Media 68

The peculiarity of the impressive movement that attacked Japan in 1968, descends to a great extent from the particular situation that had developed in the country after the defeat of 1945.

Basically, the genesis and development of the student movement are intertwined with the events of the period of American occupation, with the political choices of the Japanese Communist party and with the problem of the relations between Japan and the United States, after the return of independence.

The programme of democratic transformation that had begun with the occupation soon found its limit in the American refusal to consider as fully Fascist the Japanese regime of the Thirties. Just as happened in Germany, geopolitical considerations suggested to the winners not to touch the elements of authoritarianism rooted in the past.

For the United States, who were worried about the advance of Communism in Asia, the circulation of democratic ideas, the introduction of constitutional guarantees and of essential political and civil rights would have been sufficient for reforming and "liberating" the Japanese society, without too much popular political participation. Quite a fragile and limited democracy in a country such as Japan where no form of resistance is demonstrated in the years of the war and where the true fulcrum of the past regime, bureaucracy, was hardly touched by the purges.

In 1948, as a result of the likely success of the Chinese Communists in the struggle for national liberation, Japan changes for the USA from being an enemy country into being a potential ally in the crucial Asian chess-board. A "change of route" that becomes obvious with the outbreak of the war in Korea. On the other hand, the Socialist and Communist parties and the trade unions linked to them, following also the many repressive interventions desired by the command of the occupying forces and by the Japanese government, did not know how to elaborate winning strategies for a popular extension of democracy, nor were they able to identify common political objectives.

An inheritance that would have been weighty even after 1952 when the country regained its independence. It is in this context that we find the birth of the new left in Japan, a birth that precedes the 1968 movement by a decade.

In 1958, the Minister for Education undertook a repressive action against the teachers of the Nikkyoso union, who were fighting against the authoritarianism and limitation of freedom in schools. In defence of the teachers only the student organizations took a stand, while the Communist party and the trade unions of the category abstained from the conflict.

After the break away of the young and more radical left from the Communist party, a stronger radicalism of the student groups gave new drive to the national league of students (Zengakuren), which identified in the process of authoritarian reorganization of Japanese capitalism and in its alliance with American imperialism the main obstacles to a basic democratization of Japanese society.

In this way, between 1959 and 1960 the struggle against the signing of the Treaty with the United States develops. Having lost this battle, the movement undergoes schisms and abandonments, but the Zengakuren, without renouncing the centrality of the anti-imperialistic theme (in the second half of the 1960s mobilization against the compromise of the government of Tokyo in the war in Vietnam is intensified), tries to unite its struggle to the contradictions that run through Japanese society: it pioneeringly denounces the damage caused to the environment by industrial pollution, it supports the protest of the farmers of Narita, dispossessed for the construction of the new international airport of Tokyo.

These themes, together with anti-imperialist mobilization, will innervate the Japanese 1968 movement. In January violent clashes between students and police, first in Tokyo, then in Sasebo, greet the arrival of the American nuclear aircraft carrier "Enterprise". The Zengakuren lay siege to the American base and a group manages even to penetrate it.

The "Enterprise" anchors off the Japanese coast. In March the epicentre of furious clashes between students and police is the airport of Narita under construction, while the movement against USA intervention in Vietnam spreads. Japan is just behind the lines of the invasion. The American B52 full of bombs destined for North Vietnam take off from the base of Okinawa. In February a student demonstration in front of the base of Okinawa had erupted into violent clashes with the police.

It is only in late spring that, while still preserving its very strong general political character and nourished by the escalation of the Vietnam war, the protest arrives within the schools and university en masse, so leading to a tumultuous growth of the movement.

The already organized groups of students call their companions to the protest against the increase of the already very expensive school rates, against an organization of the didactics and research that is completely subjugated to the logic of the system and the rigid values of Japanese capitalism, against the strict system of selection that regulates access to the university (a mighty class barrier): registration with a prestigious university does in fact permit entrance at the highest level in the world of work, but to achieve this it is often necessary for the student to prepare for one or two years after high school. And above all that he has the means available to do so.

The protest and the occupations spread and the Zenkyoto (Committee of interfaculty struggle) is born. Researchers, assistants, non-teaching personnel and some professors of over two hundred universities join the latter. The front extends and in the summer the demonstrations for Vietnam resume abundantly throughout the country, with clashes, arrests and injured. The apex will be reached at the end of October with a real live "attack on Tokyo". The student movement, which this time is joined by the workers, attacks the parliament, the American embassy, the police headquarters and the railway station of Shinjuku, symbol of the system, where over a million people transit every day, is occupied.

There are demonstrations in over three hundred Japanese neighbourhoods. After three days of very violent urban guerrilla warfare the police manages to overcome the demonstrators and the students are forced to retire to the universities. In mid January of 1969 the last rampart still in the hands of the movement, Tokyo university, falls. That marks the beginning of the slow but relentless "recomposition" of Japanese society.

The repressive action of the bureaucracy will be heavy and systematic. In 1969 alone the Minister for Education will request over 350 interventions of the police force against universities "in agitation".

In the following years the accepted norm will be ably re-organized around national objectives (first of all, the economic ascent of Japan and its brilliant technological performances) bringing the majority of the citizens back to the stereotypes of "social harmony" and to a productive discipline that has become proverbial.

The anti-American sentiment will take the road of capitalistic competition and dissent will suffer very strong isolation.