In 1968 and 1969, student protests at several Japanese universities ultimately forced the closure of campuses across Japan. Known as daigaku funsō (大学紛争, lit. 'university troubles') or daigaku tōsō (大学闘争, 'university struggles'), the protests were part of the worldwide protest cycle in 1968 and the late-1960s Japanese protest cycle, including the Anpo protests of 1970 and the struggle against the construction of Narita Airport. Students demonstrated initially against practical issues in universities and eventually formed the Zenkyōtō in mid-1968 to organize themselves. The Act on Temporary Measures concerning University Management allowed for the dispersal of protesters in 1969.
Initially, demonstrations were organized to protest against unpaid internships at the University of Tokyo Medical School. Building on years of student organization and protest, New Left student organizations began occupying buildings around campus. The other main campus where the protests originated was Nihon University. They began with student discontent over alleged corruption in the university board of directors. At Nihon, protests were driven less by ideology and more by pragmatism because of the university's traditional and conservative nature. The movement spread to other Japanese universities, escalating into violence both on campus and in the streets. In late 1968, at the zenith of the movement, thousands of students entered Tokyo's busiest railway station, Shinjuku, and rioted. Factional infighting (uchi-geba, 内ゲバ) was rampant among these students. In January 1969, the police besieged the University of Tokyo and ended the protests there, leading to renewed fervor from students at other universities, where protests continued. However, as public support for the students fell, and the police increased their efforts to stop the protests, the movement waned. The passage of the 1969 Act on Temporary Measures concerning University Management gave police the legal basis to apply more forceful measures, although splinter groups of the New Left groups, such as the United Red Army, continued their violence into the 1970s.
As part of an International Phenomenon in the 68s (see May 68, New Communist Movement), Japanese New Left activists drew ideological inspiration that heavily influenced by the Cultural Revolution taking place in China. Some other groups and factions also inspired by Leon Trotsky, French existentialist philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, and the homegrown philosophy of the Japanese poet and critic Takaaki Yoshimoto. Yoshimoto's interpretation of "autonomy" (jiritsusei) and "subjectivity" (shutaisei) were based on his critique of the progressive liberal interpretations of these ideas by other Japanese intellectuals such as Masao Maruyama, whom he denounced as hypocritical. The students' devotion to shutaisei in particular would lead ultimately to the disintegration of their movement, as they focused increasingly on "self-negation" (jiko hitei) and "self-criticism" (hansei).
The university troubles helped in the emergence of Mitsu Tanaka's Women's Liberation (Ūman Ribu) movement. While most disputes had settled down by the 1970s and many of the students had reintegrated into Japanese society, the protests' ideas entered the cultural sphere, inspiring writers like Haruki Murakami and Ryū Murakami. The students' political demands made education reform a priority for the Japanese government, which it tried to address through organizations such as the Central Council for Education. The protests have been the subject of modern popular media, such as Kōji Wakamatsu's 2007 film United Red Army.
In 1968 and 1969, student protests at several Japanese universities ultimately forced the closure of campuses across Japan. Known as daigaku funsō (大学紛争, lit. 'university troubles') or daigaku tōsō (大学闘争, 'university struggles'), the protests were part of the worldwide protest cycle in 1968 and the late-1960s Japanese protest cycle, including the Anpo protests of 1970 and the struggle against the construction of Narita Airport. Students demonstrated initially against practical issues in universities and eventually formed the Zenkyōtō in mid-1968 to organize themselves. The Act on Temporary Measures concerning University Management allowed for the dispersal of protesters in 1969.
Initially, demonstrations were organized to protest against unpaid internships at the University of Tokyo Medical School. Building on years of student organization and protest, New Left student organizations began occupying buildings around campus. The other main campus where the protests originated was Nihon University. They began with student discontent over alleged corruption in the university board of directors. At Nihon, protests were driven less by ideology and more by pragmatism because of the university's traditional and conservative nature. The movement spread to other Japanese universities, escalating into violence both on campus and in the streets. In late 1968, at the zenith of the movement, thousands of students entered Tokyo's busiest railway station, Shinjuku, and rioted. Factional infighting (uchi-geba, 内ゲバ) was rampant among these students. In January 1969, the police besieged the University of Tokyo and ended the protests there, leading to renewed fervor from students at other universities, where protests continued. However, as public support for the students fell, and the police increased their efforts to stop the protests, the movement waned. The passage of the 1969 Act on Temporary Measures concerning University Management gave police the legal basis to apply more forceful measures, although splinter groups of the New Left groups, such as the United Red Army, continued their violence into the 1970s.
As part of an International Phenomenon in the 68s (see May 68, New Communist Movement), Japanese New Left activists drew ideological inspiration that heavily influenced by the Cultural Revolution taking place in China. Some other groups and factions also inspired by Leon Trotsky, French existentialist philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, and the homegrown philosophy of the Japanese poet and critic Takaaki Yoshimoto. Yoshimoto's interpretation of "autonomy" (jiritsusei) and "subjectivity" (shutaisei) were based on his critique of the progressive liberal interpretations of these ideas by other Japanese intellectuals such as Masao Maruyama, whom he denounced as hypocritical. The students' devotion to shutaisei in particular would lead ultimately to the disintegration of their movement, as they focused increasingly on "self-negation" (jiko hitei) and "self-criticism" (hansei).
