This week: Miyazaki Manabu’s dramatic departure from the Communist Party, as his faith in the revolution wanes. What does a wannabe college revolutionary with no prospects turn to when the revolution fails to materialize?
Sources
Miyazaki, Manabu. Toppamono: Outlaw,, Radical, Suspect. My Life in Japan’s Underworld. Trans. Robert Whiting.
Yoshikuni, Igarashi. Japan 1972: Visions of Masculinity in an Age of Consumerism
Images
Wow, thanks so much for doing this series. For the last year I have been studying the New Left and student protests in Kyushu, and reading all I can on the subject. I had not known about Miyazaki’s book, nor Igarashi’s, they are just what I need. I will probably use selections from them in my graduate seminar this year. Excellent!
So, with love, a few nit-picks.
Episode 4
You translated Kakumaru-ha 革マル派 as the “Core Central Faction”, but that translation is for Chukaku-ha 中核派, its cousin/mortal enemy faction.
Episode 5:
Mishima’s suicide was in 1970, not 1972.
Nobel prize for literature: You say that Mishima was a contender to be the second Japanese Nobel Prize winner after Kawabata, but lost out to Oe Kenzaburo. But really he lost out to Kawabata in 1968 to be the first award winner, he was considered a front runner throughout the 1960s. Oe did not win until 1994, long after Mishima was dead.