Japan's New Left Movements

Legacies for Civil Society

Takemasa Ando

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135087371
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Japanese History
• Index: History

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that followed the March 2011 tsunami and earthquake in Japan shocked the world. In the wake the of the disaster, questions were asked as to why Japanese antinuclear movements were not able to prevent those with vested interests, such as businesses, bureaucrats, the media and academics, from facilitating nuclear energy policies? Taking this question as its starting point, this book looks more widely at the development and powerlessness of Japanese civil society, and seeks to untangle this intersection between social movements and civil society in postwar Japan.

Central to this book are the Japanese New Left movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, and the impact they have had on civil society and politics. By focusing on a key idea that a wide range of new leftists shared – the self-revolution in 'everydayness' – Takemasa Ando shows how these groups did not seek immediate change in the realms of politics and legislation, but rather, it was believed that personal transformation would lead to broader social and political change. By reconsidering the relationship between Japanese New Left movements of the 1960s and later social movements, this book crucially connects the constructive and disruptive legacies of the movements, and in doing so provides valuable insights into the powerlessness that plagues Japanese civil society today.

Presenting a comprehensive picture of the New Left movements and their legacies in Japan, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars working in the fields of Japanese politics, Japanese history, and Japanese culture and society.

1 Before the emergence of “everydayness”

People's movements for democratisation in the early postwar period

Chapter 1 begins with discussions about the Anpo protests in 1960. This massive protest greatly affected the discourse of Japanese New Left movements in the late 1960s. New Leftists emphasised several limitations of the Anpo protests and felt obliged to overcome them. Before moving on to discussions about New Left movements, this chapter examines the Anpo protests, a large-scale people's movement for democratisation. First of all, I seek to explore the history of people's movements for democratisation (sengo minshushugi) following the end of the Second World War as the background of the Anpo protests.

Second, I move on to discussions of the Kikyô movement (Kikyô Undô, the movement for democratisation in the hometown¹). As soon as the Diet ratified the bill of the revised Anpo Treaty (the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, discussed below) on 19 June 1960 in spite of the powerful protests, thousands of university students and intellectuals tried to spread the protests against the Anpo Treaty to their hometowns during the summer break of July and August (at that time many university students came from rural areas, so “hometown” means their rural origins).

The Kikyô movement foreshadowed the New Left movements of the late 1960s in a sense that during their visits to hometowns the activists realised the problems of the Anpo protests and tried to go further beyond the protests. I also refer to the difference between the idea of reflection in the Kikyô movement (or people's movements for democratisation) and the New Left's idea of self-transformation in “everydayness”. In this way, this chapter looks at the Kikyô movements to explore the legacy of the Anpo protests which affected the discourse of New Left movements in the late 1960s.

1 “The postwar progressives” and the Anpo protests of 1960

People's movements for democratisation to 1960

May and June 1960 was a period of political activism: large numbers of Japanese people joined protest actions on the streets against the bill to revise the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty (known by its Japanese abbreviation as the Anpo Treaty) and against the undemocratic decision-making of Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke and the ruling LDP. The military treaty was initially signed in 1951 immediately after Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty. The official occupation by the Allies ended and Japan returned to being an independent state in 1952, but the Anpo Treaty permitted a US military presence in Japan to defend Japan from anticipated attacks by communist countries. Immediately after the end of the Second World War, the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (SCAP) initiated many democratic reforms of the Japanese state, such as the abolishment of the Special Higher Police (Tokkô Keisatsu), the enactment of labour laws which gave permission for collective bargaining and strikes to workers, and the introduction of a new Constitution.

