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A Second Anpo?

Bonniecanuck

DIEF WILL BE THE CHIEF AGAIN
Location
Formerly Hong Kong, currently London
Pronouns
she/her + they/them
The 1959-60 Anpo protests were the largest mass movement in modern Japanese history, but nothing approaching it has materialised since. As Nick Kapur has noted in his book Japan at the Crossroads, the characteristics of Anpo of a mass movement across social and political lines with a single objective has never come to fruition since. This may be attributed to division among progressive and left-wing organisations, and the indefinite shelving of nationalist objectives like constitutional revision by the leadership of the 1960s in favour of economic growth, including Ikeda's Income Doubling Plan, resulting in subsequent protests being affairs dominated by local interests and/or the Zengakuren, and dissuading involvement by the masses. Only in Okinawa, which still has the highest concentration of American military facilities and personnel anywhere in Japan, has mass protest continued to be sustained, although demonstrations against constitutional revision sprung up once again during the Abe administration.

Could any of the post-Anpo movements have been able to gain nearly as much support as at the movement's height? Some of the most fierce protests of the post-Anpo period include the anti-Vietnam War movement, the Zenkyoto university student movement, and the Sanrizuka protests against Narita Airport's construction, but the former appears to have mostly consisted of students, while the latter in large part evolved into what it became after the Zengakuren got involved. In neither case did any more than roughly a tenth of the turnout at Anpo materialise, and both faded as a result of a backlash in the media and, in the case of Sanrizuka, the movement splitting and losing morale, with the more radical activists resorting to terrorism that killed civilians and provoked further backlash and crackdowns. This probably means that the shift in the political zeitgeist by the late 1960s wouldn't make for ideal conditions to garner more support than what materialised.

I'm not inclined to believe that the splits in the post-Anpo Zengakuren and left were a major factor that held the potential for another mass movement back. As much as the Zengakuren became very sectarian by the mid-1960s to the extent they fought each other as much as they did riot police, they weren't the only faces of the Anpo protests, though they were often on the frontlines. On the contrary, I think it's more likely that the potential of any post-Anpo movement to grow to a similar extent has to be in spite of the Zengakuren's mobilisation, not because of it. The most likely, if not only foreseeable way for that to happen would have to be a major crisis in the Japanese government that completely and utterly shakes confidence in the government and the LDP, but that's a pretty narrow window until the backlash against student radicals fully takes hold in 1972 after the Lod Airport massacre and Asama Sanso incident.
 
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