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Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo
In 1960, when Japan revised the postwar treaty that allows a U.S. military presence in Japan, the popular backlash changed the evolution of Japan’s politics and culture, and its global role. Nick Kapur’s analysis helps resolve Japan’s essential paradox as being innovative yet regressive, flexible yet resistant, imaginative yet wedded to tradition.
324 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 6, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 13, 2018
It’s a bit of a mystery why it took so long for this book to appear. Aside from the “classic” resource, George Packard's 1966 "Protest in Tokyo," there have been few monographs that examine the multifacted events of 1960 Anpo.
There have been exceptions, most notably the work of Wesley Sasaki-Uemura and Simon Avenell, although for both of them the question is about the shift in the formulations of “civic consciousness” and social movements from the 1950s to the 1960s.
Kapur’s book is clearly written, and his introduction is the best summary in the English literature I’ve read on the course of events we associate with “Anpo.” I am very happy that this book is not only a necessary scholarly investigation but also provides readings I can assign my undergraduate students.
This book really illuminated for me the shifts in domestic and foreign policy from Kishi to Ikeda and Eisenhower to Kennedy before and after the contentious 1960 revisions of the US-Japan Security Treaty. I research this period, and I did not have a good appreciation for the extent to which Ikeda really shifted the course of the LDP and Japanese politics in general. This section, along with the sections the decline of the opposition parties, on shifts to the courts, the police, and the mass media really did convince me of the Kapur’s overall argument that we need to think not of the “1955 system” but in terms of a “1960 system.” I would encourage scholars interested in projects on postwar Japanese history to build upon some of Kapur’s work on these themes, and also on the post-1960 rise of right-wing activism.
There are two points on which I disagree fundamentally with Kapur’s analyses. I don’t think these detract from his overall work, but actually illuminate some of what I see as popular misconceptions about protest in postwar Japan in general. I recommend a close and attentive reading of Kapur’s work for anyone interested in postwar Japanese history. But with the following two caveats.
The first point is on the post-1960 afterlives of the student movement. Since many of the late 1960s student protests were framed as “Anpo 1970,” a self-conciously adopted mission on the part of many young people who had witnessed Anpo 1960, there is a missed opportunity to understand how late 1960s student activism was not just sectarian disintigration and violence, but was also a direct result of 1960 Anpo student activism. Many of the graduate students that were critical to organizing on university campuses cut their teeth in 1960 anti-Anpo protests; several of the younger participants recall a desire to enter university in the late 1960s to become an activist as a result of their exposure to 1960 Anpo (through television and radio, but also through publications of Kanba Michiko’s writings). The Vietnam War figures very marginally in Kapur’s analyses, but this was also a huge mobilizing factor for the late-1960s generation of student activists, and prompted many to undertake ever more dramatic actions as they witnessed this war waged with Japanese complicity render more and more carnage. The student population also swelled in the 1960s, meaning that the very definition of university student became more expansive in this period. Whereas the Bund of 1960 Anpo was a limited vanguard of relative social elites, the activists of the late 1906s came from a wide swath of upwardly aspirational households. In Kapur’s account, the various sects and also non-sectarian organizations become lumped together in a way that suggests a kind of inevitability from 1967 protests at Haneda to the bloody purge of the United Red Army, discovered in early 1972. This reflects a lot of the current literature about the late 1960s student New Left. It’s actually an open and interesting question how the student activists inherited the legacy of 1960 Anpo, so I hate to leave the narrative as it stands now: that 1960 Anpo was something completely
The second point I question is the framing of women’s participation in the Anpo protests. While many memoirs by female participants recall how 1960 Anpo prompted otherwise “nonpolitical” “ordinary housewives” to connect their daily lives to politics and engage more deeply in “civic activism,” defining 1960 Anpo as the first moment in postwar Japan that women participated in street activism obscures the critical role women’s groups played in political activism before then. Demonstrations in the late 1940s organized to demand more equitable systems of food distribution and democratic representation featured female speakers and groups like the Women’s Democratic Club (Fujin minshu kurabu, formed in 1947) and the Federation of Housewives (Shufuren, formed in 1948) mobilized in the street (Shufuren wore aprons and wrote their demands on enormous shamoji rice scoops). 1960 Anpo was a transformative moment that illuminates a shift in popular understandings of how women were part of a new civil society. But it was not the first instance in which women appeared in postwar protest.
There have been exceptions, most notably the work of Wesley Sasaki-Uemura and Simon Avenell, although for both of them the question is about the shift in the formulations of “civic consciousness” and social movements from the 1950s to the 1960s.
Kapur’s book is clearly written, and his introduction is the best summary in the English literature I’ve read on the course of events we associate with “Anpo.” I am very happy that this book is not only a necessary scholarly investigation but also provides readings I can assign my undergraduate students.
