Japan's New Left Movements

Japan's New Left Movements PDF Author: Takemasa Ando
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135087377
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that followed the March 2011 tsunami and earthquake in Japan shocked the world. In the wake the of the disaster, questions were asked as to why Japanese antinuclear movements were not able to prevent those with vested interests, such as businesses, bureaucrats, the media and academics, from facilitating nuclear energy policies? Taking this question as its starting point, this book looks more widely at the development and powerlessness of Japanese civil society, and seeks to untangle this intersection between social movements and civil society in postwar Japan. Central to this book are the Japanese New Left movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, and the impact they have had on civil society and politics. By focusing on a key idea that a wide range of new leftists shared – the self-revolution in ‘everydayness’ – Takemasa Ando shows how these groups did not seek immediate change in the realms of politics and legislation, but rather, it was believed that personal transformation would lead to broader social and political change. By reconsidering the relationship between Japanese New Left movements of the 1960s and later social movements, this book crucially connects the constructive and disruptive legacies of the movements, and in doing so provides valuable insights into the powerlessness that plagues Japanese civil society today. Presenting a comprehensive picture of the New Left movements and their legacies in Japan, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars working in the fields of Japanese politics, Japanese history, and Japanese culture and society.

Japan's New Left Movements

Japan's New Left Movements PDF Author: Takemasa Ando
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135087377
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that followed the March 2011 tsunami and earthquake in Japan shocked the world. In the wake the of the disaster, questions were asked as to why Japanese antinuclear movements were not able to prevent those with vested interests, such as businesses, bureaucrats, the media and academics, from facilitating nuclear energy policies? Taking this question as its starting point, this book looks more widely at the development and powerlessness of Japanese civil society, and seeks to untangle this intersection between social movements and civil society in postwar Japan. Central to this book are the Japanese New Left movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, and the impact they have had on civil society and politics. By focusing on a key idea that a wide range of new leftists shared – the self-revolution in ‘everydayness’ – Takemasa Ando shows how these groups did not seek immediate change in the realms of politics and legislation, but rather, it was believed that personal transformation would lead to broader social and political change. By reconsidering the relationship between Japanese New Left movements of the 1960s and later social movements, this book crucially connects the constructive and disruptive legacies of the movements, and in doing so provides valuable insights into the powerlessness that plagues Japanese civil society today. Presenting a comprehensive picture of the New Left movements and their legacies in Japan, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars working in the fields of Japanese politics, Japanese history, and Japanese culture and society.

Coed Revolution

Coed Revolution PDF Author: Chelsea Szendi Schieder
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478012978
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
In the 1960s, a new generation of university-educated youth in Japan challenged forms of capitalism and the state. In Coed Revolution Chelsea Szendi Schieder recounts the crucial stories of Japanese women's participation in these protest movements led by the New Left through the early 1970s. Women were involved in contentious politics to an unprecedented degree, but they and their concerns were frequently marginalized by men in the movement and the mass media, and the movement at large is often memorialized as male and masculine. Drawing on stories of individual women, Schieder outlines how the media and other activists portrayed these women as icons of vulnerability and victims of violence, making women central to discourses about legitimate forms of postwar political expression. Schieder disentangles the gendered patterns that obscured radical women's voices to construct a feminist genealogy of the Japanese New Left, demonstrating that student activism in 1960s Japan cannot be understood without considering the experiences and representations of these women.

The Transformation of the Japanese Left

The Transformation of the Japanese Left PDF Author: Sarah Hyde
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135219745
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This book examines the transition within the Japanese party system that has seen the demise of ‘the old socialists’, the Japan Socialist Party, and in its place, the emergence of the Democratic Party of Japan as the leading opposition party. Sarah Hyde has produced an original book which looks at the intra-left (non-communist) opposition party manoeuvrings during the 1990s through to the new millennium in a highly detailed and focused manner whilst simultaneously looking at the three most significant changes for the left nationally: the change to the electoral system, the change to public opinion regarding defense and the Constitution after the First Gulf War and the changes to the Labour Union movement. Ending with a chapter on the incredibly important 2007 Upper House election, which brings the development of the opposition full circle, this book will be a valuable source for students and scholars of Japanese politics, electoral systems and opposition politics.

Japan's New Left Movements

Japan's New Left Movements PDF Author: Takemasa Ando
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135087385
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that followed the March 2011 tsunami and earthquake in Japan shocked the world. In the wake the of the disaster, questions were asked as to why Japanese antinuclear movements were not able to prevent those with vested interests, such as businesses, bureaucrats, the media and academics, from facilitating nuclear energy policies? Taking this question as its starting point, this book looks more widely at the development and powerlessness of Japanese civil society, and seeks to untangle this intersection between social movements and civil society in postwar Japan. Central to this book are the Japanese New Left movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, and the impact they have had on civil society and politics. By focusing on a key idea that a wide range of new leftists shared – the self-revolution in ‘everydayness’ – Takemasa Ando shows how these groups did not seek immediate change in the realms of politics and legislation, but rather, it was believed that personal transformation would lead to broader social and political change. By reconsidering the relationship between Japanese New Left movements of the 1960s and later social movements, this book crucially connects the constructive and disruptive legacies of the movements, and in doing so provides valuable insights into the powerlessness that plagues Japanese civil society today. Presenting a comprehensive picture of the New Left movements and their legacies in Japan, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars working in the fields of Japanese politics, Japanese history, and Japanese culture and society.

