ABSTRACT
Infighting characterized the student political landscape of Japanese universities throughout the early 1960s; in 1968 radical groups formed federations to unite their efforts against university administrations, oppressive ideologies of the establishment, and government political actions.1 The willingness of warring student groups to join forces sig-- naled both widespread perception of a common enemy and the realiza-- tion among student groups that they would need to generate a lot more power than they could individually to fight their administrations or gov-- ernment. Anti-Vietnam War and anti-U.S. imperialist sentiments ran high among Japan's studentry, uniting student groups in a shared cause; recent battles with police defending a "collaborative" government pro-- vided forces with which they could physically battle. In January 1968 the docking of the U.S. aircraft carrier Enterprise at the Sasebo Naval Base before it headed to South Vietnam brought hundreds of students to the base, where they were overwhelmed by overzealous Japanese police troops. The students made several futile attempts to enter the base, and paid heavily for their efforts. Japan's studentry nevertheless grew bolder. For example, when U.S. marines, wounded in Vietnam, began arriving in Tokyo, demonstrating students battled police guarding the hospital, setting vehicles on fire and accidentally killing a local resident. Not all student uprisings were as organized as those against the U.S. military presence in Japan, though many were as violent, and as police forces continued to suppress the demonstrations, the focus of student resist-- ance shifted: students began to attack the police, whom they viewed as their oppressors, more openly. Students turned up at demonstrations wearing hard hats and gas masks, and armed with sticks and sometimes Molotov cocktails. In October 1968 demonstrating students and workers
rioted in several districts of Tokyo, destroying train stations and torch-- ing police vehicles. Riot police brutally dispersed the demonstrators, though it took some doing, as students came prepared for a fight; similar incidents occurred at a number of stations and universities throughout the year, with similar results. In 1968 and 1969, students were ready and willing to riot in their struggle against oppression and for political change.
