ABSTRACT
Up until 1960 issues raised by the war and the Occupation continued to dominate Japanese politics and society. Until the mid-1950s many Japanese remained preoccupied with survival or, if not destitute, with just making ends meet, but at the same time many thousands involved themselves actively in the political and social issues of the day. The great ideological divide created by the ‘reverse course’ in SCAP policy and accelerated by Japanese conservative governments made the 1950s a decade of political turmoil. It was marked by violent popular movements and mass demonstrations as well as angry rhetoric between the ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ political camps, which culminated in the anti-Security Treaty demonstrations and the coinciding Miike coal mine strike in 1960.
