Remembering the 1960 ANPO Struggle: “The souls of the dead live on”

Kato Tokiko, Ueno Chizuko, Hosaka Masayasu, Oguma Eiji, Linda Hoaglund
(Photo: Kimberly Hughes)

Last night, in a packed auditorium at Tokyo University, a panel of scholars gathered to commemorate  the 1960 ANPO Struggle  and how its legacy continues to affect peace movements today.

The symposium featured three panelists: author Hosaka Masayasu, professor Oguma Eiji, and film director Linda Hoaglund.

ANPO (a Japanese abbreviation for the “Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan”) was signed on June 19, 1960, despite massive opposition by a vibrant peace and democracy movement spearheaded by citizens from all walks of life, including students, artists, and activists.

Central to the symposium discussion was the idea of how both individual and collective memory has continued to impact struggles for peace in decades following the ANPO protests.

“For many people in Japan, the presence of U.S. military bases had been all but completely forgotten about in recent decades—until the issue became dragged out of the shadows by the Futenma base conflict,” explained Oguma, a social historian. “And since the United States has not bothered to provide any explanation whatsoever about what the benefits of this air base might provide, it is only too obvious that this treaty is based upon a completely unequal relationship between the two countries.”

Renowned feminist sociologist Ueno Chizuko, who moderated the discussion, noted that the Futenma issue has been presented by the media with no accompanying historical context such as the resistance against the ANPO treaty.

The event featured a screening of a 15-minute clip from the documentary film ANPO: Art X War, directed and produced by Linda Hoaglund, an American who was born and raised in Japan. The film tells the story of the 1960 protests through the eyes of numerous artists who have spent their lives working to achieve peace.

When queried regarding her motivations for portraying the ANPO resistance movement through art, Hoaglund replied that this presented her with a departure point from which she was then able to explore the issue at increasingly deeper levels. “Ever since I learned as a child that my nation dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, it has become my lifework to seek peace while also exploring the distorted relationship between these two countries.”

“I wanted to the world to know what was really happening with the ANPO struggle—especially given existing media portrayals, such as The New York Times’ dismissing the protesters as just a bunch of crazy communist kids,” she continued. “It fascinates me to explore the idea of individuals rising up to demand justice when their governments are clearly doing the wrong thing.”

Hosaka, author of The Truth about the 1960 ANPO Struggle, commented, “In Japan, education in recent years has managed to convey the idea that Japan is somehow ‘not qualified to wage war.’ This is the completely wrong focus. Instead, we must begin teaching the idea that war is wrong, and that no country must wage it.”

The evening finished with brief and yet poignant remarks from famous singer and actor Kato Tokiko, who was herself a student at the University of Tokyo in the late 1960s. Kato has been deeply involved with peace and ecology movements together with her late husband Fujimoto Toshio, a student movement leader who was jailed in the early 1970s and later founded the Daichi o mamoru kai (Association to Preserve the Earth).

“I was sixteen years old when the ANPO protest occurred, and I remember feeling a fierce sense of despair that the revolution we were fighting for did not end up happening,” she told the audience. “We had a vision for a different kind of world, and so the way that events played out—including the death of Michiko Kamba—were completely shocking.”

Kato then led a moment of silence to honor Kamba, who was killed by police exactly 50 years earlier when protesters surrounded the Diet to demand that the ANPO treaty not be implemented.

“History is not something that can be forgotten; it lives on in every one of our hearts—as do the souls of those who died in war or fighting for peace,” she told audience members, of whom several were visibly moved.

“An amazing energy was born from our movement—and it will continue to grow and transform without end.”

--Kimberly Hughes

("ANPO: Art X War" will open in Japan on September 18, 2010)

Mainichi: "Legacy of 1960 anti-security treaty movement still remains"

(Photo of Protesters surrounding the Diet Building: “Tenno-empire” and the Struggle Against Established Power in Japan – One Historian’s Engagement" by Tessei Matsuzawa, The Asia-Pacific Journal)

Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Michiko Kamba who died during a protest against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (AMPO) that drew over a million participants to the streets of Tokyo from April to June in 1960. A June 6 article, "Legacy of 1960 anti-security treaty still remains," at the Mainichi takes a sensitive look at this history and those the University of Tokyo student left behind:

Yuichi Yoshikawa visits the southern entranceway of the Diet building on June 15 every year to offer flowers in memory of a female college student, who died there in a clash between police forces and anti-Japan-U.S. Security Treaty demonstrators on the day 50 years ago.

