![]() Japan’s defeat in the Asia-Pacific War left Japanese society in a state of emotional, psychological, and physical disarray, and Japanese students were no exception. These differences allowed Japanese students to play a leading role at the vanguard of the student-led global revolutions of the 1960s. In other ways, however, the Japanese student movement differed from seemingly similar student movements in other parts of the world, owing to the legacies of Japan’s disastrous defeat in the Asia-Pacific war and the ensuing US-led military occupation. Also like students in other places, Japanese students were profoundly influenced by the global Cold War, and Japanese student uprisings tended to track closely with rises and falls in global Cold War tensions. In many ways, Japanese youth culture during this period followed a similar trajectory to that of youth cultures in other nations around the world Japanese students fell in love with rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s, increasingly embraced television and consumerism, experimented with sexual revolution and counter-culture in the 1960s, and protested against the Vietnam War and overcrowded universities in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ![]() Nevertheless, female students played an increasingly important role in the Japanese student movement throughout the period, and as educational opportunities for women expanded, became increasingly visible over time. Due to the patriarchal nature of Japanese higher education during this time period, the stereotypical image of a Japanese student movement activist from this era is a young male. However, in some cases the category of “youth” ( seinen ) expanded to include workers in their late teens and early twenties, especially the radical “youth sections” of labor unions. ![]() Many of these students were drawn from the socioeconomic elite, that is, upper-middle class and professional families, because during this time period, especially in the earlier years, many working-class students still went immediately into the workforce following the conclusion of middle school (or later on, after high school). For the most part this meant college students and students in graduate and professional schools, and to a lesser extent, high school students. Ultimately, Japanese students played an essential role in the shaping of the US-Japan alliance, and to a lesser extent, the broader contours of the “global revolution” of the late 1960s.įor the purposes of this article, we will define “Japanese students” and “Japanese youths” as those people who were no longer considered “children,” but who had also not yet entered the regular workforce to become “responsible adults” ( shakaijin ). Over this same period, Japanese youth also gained worldwide attention for their innovative protest tactics and later for the extreme violence of their protest activities. ![]() Japanese student activists took center stage in many of the major social, political, and cultural struggles in early postwar Japan, from immediately after the end of World War II in the fall of 1945 until the early 1970s. Keywords: Zengakuren Zenkyōtō student protests Anpo protests Sunagawa struggle 1968 snake dance 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. Abstract: 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. ![]()
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