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Zengakuren

Zengakuren (Zen Nihon Gakusei Jichikai So Rengo = All-Japan Student Government Union) was formed under the order of General McArthur, SCAP, in September 1948. Though initially intended to function as a medium to promote the democratization of education, it became one of the most militant anti-American organizations in Japan in the 1960s. Zengakuren had an illustrious history of public dissent and revolt. During the first five years of Zengakuren history, the Japan Communist Party (JCP) managed to exercise control over Zengakuren activities. When the Party. shifted its strategy to carrying out proletarian revolution though lawful means in the early 1950's, dissension developed among Zengakuren members.

Throughout the early stages, protests and demonstrations against both Japan and the United States were held in the belief that American imperialism should be destroyed. Sekigun leaders believed the Japan-United States Security Treaty would ultimately allow U.S. imperialists to take over the entire world.

They openly criticized the JCP-endorsed Cominform in January 1950. The 1952 May Day incident, which took place at the Imperial Plaza in Tokyo, was the first major and violent instance of Zengakuran revolt, though even prior to this date the group had been quite active. Zengakuren members armed themselves with Molotov coctails, burned public and private vehicles owned by US Security personnel, and fought a vicious battle with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. The issue over which they revolted was that of militarism and imperialism. Zengakuren identified itself as a "detached" force of the JCP at this time.

The JCP openly denounced Zengakuren in July, 1955, however. The Stalin criticism at the twentieth assembly of the U.S.S.R. Communist Party in February 1956, the Hungarian incident during October of the same year, the Sino-Soviet rift beginning from 1958, and factional dispute within international Communism thereafter all had their effects on Zengakuren. The eleventh assembly of the organization was held at JCP headquarters in Yoyogi, Tokyo, on June 1, 1958. There, militant Zengakuren students demanded the resignation of the JCP central committee and assulted its members. This date marked the split between the Yoyogi Zengakuren and the anti-Yoyogi Zengakuren, which were pro- and anti-JCP, respectively. The Zengakuren schism centered around the issue of the means by which proletarian revolution is to be carried out. The anti-Yoyogi faction advocated violence; the Yoyogi faction emphasized lawful means.

Strikes and demonstrations on 15 June 1960 included the worst student violence to date in assault on Diet involving one death and some 600 injured. It seemed that militant-leftist students were beyond all control and constituted a serious challenge to the government. In essence, student demonstrations stem from fanatical minority group of students (Zengakuren) thoroughly indoctrinated by their Communist leaders. The problem was complicated by division of Zengakuren into Trotskyite and orthodox Communist factions, with pressures within each group to outdo the other. Police under GOJ instructions leaned over backward in recent weeks to keep student demonstrations under control by mere presence, no resort to nightsticks, and above all by avoiding any student martyrdoms, which would provide emotional field-day for leftist press and tender-hearted Japanese public.

A bloody conflict emerged between police and 7,500 Trotskyite mainstream Zengakuren students, who converged on Diet throughout the afternoon. While mainstream faction assembled around Diet, smaller group from anti-mainstream demonstrated near Embassy but attempted no violence, later proceeding to metropolitan police headquarters for speeches. Diet was under siege from about 3:30. Before Zengakuren assault on Diet there was a side incident shortly after 5 pm when one of two trucks carrying rightist students bore down on leftist crowd. Melee ensued with police eventually restoring order. Shortly thereafter Zengakuren massed before Diet compound entrance, stormed gates and swarmed into compound in three successive waves, attacking police lines with long poles, clubs, stones, bricks and fire.

In first wave students with long poles jabbed police who were behind Diet gates in waves, driving them back so that main assault force could demolish gates and open way into Diet compound. Students then set fire to police vehicles. Police fought back with fire hoses, nightsticks and finally tear gas, first time latter used since May Day riot in 1952. About 7 pm, while police battling main body of students at compound gates, secondary force of students gained entrance into Diet employees’ building, doing considerable property damage before being forced out by police. During course of these affrays students seized and turned over or set fire to several police trucks which had formed part of barricade inside Diet gate.