Hundreds of thousands of protestors surrounded the building every day to express their opposition to the bilateral treaty "as we still had vivid memories of World War II, which had ended only 15 years ago, and believed the treaty would lead to another war," Yoshikawa, a 79-year-old veteran peace campaigner, said.

"When only a few people started a march with a flag, other people joined at their own initiative to make it hundreds of demonstrators at last, with antiwar sentiment stirred also by the outbreak of the Korean War and the launch of the Self-Defense Forces in the 1950s," he said.

The death of the student, Michiko Kamba, a 22-year-old senior at the University of Tokyo, happened in the uproar, and those who went through it have wondered about the meaning of the largest mass movement in postwar Japan and how it has affected their subsequent lives and careers over the past half-century.

(Photo of Michiko Kamba: “Tenno-empire” and the Struggle Against Established Power in Japan – One Historian’s Engagement" by Tessei Matsuzawa, The Asia-Pacific Journal)

Among them is Akiko Esashi, who was a freshman at Waseda University and joined the demonstration for the first time in May 1960.

"I was just an ordinary student who cheered on baseball games between Waseda and its rival Keio University, and I was told by my father when I left my home in Hiroshima City not to join the student movement," she said. "But I started taking part in the marches frequently after Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi railroaded the revision of the bilateral treaty."

The revised treaty, automatically enacted on June 19, 1960, after a 30-day Diet stalemate, committed the United States to help defend Japan if it came under attack and it provided bases and ports for U.S. armed forces in Japan, stirring public concerns that Japan may be involved in unintended wars.

"The protestors' focus gradually shifted from concerns of war to the shape of Japan's democracy" in the face of the government's hard-line stance, Yoshikawa said.

After graduating from Waseda, Esashi started editing fashion magazines, "but I always felt doubts about my work, given the magazines' stance to flatter Japan's high economic growth in those days," which was promoted by Kishi's successor, Hayato Ikeda, under the "income-doubling plan."

Esashi gradually became involved in the women's liberation movement and anti-Vietnam War activities, initiated by the Peace for Vietnam Committee, known by its Japanese acronym as "Beheiren." It was founded in 1965 by late influential writer Makoto Oda and prominent philosopher Shunsuke Tsurumi. Yoshikawa was its secretary general.

She eventually became a freelance writer and penned an award-winning biography of a female writer who faced the 1945 atomic bombing on Hiroshima and other books featuring female activists and reporters, while giving lectures on women's studies at several colleges.

Koichi Kato, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker, was a law student at the University of Tokyo in 1960. "I didn't have a clear idea about whether the security treaty was good or wrong," he said, but he was involved in the demonstrations a few times "in accordance with the conclusion of class discussions as a nonpolitical student."

His father was promoting the security treaty as a then ruling LDP lawmaker. But Kato, now 70, did not fully support either the treaty or the protests involving students and labor union members as well as the Socialist Party and Japanese Communist Party.

"But it urged me to have an interest in social issues and I made up my mind to devote my life to dealing with the Chinese Communist Party" after pondering over how Japan should proceed for the future in international society, he said.

As a diplomat and China expert, he contemplated policy toward China, and as a lawmaker subsequently, he was critical of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the war-related Yasukuni Shrine. He now says, "Japan sent unsolicited troops to China, and those who were victimized will never forget it."

Some of the 1960 demonstrators are now trying to hand down the legacy of the movement to later generations.

Prior to the 50th anniversary of Kamba's death, Esashi, 68, put out her biography, "Michiko Kamba -- Legend of a Sacred Girl," from major publisher Bungeishunju Ltd. last month by interviewing those who knew her well and examining many documents, including her writings.

"I wanted to review the explosive experiences in 1960 by writing the biography of Ms. Kamba," she said. "I expect young people to read it and know that there was a woman who tried hard to change politics and society."

Kato, who has held prominent positions such as then Defense Agency chief and LDP secretary general, now advocates the security treaty. "It is unconvincing to say we do not need to possess deterrence, particularly given the brinkmanship of North Korea. Can we feel safe without the nuclear umbrella of the United States?"

His relations with China, meanwhile, have continued.

He assumed the chairmanship of the Japan-China Friendship Association in 2008, succeeding Ikuo Hirayama, a prominent painter who died last December, and says without hesitation that the 1960 movement has affected his career.

"I think Japan, China and the United States need to form 'an equilateral-triangular relationship' to keep each other in check," he said. "The three bilateral ties should work effectively, and the Japan-U.S. ties are situated under the security treaty."

Yoshikawa is still involved in various peace campaigns and calls for abolishing the bilateral security treaty.

