What happened in 1967, and what did not
Tokyo had the most militant student movement in Asia in the 1960s, and one date stands out for 1967: 8 October, when students clashed with riot police near Haneda Airport and one student died. The better-known university occupations at Nihon University and the University of Tokyo came later, in 1968 and 1969. This article covers the factions of the student federation Zengakuren, the Haneda clash, and the later occupations, and keeps them in their proper years.
Zengakuren and its factions
Zengakuren, the All-Japan Federation of Student Self-Governing Associations, was founded in 1948 as a national body of campus student councils. Through the 1950s it was closely linked to the Japanese Communist Party. The Party’s turn toward more moderate policies, and student anger over its conduct, led to a split. The mass protests of 1960 against the revised US-Japan security treaty, known as Anpo, saw radical students try to storm the Diet building; a student, Kanba Michiko, died in the crush on 15 June 1960. The treaty went through anyway, but Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi resigned soon after.
In the following years Zengakuren fractured into rival groups. The Party-aligned students remained in one group, while several anti-Party “New Left” factions competed with them, and with each other. Some of these, with names such as Chukaku-ha and Kakumaru-ha, were bitter enemies and fought each other on campuses. In 1967 an alliance of three of the anti-Party factions, usually called Sanpa Rengo, was at the front of street confrontations. Their image became familiar: helmets, towels over their faces and long wooden staves, advancing in tight columns against police lines.
The motives varied by faction, but the main issues were opposition to the US-Japan security arrangement, to Japan’s support for American operations in Vietnam, to the American presence in Okinawa, and to the government of Prime Minister Eisaku Sato. Other protests involved the building of Narita Airport, university fees and campus governance. Not all antiwar activism was militant. A citizens’ group called Beheiren, founded in 1965, held non-violent demonstrations and public meetings against the war.
Haneda, 8 October 1967
In October 1967 Prime Minister Sato set out on an Asian tour that included South Vietnam, and students saw this as a sign of Japanese complicity in the war. Haneda Airport, then Tokyo’s main international airport, was the departure point. On 8 October student groups tried to reach the airport and block his departure, and fought with riot police on and around the access routes, including a bridge near the airport.
The clash was a street battle fought with staves and helmets on one side and riot shields and batons on the other. A student, Yamazaki Hiroaki, who was about eighteen, died. Accounts at the time disagreed on how: some blamed police action and others blamed a vehicle, and the question became a political argument in its own right. Many people were injured and many were arrested, though the exact numbers differ by source and are not given here.
The death had a large effect. For supporters it showed the cost of confronting the state, and the incident is often called the first Haneda incident because a second round of protests followed in November, when Sato travelled to the United States. Both episodes drew heavy media coverage in Japan, as part of the wider international antiwar protests of the year, and they are sometimes compared to the American draft protests of that month, such as Stop the Draft Week at Oakland, although the Japanese protesters were not facing conscription, as Japan had none.
Why Tokyo differed
The Tokyo movement had a mix of causes that was not quite the same as in the United States or Europe. As the Vietnam War escalation continued, Japanese students could see it as a question of national responsibility, because American bases in Japan and Okinawa were part of its supply chain. Japan’s rapid economic growth and its crowded, expanding universities produced a large student population, and many felt that universities treated them as customers. The Anpo memory of 1960 also gave an older generation of activists a story of how protest could shake a government, even in defeat.
The 1968-69 occupations
The most extensive university conflicts came after 1967.
Nihon University. In spring 1968 it was reported that large sums of university money were unaccounted for, which led students to demand financial disclosure and a say in running the institution. Nihon University was a very large private university, and students formed a joint struggle committee, known as the Zenkyoto, in May 1968. Barricades went up and there were mass meetings, with the number of participants reported in the tens of thousands, though figures vary.
University of Tokyo. A dispute over medical interns’ conditions began in early 1968 and grew into a wider protest against the university administration. In June 1968 students occupied the Yasuda Auditorium, and the university’s departments were blockaded and closed for many months. On 18-19 January 1969, riot police cleared the Yasuda Auditorium after a siege, in a widely televised operation. The university cancelled its entrance examination for 1969 as a result.
Other universities saw similar movements, and a student-run “joint struggle” style of organisation spread. The Tokyo events are often compared with the Columbia occupation and the May 1968 strikes in France, although each had its own roots.
Aftermath
The government responded with a university law in 1969 and tougher policing, and the movement lost momentum in the early 1970s. Factional violence increased, and some small groups turned to terrorism. The Red Army Faction, which hijacked a plane in 1970, is the best-known example, though it was never representative of most students. The Haneda protest is remembered mostly as an early marker: a year before the large occupations, it showed that Tokyo’s student radicals were willing to fight in the streets and that the state would respond forcefully.