However, SCAP shifted its focus to constraining Japanese people's movements for democratisation soon after the communist revolution in China in 1949, the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, and the expansion of the Cold War to the Asian region.The National Police Reserve (Keisatsu Yobitai) was founded in October 1950, was transformed into the National Safety Forces (Hoantai) in 1952, and was finally reorganised into the Self Defence Forces (Jieitai) in 1954. During this period of remilitarisation, Japan started to negotiate with the USA the revision of the Anpo Treaty in the late 1950s. Whereas the Japanese government and the ruling LDP aimed to obligate the USA to defend Japan from attacks by neighbouring countries, the main purpose of the revision from the perspective of the USA was to require Japan, its economically expanding junior partner in the Asian region, to share some of the burden of security in the Far East. Some Japanese conservative elites welcomed the offer of some degree of remilitarisation from the USA, but many Japanese people were concerned that Japan's remilitarisation would be facilitated by the revision of the Anpo Treaty. Kishi Nobusuke was a key figure in the revision of the Anpo Treaty. He became Prime Minister in 1957 and strongly pushed the agenda of revising the Anpo Treaty.

Kishi had played a key role in Japan's colonisation of Manchuria, northeastern China, and in founding the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932. He had occupied the position of Minister of Commerce and Industry in December 1941, when the Japanese government decided to attack Pearl Harbor, and was indicted as a class-A war criminal during the postwar period. His past career and reputation for being a strong-arm politician reminded Japanese people of their bitter experiences during wartime. Kishi was also passionate about strengthening Japan's alliance with the USA. He sought to amend the Constitution of Japan, because the Constitution, which was established following the Second World War and known as the “Peace Constitution”, included Article 9 which renounced the maintenance and use of military forces. In order to remove Article 9, Kishi and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) needed to gain two-thirds of the votes of the Upper and Lower Houses. The LDP was formed in 1955 by consolidating two conservative parties, the Liberal Party (Jiyûtô) and the Democratic Party (Minshutô), to win two-thirds of the seats in the Diet, amend the Constitution, and remilitarise to the degree commensurate with being an independent country. The amendment of the Constitution and remilitarisation was among the most important goals of the LDP. Kishi was very faithful to the will of Japanese conservative elites.

Protest actions against American military bases in Japan were preludes to the Anpo protests of 1960. In the 1950s, anti-military base struggles were active in various regions of Japan. The Anpo Treaty and the Mutual Security Agreement, which was signed in 1954, allowed the USA military to use bases in Japanese territory. While some local people had their land expropriated to provide sites for military bases, others' lives were disrupted by damage to their farming or fishing activities and by violence from US military personnel.

The deployment of the American military led to Japanese people's protests against American bases in Uchinada (Ishikawa prefecture), Sunagawa (Tokyo), Kitafuji (Shizuoka prefecture), and other places. For example, local farmers in the Sunagawa district launched very down-to-earth protest actions against the construction plan of the base. They and their supporters blocked several attempts by the Japanese government to survey the area from July to November 1955. The farmers threw animal manure at police officers in order to defend their land. They fought under the slogan “even if stakes are driven in our land, we will never let stakes be driven into our spirits (tochi ni kui o utarete mo, kokoro ni kui o utarenai)”.

It is necessary to contexualise Japanese people's movements for democratisation in the global rise of anticolonial movements at that time in order to comprehend the characteristics of these popular protests. It was in 1955 that the Bandung conference was held by 29 countries from Asia and Africa which sought to keep themselves distant from two Cold War superpowers: the USA and the Soviet Union. For the first time, colonised countries united and demanded self-determination. According to Hee-Yeon Cho, the ingredient of “the Bandung spirits” was colonised people's desire to liberate themselves from the superpowers and win political independence in world politics (Cho 2007, p. 579). In the 1950s, “the Bandung spirits” – that is, the complex of postcolonialism and nationalism – spread widely to the discursive space of global politics. It is worthwhile stressing that the power of Japanese people's protests against American military bases, as well as anticolonial movements of other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, was sourced from this complex.

The strength of popular opposition forced the Japanese government to stop surveying the land and change its original plan. During this period, many Japanese people, while desiring American consumer culture, saw the USA as an invader and a coloniser of their country (Yoshimi 2007, chs 3–4). The people's protests against the military bases stemmed from anger at the destruction of their peaceful lives caused by the USA. The anti-base movements were thus based on an antipathy towards the USA and a feeling of nationalism among Japanese people. This nationalism could be clearly seen in how young activists in the JCP or union members often sang “The Song of People's Actions for Independence (Minzoku Dokuritsu Kôdôtai no Uta)”, which began with “Defend the people's liberty. Stand up, our country's workers”. This anti-US sentiment led a number of people who took part in the anti-base protests to go on to participate in protests against the revision of the Anpo Treaty in the late 1950s to 1960.