"Under the security treaty, the SDF have been deployed to where the United States needs them, such as Iraq. It goes against the pacifist Constitution," he said in his recent lecture at Keio University, focusing mainly on the 1960 protests.

He was invited there as one of several guest lecturers for a contemporary social history course "so we could share history by hearing what those who have gone through it have to say," according to Koichi Takakusagi, professor at the university.

He also suggested the abolishment of the bilateral treaty is the key in addressing the issue of U.S. military bases in Japan, particularly in Okinawa, which hosts the controversial Futenma air station.

Yoshikawa will visit the Diet building with other peace activists on June 15, as in the past years, to leave flowers for Kamba.

Takeshi Ishida: Goals behind Japanese mass peace protests: "Widespread anti-war sentiment" & desire for a peaceful daily life

Hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens surrounded the Diet Bldg. in 1960, to protest AMPO, the US-Japan Security Treaty deal that would allow US military bases to remain in Japan and Okinawa (Photo: Mainichi)

Japanese and Okinawans have engaged in mass protests for peace since the end of the Second World War, when the U.S. military began establishing U.S. bases at former Japanese imperial military sites and seizing private and public Okinawan property to build the massive military complexes that take up much of the prefecture.  According to Takeshi Ishida, in Japanese Political Culture: Change and Continuity (1983):

In Japan, the goal underlying mass protests for peace has often been a combination of two forces: a widespread antiwar sentiment and the people's interest in maintaining a peaceful daily life, particularly in rural areas where, in a densely populated country, the attachment to landed property is very strong.

The first example of this kind was the Uchinada case, which began in 1953. Uchinada was a village located in Ishikawa prefecture on the Japan Sea; its principal industries were farming and fishing. A serious protest took place when the government decided to use the village land for artillery testing. The major slogans in the campaign against the government were "Compensation money is temporary, land is forever" and "Let us not lose the land where the graves of our ancestors are located..." A widespread fear of Japan's possible involvement in war because of the Cold War situation gave added strength to their cause...

The protest movement in Uchinada failed, but a similar case in Sunagawa brought victory for the protesters. The case began when in 1955, the government decided to expropriate peasant land in Sunagawa in order to expand the American air base located there. The movement continued for fourteen years and the government finally abandoned its plan in 1968. Initially, the Sunagawa case, like the Uchinada case, had as its strongest motivation the peasants' interest in the land...The goal of the movement gradually shifted from a particular interest to mroe general ones, such as the call for the abolition of American military bases and the condemnation of the U.S.-Japan security treaty. When the U.S. air force decided to leave the base in 1969, the leaders of this movement shifted their protest to opposing the military use of the land by the Japanese Self-Defense Forces.

A similar change in goal can be seen in the movement protesting against the target range at Kitafuji, north of Mount Fuji. Herea again, the movement was based on defense of land, in this case the peasants' rights to common land. One slogan, "Peasants are grass grown on the land," suggests the deep interest the peasants had in their land. As the movement developed however, more universalistic goals appeared, as seen in the slogan, "Don't connect Mount Fuji with Vietnam!" In the same way as in the Sunakawa case, the peasants in this area then switched their protest to opposing the military use of that land by the Self-Defense Forces.

Such changes in goals are more rapid in urban areas. In 1968 a protest movement emerged opposing the American military field hospital in Oji, located in the center of one of the most densely populated areas in the Tokyo metropolitan region. At first the people's major interests were the noise of the helicopters carrying patients from Vietnam, the danger of contagious tropical disease, the prostitution encouraged by the presence of GI's. The movement attracted much popular attention and gained wide support, finally attaining its objective when the hospital was removed.

Also in 1968, another protest movement against a field hospital was organized by intellectuals and citizens in Asaka. Here a "protest against the American invasion of Vietnam" was one of the initial goals of the movement in addition to the demands for the solution of noise and other problems resulting from the field hospital being located in that area. Activists even tried broadcasting over the hospital fence in an effort to persuade the GI patients to join the protest against the war in Vietnam. This kind of activiity was in the direction of international solidarity for peace rather than nationalist sentiment against foreign military forces.

In 1972, a movement was launched to prevent American tanks being transported to Vietnam from a supply base at Sagamihara...The most important slogan was "Don't connect Route 16 with Vietnam!"

...These historical examples indicate a change in goals from the preservation of particular vested interests or the fear of involvement of war, to a more universal active pursuit of peace and to criticism against the government's policy of supporting a war in Vietnam...A similar progression may be seen in the development of the anti-nuclear movement.