The university troubles helped in the emergence of Mitsu Tanaka's Women's Liberation (Ūman Ribu) movement. While most disputes had settled down by the 1970s and many of the students had reintegrated into Japanese society, the protests' ideas entered the cultural sphere, inspiring writers like Haruki Murakami and Ryū Murakami. The students' political demands made education reform a priority for the Japanese government, which it tried to address through organizations such as the Central Council for Education. The protests have been the subject of modern popular media, such as Kōji Wakamatsu's 2007 film United Red Army.
Origins of student activism
The Allied Occupation of Japan from the end of the Second World War to 1952 brought significant changes to Japanese politics. The occupation authorities repealed the Peace Preservation Law, which had been enacted before the war to target left-wing groups specifically and arrest their members. Left-wing prisoners incarcerated under this law were released. The Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and the Japanese Socialist Party (JSP) were legalized and became influential within Japanese politics. The JCP focused on increasing their support among students, which led to the association of students with left-wing activism. The occupation authorities promulgated the post-war Constitution of Japan, which gave political organizations the right to exist and workers the right to organize. Left-wing groups supported the Constitution and students sought to protect it and defend themselves against actions by the Japanese state they viewed as unconstitutional.
Occupation authorities restructured the Japanese education system by repealing the Imperial Rescript on Education, decentralizing the administration of the education system, and introducing the American-based 6-3-3-4 school system (six years of primary school, three years of junior secondary school, three years of senior secondary school, and four years of tertiary education), making at least nine years of education mandatory. High school admission continued to be rare and competitive. The 1949 National School Establishment Law expanded the higher education system, leading to local higher education institutions being consolidated into national universities, ensuring the existence of state-supported universities in every prefecture. This standardization later resulted in an increasing number of students ready to go on to high school, which led to the creation of more private high schools by the Ministry of Education (MoE). The number of high school graduates grew to 90% of students by the 1960s, putting pressure on higher education institutions to expand, and for secondary education institutions to extend into tertiary education.
The rise of left-wing sympathies among students led to the creation of the Zengakuren, a socialist student organization formed in 1948. Zengakuren grew out of a 1947–48 protest against an increase in university fees led by student supporters of the JCP. With Zengakuren, the student movement had a banner to rally under. In the 1950s, New Left movements that had evolved from Zengakuren, which were unaffiliated with the JCP, sprang up within the student movement. Some of Zengakuren's student leaders, for example, split from the JCP to form the Communist League, a Leninist group known as the "Bund" which took their name from the German name of the Communist League of Karl Marx's time. Groups that followed the theory of Leon Trotsky came together to form the Japan Revolutionary Communist League (Kakukyōdō), and less radical Zengakuren leaders within the Bund led the Student Socialist League (Shakai Gakusei Dōmei, shortened to Shagakudō). These factions wrested control of Zengakuren from the JCP for the New Left.
In 1960, a broad coalition of left-wing groups including the JCP, the JSP, Zengakuren, and the Sōhyō trade federation representing Japanese trade unions carried out massive protests against renewal of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan (known commonly as Anpo). For Zengakuren, Anpo marked a renewal and strengthening of their political program and the eclipsing of the Old Left by the New Left. During the Anpo protests of 1960, a split occurred between two leading left-wing intellectuals – Masao Maruyama and Takaaki Yoshimoto. Maruyama saw the protest as an example of the enacting of the concept of shutaisei (subjectivity), or the idea of the autonomy of society from the state and the self, and as a shining beacon of democratic ideals. Yoshimoto saw the protest as a reaction against capitalist alienation, not as an act of protecting democracy. Yoshimoto accused Maruyama and his supporters of being duplicitous, hypocritical, and going against shutaisei by deceiving themselves into believing they were against the war and the heralds of popular democracy. The New Left, especially the Bund, took up Yoshimoto's ideas and his critique of Maruyama and Japanese progressivism. Zengakuren attacked the JCP, the progressives, and anything else they deemed as the "Establishment" as organizations that threatened shutaisei by destroying the autonomy of the self and replacing it with a vanguard. This marked the turn of the Japanese New Left against mainstream progressivism and orthodox Stalinism.
By the late 1960s, the number of university students and universities reached an all-time high, with 52 universities in Tokyo providing a haven for New Left radicals. The lack of post-war publication censorship, the printing of affordable Marxist texts and the abundance of free time at university led to the radicalization of many more students. The generation born in the postwar baby boom had reached university and universities had accommodated this change by opening up thousands of additional spaces. Tensions had already risen, and the student movement had been mostly dormant since the Anpo protests. The situation in the universities had become increasingly unstable, leading to the 1968 protests.
