually available with English subtitles on the DVD version) retells the story of the hostage stand-off with the Red Army from the perspective of the police. “Ame no Hikari” depicts the same events, but from the perspective of the Red Army students.
Other than that, many local library have some a series of documentary videos on the 20th Century in Japan, which contain some footage of the student battles with police.

Link of the Day
Via This Modern World
Perhaps as you watch Hillary Clinton’s dreams ripped to shreds, you’ve allowed yourself to feel a small measure of human sympathy for her. DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE. She still feels compelled to blatantly lie about everything important, as Robert Naiman explains here.