Police confirmed death of Michiko Kamba (university professor’s daughter who had previously been taken into custody at time of Haneda riot in January). Total injured (police figures): 260 students, 536 police (36 serious injuries).

Shortly after midnight June 16 cabinet met in emergency session and issued statement saying violence was planned destructive action by Communists in keeping with international Communist aims of world domination. Left-wing leaders immediately sought to blame Kishi cabinet for ramming security treaty through lower house. Statements charged police and rightist “hoodlums” with “violent suppression of peaceful demonstration”. Sohyo SecGen Akira Iwai called police actions “fascist oppression”. JSP SecGen Saburo Eda also protested police violence and renewed demand that Kishi resign and Diet be dissolved. Mainstream Zengakuren Vice Chairman Tokuo Onda called on 350,000 students to boycott classes in protest against deaths of “several” students in June 15 riot.

Toward the end of the 1960s some political turbulcnce occurred again around the United States-Japan Mutual Security Agreement. This agreement had a term of ten years, and left wing radicals demanded that the government not prolong the agreement beyond 1970. This time, however, there was no significant outspoken support from either the labor unions-except lor the most radical groups such as the Dohroh (unions of the national railroads' locomotive drivers) and the combative Japanese teachers' unions, together called Nikkyoso-or the majority of opinion leaders and intellectuals. There were some extreme ideologists and radical students on university campuses. The most violent of these students became the Japanese Red Army.

Many universities were dominated by the extreme leftist student organization Zengakuren, the influence of which, however, was less than it was in the late 1960's when it was most powerful. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Report of December 14, 1968, describe the strength of Zengakuren, indicates that student unions at 156 colleges and universities (there were 845 colleges and universities as of 1968) were controlled by the Yoyogi faction, and 95 of them bY anti-Yoyogi factions. As many as 460,000 college and university students (out of an estimated total of 1,525,000) were members of the Yoyogi faction, 374,000 of the anti-Yoyogi factions. At least 11,900 of the former group and 7,600 of the latter were considered activists. The Yoyogi faction was capable of mobilizing 38,300 of its members, and anti-Yoyogi factions 31,700. [As is appreciated by those familiar with the art, these were impossibly precise numbers.]

By 1970 the Yoyogi faction's slogan was "'all student movement". It maintained that state power lies with those who control the administrative organs of the state, supported by the armed forces, that the Diet is the instrument which legalizes violence against dissenters, and that the current government entertained designs to increase state power by ignoring the will of the people. Members of the Yoyogi faction therefore plan to distribute themselves among non-factional students with the hope of causing them to realize the danger of capitalistic imperialism. They aim, further, to isolate reactionary elements in the government by gaining mass support, thereby giving rise to legislation favorable to Communism.

This faction proclaims that it opposes violence but is willing to combat violence of the anti-Yoyogi type with equal force, if necessary. It assaults anti-Yoyogi groups, but as a rule not the riot squad, which is seen as an insignificant entity of state power. Its ultimate aim is to prepare itself to confront state power per se. In the meantime, casualties among its members were kept to a minimum.

Originally, the anti-Yoyogi faction received its directives from the National Committee of the Union of Revolutionary Communists (Kaku-kybda), a Trotsky front. But this faction split into: (1) the Student Socialist League (Shagaku-dó), (2) the Socialist Youth League (Shaseid6 kaih6-ha), and (3) the Marxist League (Maru-kakud6). Though attempts were made to unify these three even before the 1960 demonstration against the renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (which was mnewed), the Marxist League split further into the Revolutionary Marxists (Kaku-maru) and the Revolutionary Core (Chalsaku). The former was organized in 1958; the latter, together with the already functional Student Socialist and Socialist Youth Leagues, formed the Tripartite Zengakuren (Sanpa Zengakuren) in December 1966. During July, 1968, the Tripartite Zengakuren split into (1) the Core and (2) the Anti-Imperialists (Hantei), comprising the Student Socialist League, the Socialist Youth League and others.