Initial skirmishes
Student unrest reemerged with protests at Keio University in 1965 and Waseda University in 1966 being the first to use the name "All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees" (Zenkyōtō) to refer to the student organizations coordinating the protests. The Waseda disturbances lasted 150 days, ending when student activism calmed down nationwide. A controversial reform made by the University of Tokyo in late 1967 regarding medical internship, seen as six years of free labor by medical students, led to a student strike at the university in early 1968. A fight on February 19 between a tutor and students caused by the controversy over internship reform led to the punishment of 17 students and the expulsion of four. Medical students, who disrupted graduation ceremonies at the university in March, deemed some of the punishment as absurd, as one of the students was not in Tokyo at the day of the fight but in Kyushu. As riot police were called in to protect these ceremonies, the students moved to occupy Yasuda Hall in June. The University of Tokyo decided to take measures to take back Yasuda Hall from student occupation and clear its barricades. However, this led to outrage amongst the student population, which re-occupied the hall and called a general strike.
The protests by the University of Tokyo medical students spilled over to other universities. One of the first was Nihon University (known commonly as Nichidai), which saw 10,000 of its 86,000 students demonstrating in May 1968 over the suspicious use of two billion yen of funds by the university's board of directors. Students accused the board of "money-making" in a "mass-production university". Although the political ideologies of the universities were different, the University of Tokyo was an elite school whose students had left-wing sympathies, while Nihon University was more conservative and repressive. The protests used similar tactics, such as the occupation of important university buildings, whose use later allowed for the formation of Zenkyōtō groups in different universities.
Zenkyōtō and spread of the movement
In July 1968, the University of Tokyo Zenkyōtō, or All-Campus Joint Struggle Committee was formed to coordinate protests at different universities across the country. Non-sectarian postgraduate student Yoshitaka Yamamoto was elected leader of this Zenkyōtō. Although it had previously existed, the University of Tokyo popularized the Zenkyōtō model. This served as the mainstream interpretation of the model after this point. The Zenkyōtō brought the actions of non-sectarian activists – people who did not follow any set path to revolution and were unaffiliated with either Zengakuren or the JCP – to light. This contrasted with the pre-Zenkyōtō situation, where activists were split into 39 groups affiliated with Zengakuren and opposed to the JCP and one group that was pro-JCP. The Zenkyōtō helped to expand the scope of protestors. Whereas only undergraduate students protested against Anpo in 1960, the Zenkyōtō included graduate students and some members of staff. The Zenkyōtō at Nihon University helped students push back against conservative influence on the student movement.
In July 1968, the Zenkyōtō at the University of Tokyo demanded that all senior medical staff at the university resign. This led to the resignations of the director of the University of Tokyo Hospital and the dean of the Faculty of Medicine on August 10. In the same month, talks broke down, violence reemerged on campus, and the Zenkyōtō slowly lost control to different organizations. In November, members of the Kakumaru-ha, a breakaway organization of the Trotskyist Japan Revolutionary Communist League, took nine professors as hostages, including Literature Faculty Dean Kentarō Hayashi. Discussing the protests, Hayashi described how many professors like him were interrogated ruthlessly for days and verbally abused by students. The Shaseidō Kaihō-ha, another Zengakuren organization, and the Minsei Dōmei, a Zengakuren clique aligned with the JCP, became involved. These factions brought factionalist divisions onto campus, leading to fights where non-sectarian students intervened to either break them up or provide first aid. This three-way internal conflict took place mostly at the Komaba campus of the University of Tokyo. In December, a fight between the Shaseidō Kaihō-ha and the Kakumaru-ha at Waseda University that started over an accusation of the theft of papers spilled over to the University of Tokyo, where the factions occupied different buildings belonging to the university's Literature Department and built barricades. This dispute lasted three weeks, leading to the withdrawal of the Kakumaru-ha from the Zenkyōtō. Different Zengakuren factions controlled different buildings from then on.
In the meantime, protests spread across many universities in Japan. Students at different universities protested different things. At Kansei Gakuin University and Tōhoku University, students protested rising tuition costs. They called for university democratization at Kanagawa University and Beppu University. At Doshisha University and Waseda University, the protest's primary focus was giving the students a role in electing the university rector, and students aimed to gain control of student association buildings at Nagasaki University and Hanazono University. Sophia University shut down its campus for six months. An American jet crashed into the computer center at Kyushu University, sparking anti-American protests aimed at shutting down Brady Air Base. By the end of 1968, students had seized control of 67 campuses, with hundreds of campuses subject to significant student unrest. Protests also occurred outside of university campuses. Thousands of students entered Shinjuku Station on October 21 (International Anti-War Day) and rioted, leading the police to invoke the Riotous Assembly Crime Act. The scale of the riot provoked public backlash that increased public support for the police, which led them to use more force when assaulting occupied campuses. The Sophia University occupation, for example, collapsed in December 1968 after a police siege of the campus.