This book really illuminated for me the shifts in domestic and foreign policy from Kishi to Ikeda and Eisenhower to Kennedy before and after the contentious 1960 revisions of the US-Japan Security Treaty. I research this period, and I did not have a good appreciation for the extent to which Ikeda really shifted the course of the LDP and Japanese politics in general. This section, along with the sections the decline of the opposition parties, on shifts to the courts, the police, and the mass media really did convince me of the Kapur’s overall argument that we need to think not of the “1955 system” but in terms of a “1960 system.” I would encourage scholars interested in projects on postwar Japanese history to build upon some of Kapur’s work on these themes, and also on the post-1960 rise of right-wing activism.
There are two points on which I disagree fundamentally with Kapur’s analyses. I don’t think these detract from his overall work, but actually illuminate some of what I see as popular misconceptions about protest in postwar Japan in general. I recommend a close and attentive reading of Kapur’s work for anyone interested in postwar Japanese history. But with the following two caveats.
The first point is on the post-1960 afterlives of the student movement. Since many of the late 1960s student protests were framed as “Anpo 1970,” a self-conciously adopted mission on the part of many young people who had witnessed Anpo 1960, there is a missed opportunity to understand how late 1960s student activism was not just sectarian disintigration and violence, but was also a direct result of 1960 Anpo student activism. Many of the graduate students that were critical to organizing on university campuses cut their teeth in 1960 anti-Anpo protests; several of the younger participants recall a desire to enter university in the late 1960s to become an activist as a result of their exposure to 1960 Anpo (through television and radio, but also through publications of Kanba Michiko’s writings). The Vietnam War figures very marginally in Kapur’s analyses, but this was also a huge mobilizing factor for the late-1960s generation of student activists, and prompted many to undertake ever more dramatic actions as they witnessed this war waged with Japanese complicity render more and more carnage. The student population also swelled in the 1960s, meaning that the very definition of university student became more expansive in this period. Whereas the Bund of 1960 Anpo was a limited vanguard of relative social elites, the activists of the late 1906s came from a wide swath of upwardly aspirational households. In Kapur’s account, the various sects and also non-sectarian organizations become lumped together in a way that suggests a kind of inevitability from 1967 protests at Haneda to the bloody purge of the United Red Army, discovered in early 1972. This reflects a lot of the current literature about the late 1960s student New Left. It’s actually an open and interesting question how the student activists inherited the legacy of 1960 Anpo, so I hate to leave the narrative as it stands now: that 1960 Anpo was something completely
The second point I question is the framing of women’s participation in the Anpo protests. While many memoirs by female participants recall how 1960 Anpo prompted otherwise “nonpolitical” “ordinary housewives” to connect their daily lives to politics and engage more deeply in “civic activism,” defining 1960 Anpo as the first moment in postwar Japan that women participated in street activism obscures the critical role women’s groups played in political activism before then. Demonstrations in the late 1940s organized to demand more equitable systems of food distribution and democratic representation featured female speakers and groups like the Women’s Democratic Club (Fujin minshu kurabu, formed in 1947) and the Federation of Housewives (Shufuren, formed in 1948) mobilized in the street (Shufuren wore aprons and wrote their demands on enormous shamoji rice scoops). 1960 Anpo was a transformative moment that illuminates a shift in popular understandings of how women were part of a new civil society. But it was not the first instance in which women appeared in postwar protest.
March 5, 2025
Well, this is a deeply researched exploration of how the 1960 protests against the US Japan Security Treaty (Anpo) reshaped Japan’s political landscape, civil society, and cultural life. While many histories of postwar Japan focus on the so-called “1955 System,” Kapur makes a bold argument: it was 1960, not 1955, that defined modern Japan, as the protests triggered shifts that restructured governance, opposition politics, and public discourse in lasting ways.
He sort of convinced me! It's complicated.
The book is strongest in its political analysis. Kapur does an excellent job showing how the ruling LDP adapted to the Anpo crisis, shifting from Kishi Nobusuke’s heavy handed, authoritarian tactics to Ikeda Hayato’s “low posture” strategy. Instead of suppressing dissent through brute force, the LDP coopted public discontent by pivoting to economic growth and social stability, laying the groundwork for Japan’s rapid prosperity in the 1960s and beyond. Kapur also effectively traces how opposition parties, particularly the JSP, fragmented after Anpo, making it easier for the LDP to dominate electoral politics for decades. His discussion of Japan’s diplomatic recalibration with the US under John F. Kennedy is particularly great, highlighting how Japan secured key concessions and a more consultative alliance without significantly altering the security treaty itself.
However, while Kapur convincingly demonstrates the institutional impact of Anpo, his approach is somewhat functionalist. He focuses heavily on systemic change while sometimes underplaying the role of individual agency, grassroots activism, and cultural forces. For example, while he acknowledges that leftist activism didn’t entirely disappear after 1960, he frames its decline too narrowly. Leftist activism did not end. It evolved into local, decentralised movements focused on environmentalism, consumer rights, and feminism, areas Kapur only briefly touches on.