The Red Years

The Red Years PDF Author: Gavin Walker
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786637227
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Japan: The "other," lesser-known 1968 The analysis of May 68 in Paris, Berkeley, and the Western world has been widely reconsidered. But 1968 is not only a year that conjures up images of Paris, Frankfurt, or Milan: it is also the pivotal year for a new anti-colonial and anti-capitalist politicsto erupt across the Third World, a crucial and central moment in the history, thought, and politics of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Japan's position -- neither in "the West" nor in the "Third World" --provoked a complex and intense round of mass mobilizations through the 1960s and early 70s. Although the "'68 revolutions" of the Global North -- Western Europe and North America -- are widely known, the Japanese situation remains remarkably under-examined globally. Beginning in the late 1950s, a New Left, independent of the prewar Japanese communist moment (itself of major historical importance in the 1920s and 30s), came to produce one of the most vibrant decades of political organization, political thought, and political aesthetics in the global twentieth century. In the present volume, major thinkers of the Left in Japan alongside scholars of the 1968 movements reexamine the theoretical sources, historical background, cultural productions, and major organizational problems of the 1968 revolutions in Japan.

Japan's Militant Teachers

Japan's Militant Teachers PDF Author: Benjamin C. Duke
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824880803
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Japan's Militant Teachers is the first comprehensive English-language analysis of the origin and development of the fundamental issues in this struggle. It is an objective approach to the history of the teacher's movement from its prewar conception, through the birth of Nikkyoso in 1947, to that union's present strength encompassing a large majority of all public school teachers. It is significant that this study was undertaken by a non-Japanese. Professor Duke was accepted with full confidence by all parties in the dispute. His study includes material obtained from many firsthand interviews conducted between 1968 and 1970 with the leaders of Nikkyoso and government representatives form the Ministry of Education. He has thus been able to present an objective accounting without passing judgement. This book examines the problems of Nikkyoso within the greater context of Japanese society. It is a good introduction to, and analysis of, the problems facing organized teacher' movements as well as the problems facing Japanese education as a whole.

Scream from the Shadows

Scream from the Shadows PDF Author: Setsu Shigematsu
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816667586
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The first sustained analysis of the Japanese women's liberation movement of the '70s, with its lessons for contemporary politics

Mobilizing Japanese Youth

Mobilizing Japanese Youth PDF Author: Christopher Gerteis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150175632X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
In Mobilizing Japanese Youth, Christopher Gerteis examines how non-state institutions in Japan—left-wing radicals and right-wing activists—attempted to mold the political consciousness of the nation's first postwar generation, which by the late 1960s were the demographic majority of voting-age adults. Gerteis argues that socially constructed aspects of class and gender preconfigured the forms of political rhetoric and social organization that both the far-right and far-left deployed to mobilize postwar, further exacerbating the levels of social and political alienation expressed by young blue- and pink- collar working men and women well into the 1970s, illustrated by high-profile acts of political violence committed by young Japanese in this era. As Gerteis shows, Japanese youth were profoundly influenced by a transnational flow of ideas and people that constituted a unique historical convergence of pan-Asianism, Mao-ism, black nationalism, anti-imperialism, anticommunism, neo-fascism, and ultra-nationalism. Mobilizing Japanese Youth carefully unpacks their formative experiences and the social, cultural, and political challenges to both the hegemonic culture and the authority of the Japanese state that engulfed them. The 1950s-style mass-mobilization efforts orchestrated by organized labor could not capture their political imagination in the way that more extreme ideologies could. By focusing on how far-right and far-left organizations attempted to reach-out to young radicals, especially those of working-class origins, this book offers a new understanding of successive waves of youth radicalism since 1960.

The State and Politics In Japan

The State and Politics In Japan PDF Author: Ian Neary
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509535853
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Politics in Japan is undergoing a major transformation. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has, since 2012, embarked upon an ambitious programme of policy reforms as well as changes to Japan’s governing structures and processes. At the heart of this policy agenda is ‘Abenomics’ – a set of measures designed to boost Japan’s flagging economy, but one which is yet to deliver on its promises. In this fully revised and updated second edition of his classic text, Ian Neary explores the dynamics of democracy in Japan, introducing the key institutions, developments and actors in its politics from the end of the Second World War to the present day. Packed with illustrative material and examples, this comprehensive study traces the continuities and the changes that are underway in five major policy areas: foreign and defence, industry, social welfare, the environment and human rights. Assuming no prior knowledge of Japan, this textbook will be an invaluable and welcome resource for all students interested in the government and politics of contemporary Japan and its international profile.

Japan at the Crossroads

Japan at the Crossroads PDF Author: Nick Kapur
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674988485
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
In spring of 1960, Japan’s government passed Anpo, a revision of the postwar treaty that allows the United States to maintain a military presence in Japan. This move triggered the largest popular backlash in the nation’s modern history. These protests, Nick Kapur argues in Japan at the Crossroads, changed the evolution of Japan’s politics and culture, along with its global role. The yearlong protests of 1960 reached a climax in June, when thousands of activists stormed Japan’s National Legislature, precipitating a battle with police and yakuza thugs. Hundreds were injured and a young woman was killed. With the nation’s cohesion at stake, the Japanese government acted quickly to quell tensions and limit the recurrence of violent demonstrations. A visit by President Eisenhower was canceled and the Japanese prime minister resigned. But the rupture had long-lasting consequences that went far beyond politics and diplomacy. Kapur traces the currents of reaction and revolution that propelled Japanese democracy, labor relations, social movements, the arts, and literature in complex, often contradictory directions. His analysis helps resolve Japan’s essential paradox as a nation that is both innovative and regressive, flexible and resistant, wildly imaginative yet simultaneously wedded to tradition. As Kapur makes clear, the rest of the world cannot understand contemporary Japan and the distinct impression it has made on global politics, economics, and culture without appreciating the critical role of the “revolutionless” revolution of 1960—turbulent events that released long-buried liberal tensions while bolstering Japan’s conservative status quo.