The Anpo protests

After Prime Minister Kishi took office in 1957, he declared his intent to enforce a nationwide rating system for teachers to be administered by school principals. The Japan Teachers' Union (Nikkyôso), a national network of teachers' unions, organised a national campaign and went on general strikes against the introduction of the rating system. Kishi also sought to introduce the Police Duties Bill (Keisatsukan Shokumu Shikô Hô) into the Diet in October 1958. The Bill allowed police officers to expand their power of interrogating, searching, and arresting. Due to this legislation, an increasing number of Japanese people were concerned that Japan would return to being on authoritarian state and go to war again. This concern urged people's groups for democratisation to organise a national campaign against Kishi and the LDP; a network of these groups successfully mobilised a large number of people to strike, join rallies, and demonstrate against the Police Duties Bill.

In 1959, the national campaign shifted focus to the revision of the Anpo Treaty. Japan and the USA had already begun their negotiations on the revision of the Treaty in 1958. The People's Council to Stop the Revised Security Treaty (Anpo Kaitei Soshi Kokumin Kaigi) was formed in March 1959. This national campaign network comprised 134 people's organisations, including nuclear disarmament groups, anti-military base groups, women's groups, farmers' unions, and youth groups. The aim of the People's Council was to coordinate anti-Anpo demonstrations in Tokyo with labour strikes, rallies, and other local protests.

While the Council did not mobilise a wide range of people to protest against the Treaty, some student activists took radical action to stop the negotiations. In January 1960, about 700 student activists tried to blockade Haneda Airport to prevent Prime Minister Kishi from visiting American President Dwight Eisenhower, but the police protected Kishi from the demonstrators, and Kishi flew to the USA and finally signed the revised Anpo Treaty on 19 January. The demonstrators shifted the focus of their actions to stopping the ratification of the Treaty in the Diet. On 19 May, the JSP's members, who sat in protest in front of the Diet Building against the ratification of the bill, were expelled by the police. Then the Lower House MPs voted for the Anpo Treaty and extended the Diet session in the absence of opposition members. This inflated Japanese people's anger with the LDP's undemocratic way of decision-making over the Treaty. These strong-arm methods fuelled people's actions against the Anpo Treaty. From that day, “The Defence of Democracy” was added to the slogan of the Anpo protests, and in late May and early June protest actions expanded rapidly. Demonstrators marched on the Diet, the Prime Minister's office, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, and the American Embassy again and again. The mobilisation of the Anpo protests was facilitated by TV broadcasts. TVs began to be widely diffused in Japan following the wedding of Crown Prince Akihito in 1959. Those who did not have their own set (most people could not afford to buy TVs themselves at that time) watched TV news in electrical appliance shops, restaurants, and neighbours' houses to see what happened in the Diet and on the streets.

The people's power reached a peak on 15 June. Labour unions in the public and private sectors mobilised 5.8 million workers in the strikes. Around 110,000 demonstrators surrounded the Diet in Tokyo to stop the revision of the Treaty and protest against the undemocratic ruling party. About 1,500 student activists clashed with the police, who were armed with water cannons and tear gas, and finally entered the Diet. Since the demonstrators were violently attacked by the police and right-wing groups, many of them were seriously injured. Kanba Michiko, a female student from Tokyo University who joined the protests, was killed in the clash between demonstrators and the police. The anger of the protesters towards the Kishi cabinet and the LDP was aggravated by the death of Kanba.

The massive protests were based on a wide range of people's movements for democracy and peace, which consisted of anti-military base movements, ban-the-bomb movements, labour movements, women's movements, and the like. Activists of those movements were known as “the postwar progressives (sengo kakushin seiryoku)”. To them, the protection of their livelihood was more important than political ideologies. Mobilisation of the activists was promoted by their bitter memories during and...