September 1969 saw the formation of the All-Japan Common Struggle League (Kyoto-rengo), a confederation of all anti-Yoyogi splinter groups (numbering more than forty at that time), such as the Anarchists, Proletarian Army, Student Freedom League, International Communist Student League, Mao League, etc. They all agreed that a successful revolution required both a historical situation which brings about public awareness of the danger of the Establishment and a revolutionary organization that is prepared to respond to that public awareness, that the Yoyogi faction is a reactionary front, and that action speaks more clearly than words. Their common grievance was that though the Yoyogi faction speaks of revolution it avoids direct confrontation with the Establishment.

Among the anti-Yoyogi factions, the Revolutionary Marxists were the most well versed in revolutionary doctrine. They were anti-Stalinists and represent the mainstream of Trotkyism in Japan, regarding the Yoyogi faction as Stalinist and the Anti-Imperialists as disorganized elements shifting between Stalinism and international proletarianism. They did not ally themselves with the JCP or the Socialists because they believe that these parties have lost the support of the proletariat; they remained separate from the Anti-imperialists, contending that unnecessary violence of the Anti-Imperialist kind cannot lead to a successful proletarian revolution.

Having shifted their tactics from direct confrontation with the police to indoctrination of members, the Revolutionary Narxists were critical of both Red China and the USSR, regard Alexander Dubcek as a bourgeois socialist, and believe that the realization of international proletarianism requires the overthrow of Stalinism, Maoism, and both U.S. and Japanese imperialism. They propose violence as a means to show the people that parliamentary government is a disguised instrument of bourgeois democracy calculated to exploit the proletariat, and claim that all forms of military alliance were detrimental to the reaization of a proletarian revolution, that international proletarianism should replace the idea of military alliance as a means of national defense and that militant demonstrations were to be spread throughout Japan by the training of militant students who will lead laborers, farmers, and urban citizens toward a proletarian revolution.

The Tripartite faction held their last meeting on July 21, 1968, spliting into the Core and the Anti-Imperialist factions. The Core is the most militant of the 28 anti-Yoyogi groups. Its lively slogan is "anti-imperialism and anti-Stalinism". The Core and the Anti-Imperialists were the most militant groups. They believe that confrontation with police and riot squad, rather than group indoctrination, provides the greatest revolutionary experience. But whether demonstrations and confrontations were successful is not the crucial issue for them. The crucial issue is to focus public attention on the dangers of imperialism and militarism. Imperialism is conceived not only in terms of military activity but also of expanding spheres of economic influence, particularly in the developing regions of the world.

Among the Anti-imperialists, the Student Socialist League, which also advocates militant tactics, commands the greatest number of followers. The Student Socialist League is a unique member of the anti-Yoyogi factions primarily because it is Stalinistic; nevertheless, it regards the Yoyogi faction as baying succumbed to state power, an imperialist in revolutionary's clothing. The League is in agreement with the Core insofar as anti-imperialism is concerned, but not on the issue of Stalinism. It lacks the theoretical orientation of both the Yoyogi faction and the RevolutionarY Marxists.

Disputes between the Yoyogi and anti-Yoyogi factions and among anti-Yoyogi factions make coalition of left wingers impossible. Though the Yoyogi and the anti-Yoyogi factions have a common goal -- the destruction of the Establishment -- their respective means to realize it differ to such an extent that coordination or conciliation between the two cannot be expected. Makoto Nakajima, a veteran of student and mass movements of the last two decades, said, "dialogue between the Yoyogi and the anti-Yoyogi factions is an impossibility.

Though student power failed to realize its goal in the 1968-69 period, their activities of that period form an important chapter in the recent history of Japanese education: it exposed the vulnerable aspects of higher education to the government, educators, and the public; it had considerable impact in the formulation of future educational policies and in educational planning. Student power is an element that cannot be ignored in modern higher education in a democratic society.