Nick Kapur. Japan at the Crossroads

The mass protests against renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 occupy a firmly established place in most historical narratives of postwar Japan, so it is simply assumed to be one of those topics that historians of modern Japan know well. Nick Kapur’s Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo refutes this assumption by demonstrating how narrow our understanding has been, reminding us of the relative dearth of English-language historical scholarship on this subject, and most significantly, recasting the 1960 moment within the history of the early postwar period. Nick Kapur’s Japan at the Crossroads opens with an incisive description of the context, stakes, and developments of the anti-treaty movement and protests, but this is mere prelude to a book that is centrally about the legacies of “Anpo,” the Japanese term serving as both the shortened translation of the treaty’s name and an encapsulation of the conflicts that surrounded its renewal. Kapur characterizes Anpo as an “inflection point” that amplified some arcs from the 1950s and bent others (271), rendering 1960 a “revolutionary moment” that foreclosed some possibilities and birthed others (7). The book’s chapters delve into the impacts of Anpo for various aspects of political, social, and cultural life in the early 1960s, primarily in the realms of domestic politics, diplomatic relations with the U.S., social movements, and artistic creation. For the U.S.-Japan relationship, the protests proved to be a pivotal strain after which both President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato recognized the need for repairing and reinforcing the alliance between the two countries. Out of 1960 thus came a more consultative and reciprocal U.S.-Japan relationship based on a “foundational compromise” (37) whereby the U.S. granted Japan greater access to its markets and Japan stood more solidly behind U.S. Cold War foreign policy goals around the globe. For social movements, what was viewed as the failures of Anpo spelled the end of the broad-based leftist coalition that had fueled the street protests of 1959 and 1960, giving rise to the New Left and new forms of protest. At the same time, the specter of leftist ascendance reinvigorated right-wing organizations. For the artistic and literary worlds, Kapur suggests that Anpo sealed the fate of a belief in ideological absolutes, provoking a younger generation of artists and writers to revolt and experiment with forms and structures of production.

Compromise · Media studies · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Treaty · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies