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The Red Years: Theory, Politics, and Aesthetics in the Japanese ’68
The story of Japan’s forgotten radical 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 was also the pivotal year for a new anti-colonial and anti-capitalist politics to 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 mobilisations 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, the 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 organisational problems of the 1968 revolutions in Japan.
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 was also the pivotal year for a new anti-colonial and anti-capitalist politics to 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 mobilisations 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, the 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 organisational problems of the 1968 revolutions in Japan.
176 pages, Paperback
First published November 24, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 25, 2023
Perhaps THE most uneven history of leftism I have ever read. A series of essays, this is one of the few books I've found on the leftist Japanese student movement, and if this subject interests you it's worth picking up on that basis.
There are essays in here that are intensely bogged down with Marxist and Critical Theory terminology to the point of near-unreadability. There's also some absolutely incredible pieces on little known Japanese leftist sites of struggle and conflict. My two favorite pieces were ’68 and the Japanese Women’s Liberation Movement, an essay on the role of women and their domestic labor in the student movement. It feels intensely relevant to modern-day organizing, where direct action is often idealized among men as dashing and heroic but domestic labor is still often silently done by female organizers, The other was The Undercurrent of Art and Politics in the 1960s: On Gendai Shichōsha, which details the production of outsider art in in leftism in Japan.
There are also several essays that dive into the role of intra-leftist fighting in destroying and defeating Japanese leftism in this period--perhaps moreso from these tendencies' ability to deflate the motivation of those involved than the (extremely real) threat of law enforcement interference. The final essay, though, wisely breaks down the tendency of liberal movements to affix leftist struggle as a childish tendency from a past time, rather than the very real concerns of those impacted by colonialism and capitalism, concerns that continue to be mostly side-lined and ignored.
If the Japanese student movement interests you, this is basically a must-read, but I would forgive yourself if you decide to skip some of the denser essays.
There are essays in here that are intensely bogged down with Marxist and Critical Theory terminology to the point of near-unreadability. There's also some absolutely incredible pieces on little known Japanese leftist sites of struggle and conflict. My two favorite pieces were ’68 and the Japanese Women’s Liberation Movement, an essay on the role of women and their domestic labor in the student movement. It feels intensely relevant to modern-day organizing, where direct action is often idealized among men as dashing and heroic but domestic labor is still often silently done by female organizers, The other was The Undercurrent of Art and Politics in the 1960s: On Gendai Shichōsha, which details the production of outsider art in in leftism in Japan.
There are also several essays that dive into the role of intra-leftist fighting in destroying and defeating Japanese leftism in this period--perhaps moreso from these tendencies' ability to deflate the motivation of those involved than the (extremely real) threat of law enforcement interference. The final essay, though, wisely breaks down the tendency of liberal movements to affix leftist struggle as a childish tendency from a past time, rather than the very real concerns of those impacted by colonialism and capitalism, concerns that continue to be mostly side-lined and ignored.
If the Japanese student movement interests you, this is basically a must-read, but I would forgive yourself if you decide to skip some of the denser essays.
September 11, 2021
Chelsea Szendi Schieder, "Human Liberation or 'Male Romance'?": "Many participants in campus-based activism in the late 1960s in Japan employed the term 'the everyday' to indicate both the broad set of institutions and practices they challenged, as well as the links between those institutions and war, capitalism, and global inequality. [The campus movement] attacked the 'everyday' perpetuation of systems of power in affluent postwar Japanese society and sought to disrupt them with strikes, campus occupations, and street battles. [...] One contemporary source estimated that 40 percent of all university students in Japan were unable to attend classes in June 1969 alone because of 'campus disorder.' The call to interrupt everyday life was answered by a generation of university students, and barricaded campuses were part of their educational experience."
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Party & Community
History + Lesions.
...
The Agitator
recognizes
a self & an other
or such would ideally prove to be the case.
...
William Marroti, "The Perception of Violence": "This politics inaugurates new engagements, with novel perceptions and personal reflections that brings forth new actions and collective identifications. It is at this level that we should consider questions of comparability, of how such politics becomes thinkable, and of the proper approach to address the nature of this politics."
...
Who gets to be a subject? Why do we produce subjects this way? What does the Soviet Union have to do with anything? What doesn’t it?
...
Party & Community
History + Lesions.
...
The Agitator
recognizes
a self & an other
or such would ideally prove to be the case.
...
William Marroti, "The Perception of Violence": "This politics inaugurates new engagements, with novel perceptions and personal reflections that brings forth new actions and collective identifications. It is at this level that we should consider questions of comparability, of how such politics becomes thinkable, and of the proper approach to address the nature of this politics."
...
Who gets to be a subject? Why do we produce subjects this way? What does the Soviet Union have to do with anything? What doesn’t it?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews