Organizing the Spontaneous: Citizen Protest in Postwar Japan

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points in chapters six and seven are:

Book title: Sasaki-Uemura, Wesley. 2001. Organizing the Spontaneous: Citizen Protest in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Main points:

Ch. 6. Unlike the Mountain Range or the Grass Seeds, the Voiceless Voice was formed in the midst of the Anpo protest in direct response to the Treaty ratification. They represented the large number of people who were concerned with the government’s program of retrenchment in the years leading up to the Anpo controversy. (148)

- the experience of the Voiceless Voice had shown that the number of people actually marching around the Diet represented only a portion of the sentiment against PM Kishi and the Treaty. (148)

- one of the Voiceless Voice member, Takabatake Michitoshi, referred the way in which they formed the group as a process of ‘organizing the spontaneous’. It meant that the members generated their group spontaneously. (149)

- the focus now was how to defend democracy. According to Takeuchi, Kishi raised the specter of prewar fascism through his action in polarizing politics to such an extent that there could no long be any middle ground. (153)

- by using the term ‘Voiceless Voice’, Kishi had himself actually appropriated a phrase that some demonstrators were already using to describe their participation in the Treaty protest. At the next united action, the June 4 general strike, a placard appeared that identified its two placard bearers as ‘Voiceless Voices’ and encouraged onlookers to join them in disproving Kishi’s claim they he represented the voiceless voices. (156)

- the Voiceless Voice also garnered a good deal of exposure in the newspapers and on TV. (159) They told reporters that they did not belong to any particular organization. (159) To encourage more people to come out, the Voiceless Voice promoted voluntary participation, even on limited, part-time basis. (159) The philosophy of ‘just do what you can’ was a key factor in attracting bystanders to join the protest.  Voiceless Voice made known their marching song on June 15. (160-1)

-the opposition to Anpo and the government exhibited by the Voiceless Voice and the citizen who flooded the streets after May 19 was conditioned by historical memories of what had happened in WWII, they saw the sudden transformation of their leaders into ‘democrats’ with the coming of the occupation by SCAP. (167)

- SCAP’s course reversal in late 1940s rekindled people’s fear about the re-militarization of their country. Despite Article 9, MacArthur authorized the formation of a 75,000 man national Police reserve force in 1950 to fill the gap left by the departure of American troops for Korea. (169)

- although some groups failed to develop a systemic critique of the political process, those like the Voiceless Voice went beyond partisan politics to assert a new base of political subjectivity. Citizen’s opposition to Anpo was both profoundly conservative and racially progressive because of historical memory. (177)

-Maruyama Masao helped develop the theoretical perspective of the citizen’s movement during the Anpo protests. (179). One consequence of Maruyama’s line of reasoning was that the citizenship could only be conceived of in its relation to the state. For him citizens were defined by their engagement in the public sphere, which he saw as a contest space. He saw democracy in term of direct individual engagement with the government. (191)

- one of the most important aspect of the Voiceless Voice’s movement was their attempt to break down the boundary between politics and everyday life, and to engage the national government rather than the local. (193)

Ch. 7 Epilogue- it would be a mistake to describe the Anpo protest as the Big Ban from which thousands of separate worlds were generated. The protesters had never been a unified body despite government and media characterization of them as a mindless mob, or the dupe of international communism. (195)

- those who took part in the protests surrounding Anpo later became active in the anti-Vietnam war efforts and in local environmental movements etc. During the 1960s and 70s, the labor movement began to lose its dynamism compared to the students, the feminists, and the local residents in fighting pollution. (202) Women played an increasingly important role in the new social movement since Anpo. (203)

- the groups examined here were affirming the values implied in the Peace Constitution – free expression, and full and equal participation in decisions affecting their own lives. (206). Citizen’s movement also adopted the model of decentralized, anti-hierarchic networks as a way of ensuring free expression and open debates. (207). This organizational principle was seen as necessary to avoid being subordinated to political parties.

- the environmentalist movement of local residents against polluting industries and disruptive state projects in the 1970s also typically adopted a nonpartisan stance. (209) The Anpo era legacy that most frequently related to later movement was philosophical; this is the idea of the citizen as the key social actor operating in public spheres. (211)

- the government justified the environmental impact by asserting that the project’s public benefit out weighted any sacrifices that local communities might have to make. The logic was a post war variation of the prewar ideology of ‘suppressing private interest to support the nation. (212)

- the groups discussed here viewed history in personal terms, and thought that personal responsibly had to be attached to the past, if they were to turn memories in prophesy. Their most important legacy was a tradition of resisting authority and reclaiming the past. They were unwilling to let the reactionary state/party/ mass media to be the ‘custodian of the past’. (215)