Table Of ContentMOBILIZING JAPANESE
YOUTH
Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
The Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University were
inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the results of significant new
research on modern and contemporary East Asia.
MOBILIZING
JAPANESE
YOUTH
The Cold War and the Making
of the Sixties Generation
Christopher Gerteis
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON
Copyright © 2021 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House,
512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.
cornell.edu.
First published 2021 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gerteis, Christopher, 1968– author.
Title: Mobilizing Japanese youth : the Cold War and the making of the sixties
generation / Christopher Gerteis.
Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2021. | Series: Studies
of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020046250 (print) | LCCN 2020046251 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781501756313 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501756320 (epub) |
ISBN 9781501756337 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Youth—Political activity—Japan—History—20th century. |
Radicalism—Japan—History—20th century. | Political violence—Japan—
History—20th century. | Political alienation—Japan—History—20th century. |
Japan—Politics and government—1945–
Classification: LCC HN730.Z9 R3225 2021 (print) | LCC HN730.Z9 (ebook) |
DDC 303.48/4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046250
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046251
Cover image: View of a group of teenaged “motorcycle kids” parked on an
unidentified street, Tokyo, Japan, 1964. Photo by Michael Rougier/The LIFE
Picture Collection via Getty Images.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Note on Transliteration ix
Introduction: The Nexus of Gender, Class, and Generation 1
1. Unions, Youth, and the Cold War 11
2. The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Red Army 42
3. Political Alienation and the Sixties Generation 68
4. Cold War Warriors 100
5. Motorboat Gambling and Morals Education 121
Epilogue: Life and Democracy in Postwar Japan 144
Notes 155
Index 173
Acknowledgments
In this business one comes to rely on a great many people, and over the course
of this project I have incurred a great many debts of gratitude. Many friends
and colleagues have given generously of their time in reading and commenting
on various drafts of this manuscript. Aaron W. Moore encouraged me to return
to this project after years of letting it sit on the hard drive. Bill Mihalopoulos
and Stephen Vlastos read draft after draft with unfailing energy and encourage-
ment while demanding that I think harder, and write more clearly, each time.
I am also indebted to James McNally, Fujiwara Tetsuya, Laura Hein, Timothy S.
George, Barak Kushner, Sheldon Garon, and Sabine Fruhstuck for their rigorous
critique, thoughtful commentary, and gentle encouragement. I am thankful
for the insights and critiques, both electronic and face to face, offered by Patricia
Steinhoff, Sebastian Conrad, Andreas Eckhert, Frederick Cooper, Tak Fujitani,
Andrew Gordon, Frank Grüner, Hans Martin Krämer, Linda K. Kerber, Karen
Nakamura, David Tobaru Obermiller, and John W. Treat.
I want to convey a very special thank you to Helen Macnaughtan—and
all my colleagues at the SOAS Japan Research Centre—for their good cheer,
their camaraderie, and a string of small grants that helped keep me going. The
SOAS Japan Research Centre has been a safe harbor for intellectual inquiry
and collegiality amid the political and economic turmoil that befell UK higher
education during the early twenty-first century. I am also deeply grateful to the
staff and faculty of the Ōhara Institute for Social Research, Hōsei University,
the Institute for Social Sciences of the University of Tokyo, and the Kōji Taka-
zawa Collection of the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. I particularly want to
thank Tokiko Bazell and Patricia Steinhoff for their hard work in building and
sustaining the unique materials that have inspired my thinking on the subject
of radical politics in Japan.
None of this book would have been possible without significant financial
support from the Japan–United States Educational Commission and the United
States Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Fulbright
Scholar Program (2008–9), the Northeast Asia Committee of the Association for
Asian Studies (2007 and 2010), the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee
of the United Kingdom (2012), the Humboldt University of Berlin International
Research Center: Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History (2015–16), and
the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Program for Japan Studies in Global
vii
viii ACknowledGments
Context, supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and
Technology (2016–17). Each of these organizations underwrote precious periods
of time during which I was able to focus on writing in the decade it has taken to
complete this book.
My editor at Cornell University Press, Roger Haydon, saw promise in a rough
manuscript early on, and offered key insights that helped me see it to completion.
My copyeditors, Rebekah Zwanzig and Eric Levy, hammered the final manuscript
into something far more readable than it would have been without their help.
Harald Fuess at the University of Heidelberg arranged for summer grants in 2014
and 2018 that supported me while I wrote both the first and final chapters along
the banks of the Neckar River. Heidelberg is indeed a great city in which to write.
I owe a particular debt to my colleagues at the Humboldt University of Berlin
International Research Center: Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History,
with whom I was able to spend the academic year 2015–16 exploring the global
comparative contexts of this book. I am also particularly indebted to my col-
leagues at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo,
where I finished this manuscript during the spring of 2020—Masuya Michiyo,
Nakajima Takahiro, Sato Jin, and Baba Norihisa, in particular. But most of all,
I am grateful to Jennifer E. Anderson, without whose fierce intellect, hardened
critique, love, and support this book would not exist.
Note on Transliteration
Japanese terms have been transliterated into roman characters using the Hep-
burn (romaji kai) system. As is the custom in East Asia, family names precede
personal names except when the subject has indicated the opposite preference.
Knowing how to pronounce the various names may make it easier for readers
unfamiliar with Japanese to recall significant works later. Fortunately, Japanese
is fairly simple to pronounce. The following rules will help readers sound out
words as they read:
1. Syllables are single vowels or combinations of a consonant and an open
vowel. The exception is n, which ends some syllables.
2. There are five basic vowel sounds:
a like the a in father, but shorter and more clipped
i like the i in machine, but shorter and more clipped.
u like the u in put, but shorter, more clipped, and without lip rounding.
e like the e in bet, but shorter and more clipped.
o like the o in hose, but shorter and more clipped.
3. There are two major diphthongs:
ai like the i in idea.
ei like the a in way.
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