The United States and the Japanese Student Movement, 1948–1973

In the era following Japan’s WW II defeat, activism among students there erupted earlier than generally acknowledged. Spurred by a major rethinking of American occupation policies after 1947, emerging young people’s notions of Japan’s future path came to be seen as differing significantly from the policy objectives the US articulated. Although the original occupation goals had been to inculcate a renewed commitment to ‘democracy’ in Japan and to provide a reinvigorated sense of national security, the new American objectives placed a greater emphasis on cementing Japan’s role as a major Asian bulwark in the Pacific against the Cold War threats emanating from the Soviet Union and China. Koda weaves together a number of significant threads from the Japanese point of view. This expands current understandings of nongovernmental protests by Japan’s leading national student organization, Zengakuren, against perceptions of imperialist overreach by the US and the consequences of these protests as they affected Japan’s relations with the US and the larger world. The author’s expanded interpretive canvas is well worth exploring. Recommended.