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From Shinjinkai to Zengakuren: Petit Bourgeois Students and the Postwar Revolution, 1945–1950

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Student Radicalism and the Formation of Postwar Japan

Part of the book series: New Directions in East Asian History ((NDEAH))

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the conflict over the postwar Shinjinkai through the perspectives of its leader, Watanabe Tsuneo, and Okiura Kazuteru, the student activist who played a key role in ousting him and paving the way for the establishment of the Zengakuren. It shows that the attack on the postwar Shinjinkai was not merely a disciplinary crackdown by the JCP, but resulted from the rebellion of younger student radicals entering the university in 1947 against the existing leadership of the Tokyo University JCP cell. It also explores how the Shinjinkai and Zengakuren students identified with alternative generational manifestoes of Ara Masahito’s ‘Second Youth’ and Kurosawa Akira’s film No Regrets for my Youth, and how they positioned themselves in Japan’s postwar revolution as ‘petit bourgeois’ students.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Oguma Eiji, ‘Minshu’ to ‘aikoku’ (Tokyo: Shin’yōsha, 2003), 223–242.

  2. 2.

    See, for example, Yamanaka Akira, Sengo gakusei undōshi (Tokyo: Gun shuppan, 1966).

  3. 3.

    Itō Takashi et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku (Tokyo: Chūō kōron shinsha, 2000), 32–35.

  4. 4.

    Ibid., 38–39. Uozumi Akira, Watanabe Tsuneo, media to kenryoku (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2003), 48.

  5. 5.

    Itō et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku, 40–42.

  6. 6.

    Ibid, 44.

  7. 7.

    Uozumi, Watanabe Tsuneo, media to kenryoku, 53–54.

  8. 8.

    Shiryō sengo gakusei undō v.1 (Tokyo: San’ichi shobō, 1969), 163. Itō et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku, 46. Uozumi, Watanabe Tsuneo, media to kenryoku, 60–63.

  9. 9.

    See for example Takei Teruo, Sō to shiteno gakuseiundō (Tokyo: Seiunsha, 2005), 24.

  10. 10.

    Okiura Kazuteru, ‘Zengakuren kessei no kokoro to chikara, jō,’ Asahi Jānaru, November 9, 1969, 84–86.

  11. 11.

    Ōno Akio, Zengakuren keppūroku (Tokyo: 20 seikisha), 16–51.

  12. 12.

    Okiura, ‘Zengakuren kessei no kokoro to chikara, jō,’ 85. Uozumi, Watanabe Tsuneo, media to kenryoku, 65.

  13. 13.

    Andō Jimbei, Sengo nihon kyōsantō shiki (Tokyo: Gendai no rironsha, 1976), 239. Okiura, ‘Zengakuren kessei no kokoro to chikara, jō,’ 88.

  14. 14.

    Shiryō sengo gakusei undō v.1, 138–139.

  15. 15.

    Funabashi Naomichi, ‘Fukuin gakusei no kujū to kōyō,’ Asahi Jānaru (October 12, 1969), 111.

  16. 16.

    Ōno, Zengakuren keppūroku, 34.

  17. 17.

    Yamada Munemutsu, Sengoshisōshi (Kyōto: San’ichi shinsho, 1959), 52–54.

  18. 18.

    Andō, Sengo nihon kyōsantō shiki, 238,241. Kojima Shinji, Furikaette ima (Kojima Shinji, 2002), 162.

  19. 19.

    Okiura, ‘Zengakuren kessei no kokoro to chikara, jō,’ 86.

  20. 20.

    Koyama Kōken, Sengo nihon kyōsantōshi (Tokyo: Hōga shoten, 1966), 37–47.

  21. 21.

    Shioda Shōhei, ‘2.1 zenesuto,’ Rōdō nōmin und (March 1969): 201.

  22. 22.

    Okiura, ‘Zengakuren kessei no kokoro to chikara, jō,’ 89.

  23. 23.

    Shiryō sengo gakusei undō v.1, 143.

  24. 24.

    Uozumi, Watanabe Tsuneo, media to kenryoku, 68–70.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 70,72.

  26. 26.

    Shiryō sengo gakusei undō v.1, 157–158.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 162.

  28. 28.

    Mashita Shin’ichi and Watanabe Tsuneo, ‘Sedai no taiwa,’ Ningen (January 1948), 13.

  29. 29.

    Henry Smith, Japan’s First Student Radicals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 52–58,66.

  30. 30.

    Uozumi, Watanabe Tsuneo, media to kenryoku, 72–73. Itō et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku, 47.

  31. 31.

    Watanabe received especially warm receptions in the women’s universities. His bag would be ‘filled with love letters’ after giving speeches there. See Itō et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku, 46. The party later criticized such ‘individualistic activities’ as unproletarian. Some women students, infected with ‘academism worship,’ fell under the direct influence of Tokyo University students without maintaining the necessary ties with party organizations. See Yamabe Kentarō, ‘Heibon na gimu wo,’ Akahata, December 13, 1947.

  32. 32.

    Uozumi, Watanabe Tsuneo, media to kenryoku, 74–81. Itō et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku, 62.

  33. 33.

    Shiryō sengo gakusei undō v.1, 157.

  34. 34.

    Itō et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku, 50.

  35. 35.

    Uozumi, Watanabe Tsuneo, media to kenryoku, 84–85.

  36. 36.

    Itō et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku, 51.

  37. 37.

    Shiryō sengo gakusei undō v.1, 157–168. Uozumi, Watanabe Tsuneo, media to kenryoku, 90,92.

  38. 38.

    Itō et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku, 56–57.

  39. 39.

    Shiryō sengo gakusei undō v.1, 170.

  40. 40.

    Itō et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku, 47.

  41. 41.

    Watanabe Tsuneo et al., ‘Yasukuni wo kataru, gaikō wo kataru,’ Ronza, February 2006, 33.

  42. 42.

    Shiryō sengo gakusei undō v.1, 162–163.

  43. 43.

    J. Victor Koschmann, Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 48.

  44. 44.

    Ara Masahito, ‘Daini no seishun,’ in Gendai nihon bungaku taikei (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1972), 179.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., 176.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 182–185.

  47. 47.

    J. Victor Koschmann, ‘Japanese Communist Party and the Debate over Literary Strategy under the Allied Occupation of Japan,’ in Ernestine Schlant and J. Thomas Rimer eds., Legacies and Ambiguities (Washington D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1991) 175.

  48. 48.

    Ara, ‘Daini no seishun,’ 185.

  49. 49.

    Ibid., 178.

  50. 50.

    Ibid., 176.

  51. 51.

    Watanabe Tsuneo, Letter to Mashita Shin’ichi, Ningen (January 1948), 13.

  52. 52.

    Andō Jimbei, Sengo nihon kyōsantō shiki, 19–30.

  53. 53.

    Takeuchi Yō, Kyōyōshugi no botsuraku (Tokyo: Chūkō shinsho, 2007), 54–55.

  54. 54.

    Itō et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku, 570–573.

  55. 55.

    Shiryō sengo gakusei undō v.1, 162.

  56. 56.

    Itō et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku, 21–29. Uozumi, Watanabe Tsuneo, media to kenryoku, 37–42.

  57. 57.

    Itō et al. eds., Watanabe Tsuneo kaikoroku, 57.

  58. 58.

    Tsurumi Kazuko, Social Change and the Individual (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 130–131.

  59. 59.

    John Dower, Empire and Aftermath (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 279–292. Oguma Eiji, ‘Minshu’ to ‘aikoku,’ 193–195.

  60. 60.

    Takahashi Kazumi, Shōgai ni wataru ashura to shite (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten, 1970), 357.

  61. 61.

    Ibid., 368.

  62. 62.

    Kuroi Senji, Kakō to nichijō (Tokyo: Kawade shobō shinsha, 1971), 111.

  63. 63.

    Yomota Inuhiko, Nihon no joyū (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2000), 169–172. Kyōko Hirano, Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 203.

  64. 64.

    Maruyama Masao, ‘Wakaki sedai ni yosu,’ in Senchū to sengo no aida (Tokyo: Misuzu shobō, 1976), 272–280.

  65. 65.

    Andō, Wareraga seishun, 63.

  66. 66.

    Tsurumi, Social Change and the Individual, 310.

  67. 67.

    Takada Yoshitoshi, ‘Kōdō no imi no hakkutsu,’ Shisō no kagaku v.8 (August 1959): 25–30.

  68. 68.

    Okiura, ‘Zengakuren kessei no kokoro to chikara, jō,’ 89.

  69. 69.

    Shiryō sengo gakusei undō v.1, 160,195.

  70. 70.

    Ōno, Zengakuren keppūroku, 97.

  71. 71.

    Yamashita Hajime, Daigaku no seishun: Komaba (Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 1956), 16.

  72. 72.

    Tokyo daigaku shuppankai ed., Kike wadatsumi no koe (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1968), 1–4.

  73. 73.

    Ned Loader, ‘‘Listen to the Voices From the Sea’: The Art and Politics of a Japanese Anti-War Film,’ (PhD diss, Emory University, 1993), 256–261.

  74. 74.

    Yamashita, Daigaku no seishun: Komaba, 34.

  75. 75.

    Ibid., 40–41.

  76. 76.

    Ōno, Zengakuren keppūroku, 102. Ando Jimbei had worked in a factory constructing ammunition for the battleship Musashi while in middle school. Even as an adult, he felt happy reading about how the ammunition he helped manufacture hit their mark. Andō, Wareraga seishun, 12.

  77. 77.

    Yamashita, Daigaku no seishun: Komaba, 56–62.

  78. 78.

    Ibid., p.63–69.

  79. 79.

    See for example Donald Roden, Schooldays in Imperial Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 210–229. Takada Rieko, Bungakubu wo meguru yamai (Kyōto: Shōraisha, 2001), 224.

  80. 80.

    Miyamoto Kenji, ‘Haiboku no bungaku,’ in Nihon gendai bungaku zenshū v.69 (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1969), 355–366.

  81. 81.

    Takeuchi, Kyōyōshugi no botsuraku, 48.

  82. 82.

    Okiura, ‘Zengakuren kessei no kokoro to chikara, jō,’ 87.

  83. 83.

    Andō Jimbei, Wareraga seishun (Tokyo: Gendai no rironsha, 1979), 68.

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  1. Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan

    Kenji Hasegawa

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Hasegawa, K. (2019). From Shinjinkai to Zengakuren: Petit Bourgeois Students and the Postwar Revolution, 1945–1950. In: Student Radicalism and the Formation of Postwar Japan. New Directions in East Asian History. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1777-4_2

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