Kapur’s analysis of culture and the arts is also a bit uneven. Chapter 5, which explores literature, theatre, and visual art after Anpo, contains fascinating insights, especially on avant garde movements like the Neo Dada Organizers and Hi Red Center. But at times these artistic shifts are treated more as mere reactions to political events rather than as ideological movements in their own right. The rejection of state aligned cultural hierarchies wasn’t just a response to Anpo; it was part of a broader intellectual tradition, influenced by existentialism, Marxism, and even the long standing impact of Russian (and French? Continental Europe?) literature and art in Japan. Similarly, while Kapur does a great job outlining how right-wing violence and state censorship shaped public discourse post-Anpo, his emphasis on 1960 as a turning point risks overlooking the longer history of state-managed public expression, which had existed long before the protests.
Despite these critiques, Japan at the Crossroads is a vital contribution to the study of postwar Japan. It challenges simplistic ideas that see Japan’s political stability as inevitable and instead presents a picture of a nation continually renegotiating its political and cultural identity. While some may wish for deeper engagement with Japanese-language sources and alternative theoretical perspectives, which this book doesn't really have, Kapur’s work is an accessible, thought-provoking read for anyone interested in modern Japan, protest movements, or the intersection of politics and culture.
Would highly recommend to readers of political history, social movements, and those curious about how art and literature emerge from moments of crisis.
He sort of convinced me! It's complicated.
The book is strongest in its political analysis. Kapur does an excellent job showing how the ruling LDP adapted to the Anpo crisis, shifting from Kishi Nobusuke’s heavy handed, authoritarian tactics to Ikeda Hayato’s “low posture” strategy. Instead of suppressing dissent through brute force, the LDP coopted public discontent by pivoting to economic growth and social stability, laying the groundwork for Japan’s rapid prosperity in the 1960s and beyond. Kapur also effectively traces how opposition parties, particularly the JSP, fragmented after Anpo, making it easier for the LDP to dominate electoral politics for decades. His discussion of Japan’s diplomatic recalibration with the US under John F. Kennedy is particularly great, highlighting how Japan secured key concessions and a more consultative alliance without significantly altering the security treaty itself.
However, while Kapur convincingly demonstrates the institutional impact of Anpo, his approach is somewhat functionalist. He focuses heavily on systemic change while sometimes underplaying the role of individual agency, grassroots activism, and cultural forces. For example, while he acknowledges that leftist activism didn’t entirely disappear after 1960, he frames its decline too narrowly. Leftist activism did not end. It evolved into local, decentralised movements focused on environmentalism, consumer rights, and feminism, areas Kapur only briefly touches on.
Kapur’s analysis of culture and the arts is also a bit uneven. Chapter 5, which explores literature, theatre, and visual art after Anpo, contains fascinating insights, especially on avant garde movements like the Neo Dada Organizers and Hi Red Center. But at times these artistic shifts are treated more as mere reactions to political events rather than as ideological movements in their own right. The rejection of state aligned cultural hierarchies wasn’t just a response to Anpo; it was part of a broader intellectual tradition, influenced by existentialism, Marxism, and even the long standing impact of Russian (and French? Continental Europe?) literature and art in Japan. Similarly, while Kapur does a great job outlining how right-wing violence and state censorship shaped public discourse post-Anpo, his emphasis on 1960 as a turning point risks overlooking the longer history of state-managed public expression, which had existed long before the protests.
Despite these critiques, Japan at the Crossroads is a vital contribution to the study of postwar Japan. It challenges simplistic ideas that see Japan’s political stability as inevitable and instead presents a picture of a nation continually renegotiating its political and cultural identity. While some may wish for deeper engagement with Japanese-language sources and alternative theoretical perspectives, which this book doesn't really have, Kapur’s work is an accessible, thought-provoking read for anyone interested in modern Japan, protest movements, or the intersection of politics and culture.
Would highly recommend to readers of political history, social movements, and those curious about how art and literature emerge from moments of crisis.
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June 3, 2023muy muy muy interesante ! no sé si esto me lo recomendó chatgpt de hecho ... pero en cualquier caso intentaba responder a la pregunta de "de dónde viene la imagen de las protestas que salen a veces en los animus, con las bandanas, las banderas gigantes, etc?"
respondido queda!
(lo difícil que es encontrar algo interesante de la historia de Japón que no sean samuráis o nazis... que sí amor que eres de extrema derecha ya lo sé zzzzz)
respondido queda!
(lo difícil que es encontrar algo interesante de la historia de Japón que no sean samuráis o nazis... que sí amor que eres de extrema derecha ya lo sé zzzzz)
June 16, 2022
I was grateful to have the author as a lecturer! His book was equally as impressive as his teaching skills. I couldn't put this book down since it was so engaging and full of information. I'm looking forward to seeing more of his work soon (hopefully).
June 27, 2022
Onnodig moeilijk taalgebruik, matige structuur. Wel erg interessant.
September 15, 2022
I enjoyed the economic and some of the political coverage. The other sections on media and art I found to be rather a forced inculturation for which I do not acquire the taste.
August 27, 2023
Read for Comparative Literature class “Social Revolutions East and West”! Such a good recap of the Anpo movement and the theory thread lines of how social movements originate
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews