This week, we’re looking at the implosion of the Japanese New Left with a focus on the factional conflicts of the Zengakuren. How did a student youth movement end up divided into 20+ factions, the two largest of which engaged in a multi-decade war of assassination and street violence against each other? And how might that be connected to the general decline of Japan’s left-wing opposition more broadly?
Sources
Andrews, William. Dissenting Japan: A History of Japanese Radicalism and Counterculture from 1945 to Fukushima.
Dowsey, Stewart, ed. Zengakuren: Japan’s Revolutionary Students
Shimbori, Michiya, et al. “Japanese Student Activism in the 1970s.” Higher Education 9, No 2 (Mar, 1980).
The official websites of both the Chukakuha (bonus in English) and Kakumaruha
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