As mentioned in Part 2 of the Dr. Steinhoff interview, the ideological differences between the dozens of New Left sects are quite “arcane” to say the least. And yet, there must have been some manner of articulated position to separate one group from another. In order to give some sense of the differences, I have translated this satirical text from Asahi Journal, published on December 29, 1968, about the each group’s hypothetical reaction if the revolution started one morning.

(Text found in the Mainichi publication『連合赤軍・”狼”たちの時代―1969-1975』.)

Minsei (民青): Horrified, they’d rush to call Yoyogi (Japanese Communist Party headquarters), but since they have no idea what is going on, they’d push together all their furniture into a barricade, lock the door, and hide in the closet.

Bund (ブント): They wouldn’t believe the news, exclaiming, “We haven’t finished off the riot police, so there’s no way the revolution has begun!”

Kakumaru (革マル): They’d play it all cool, looking up at the sky and muttering, “Any revolution that we didn’t start could not possibly be real, so we aren’t going to liberate no one from alienation.”

Chūkaku (中核): They’d demand, “Let us join in,” and when denied, would cry, “They are Stalinist agents!” to deaf ears.

(United Socialist) Front (フロント): They’d be busy calling to arrange for teachers to hold a teach-in about the revolution.

Kaihō (解放): They’d keep repeating their one idiot slogan “We’re against the rationalization of revolutionary power!” until everyone finally realized how dumb they are.

ML (マルクス・レーニン主義派): Flustered, they’d call Beijing. But not being able to connect, they’d be completely perplexed: “How could a revolution start without a people’s war?” Then they’d retreat back to the farms with dour faces.

Proletariat Army (プロ軍): They’d say, “What? This is shitty!” and start pouring sulfuric acid into bottles to get ready for the counterrevolution.

Tokyo University Law Department Students (東大法学部学生): A call to the National Personnel Authority (人事院) would not convince them, so they’d go there to directly confirm it themselves. But they’d be terrorized to learn that the Civil Service Exam (国家公務員試験) had been abolished. After pulling themselves together, they’d throw out their statute books (六法全書) and start leafing through works by Stalin, Guevara, and Lenin. But not being able to understand the sentiments, they start preparations to make a placard that reads “Anti-Violence, Anti-Blockade.”

1. Minsei (民青) is the nickname for the Democratic Youth League of Japan (日本民主青年同盟) — a junior organization of the Japanese Communist Party. They were non-New Left student activists.
2. Kakumaru and Chūkaku are two factions of the Revolutionary Communist League that have been at war with each other for decades.
3. Front were the “Socialist League” and believed in “structural reform.”
4. Kaihō — meaning “liberation” — were an extremist offshoot of the Japan Socialist Party-affiliated Japan Socialist Youth League (日本社会主義青年同盟) nicknamed Shaseidō (社青同).
5. ML were an offshoot of Bund who took up Maoist ideology.
6. Pro-gun were Fourth Internationalist Trotskyites.
7. The Japanese bureaucracy has traditionally come from the Law Department of Tokyo University.

Dr. Patricia Steinhoff is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. This is the second installment of our interview with Dr. Steinhoff about the Japanese New Left in the 1960s and 1970s.

PART 2 – THE BIRTH OF A MOVEMENT

Let’s begin with the 1960 demonstrations against the revision of the Ampo (Japanese shorthand for Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan). Did these protests enjoy broad public support?

Yes, the 1960 Ampo protests had very wide support. A lot of it was mobilized by the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. Those parties also had the main labor federations, which could mobilize huge numbers of people. There were also citizens groups created at the time. The student movement had initially been pretty much organized by the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) right after the war, but then expanded. But in the late ’50s, a lot of the student leaders were unhappy with what was happening with party policy, and they didn’t like being dictated to and treated like a subordinate part of the working class instead of being something on their own. A big group of those leaders broke with the Communist Party in 1958. Others were thrown out when they went with the leaders who left the party. They were the beginning of Japan’s New Left.

So the New Left, in Japan, means quite explicitly, “not affiliated with the Communist Party.” Marxist, but not JCP.

And the people who founded it had been key top leaders of Zengakuren (全学連, All-Japan Federation of Students’ Self-Governing Associations), particularly around Tōdai (Tokyo University).

At that time, was Zengakuren controlled by the Japanese Communist Party?

Not exactly, and to characterize it that way to an English-speaking audience invites misconceptions. Zengakuren was a national federation of student government organizations all over Japan. There were local student government organizations or jichikai (自治会) on every campus, and students were elected to leadership positions in student government for each university faculty or gakubu (学部). These student organizations ran the co-op, and they got money from student fees. And they would control the student government because they were elected to do so.

Zengakuren had a democratic centralist kind of structure, where they had campus units that were just students, but technically everyone at some level is a member. Then there is an organizational structure for the city-wide federation and then for the regional federation, and then the national one. Each level would elect the next level up — that is what democratic centralism means. The Communist Party controlled the top — the organization leadership — but not necessarily the individual students. It’s not to say that every student in Japan was a Communist, but the movement itself at the national level was under clear control. So Zengakuren could mobilize people for different things. That was the case through the 1950s.

Then in the late ’50s, that’s when these people — who were national leaders of Zengakuren, but most of them also were from the Tōdai cell that controlled the Tōdai student government organization — broke with the party. They walked out and formed their own organization — Kyōsanshugisha Dōmei (共産主義者同盟, Communist League). They kept the word kyōsanshugi (共産主義, communism) but not the kyōsanto (共産党) of the Communist Party. They organized themselves as another party. They were nicknamed Bund (ブント).

Were they aligned with the left-wing of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) instead of the JCP?

No. It is a mistake to think of this in terms of national political parties, as these were groups of students operating independently. They were close to the Socialist Party in their ideas, but at that point, the Socialist Party was not that much involved in the student movement. Later in the mid-to-late ’60s, they had a student branch — one part of which became part of the New Left.

Then there was another organization, which was minimal in the late ’50s — the Trotskyite League (日本トロツキスト連盟). It had been just a little study group, but right at that point, it also began to grow. It became another part of the New Left, and because it’s Trotskyite, it was not connected to the Communist Party. That became Kakumeiteki Kyōsanshugisha Dōmei (革命的共産主義者同盟, Revolutionary Marxist League), and then that split in Kakumaru-ha (革マル派) and Chūkaku-ha (中核派). And also, Daiyon-Intā (Fourth International), which is affiliated with the Trotskyite Fourth International organization.

Ideologically-speaking, what were these parties’ relative positions?

These people are all left of the Communist Party.

From ’59 to ’61, there was a fair amount of movement between Chūkaku and Bund, so if you trace individual histories, they are entangled. They’re all much more militant than the JCP, but they’re basically student organizations and they’re seeing students as the vanguard of the proletariat. But a lot of it follows the Trotskyite idea of simultaneous world revolution. They’re all anti-Stalinist. The individual differences between the groups are too arcane to be described here.

Continued »