Social Science Japan Journal Advance Access originally published online on September 2, 2009
Social Science Japan Journal 2009 12(2):227-245; doi:10.1093/ssjj/jyp030
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Social Science Japan Journal 12:227-245 (2009)
© 2009 Oxford University Press
The Intellectual Culture of Postwar Japan and the 1968–1969 University of Tokyo Struggles: Repositioning the Self in Postwar Thought
Rikki KERSTEN is Professor of Modern Japanese Political History in the Department of Political and Social Change at the Australian National University. Her recent publications include ‘Japan’, in R.J.B. Bosworth, ed., Oxford Handbook of Fascism, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2009): 521–544; ‘The Emperor and the Left in Interwar Japan’, in Ben-Ami Shillony, ed., The Emperors of Modern Japan, Leiden: Brill (2008): 107–136; ‘The Social Imperative of Pacifism in Postwar Japan: Shimizu Ikutar
and the Uchinada Movement’, Critical Asian Studies, 38(3) (September 2006): 303–328; The Left in the Shaping of Japanese Democracy (Edited with D. Williams), London: RoutledgeCurzon (2006). Between July 2009 and May 2010, she will be a JSPS Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo. She can be reached by e-mail at rikki.kersten{at}anu.edu.au
Japan's student-led protests of 1968–1969 resonated with similar movements around the world, particularly in their demand for individual autonomy and liberation from the burden of mature capitalism and the yoke of social regimentation. In the case of Japan, this movement also signified a major turning point in postwar intellectual culture. 1968 was when protesting youth led a critical rejection of the progressive intellectuals who had defined the substance of postwar Japanese democratic idealism. In intellectual terms, progressive thinkers were challenged from two directions: radicalism and conservatism. The confrontation between these three intellectual positions was dramatised in the movement that took place at the University of Tokyo. This article examines the experiences and responses of Maruyama Masao, Yoshimoto Takaaki (Ry
mei) and Hayashi Kentar during the course of the 1968–1969 protests at the University of Tokyo. I conclude that while 1968 heralded the end of progressive predominance, it confirmed the importance of ideas about the self in postwar intellectual life.