ABSTRACT

What differentiates the yakeato generation – the generation born in the 1930s – from the rest of the Japanese people who experienced the war is the social upheaval that permanently shaped their attitude to life, leading them to distrust authority in whatever form it might take. Commencing with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, life in Japan became progressively harder. The demands of war absorbed more and more of the national budget at the expense of Japanese society. Privation accelerated with the declaration of war against America in 1941. The youth of Japan, drafted into the armed forces, knew that they had little chance of returning. ‘I’ll see you at Yasukuni’ was often said among themselves and to relatives, and heard by young children in their farewells. It was in this atmosphere of social crisis, repression and instability that the yakeato generation, too young to go to war themselves, spent their early formative years. By 1945, hunger and devastation were realities of daily life in Japan, which climaxed in the terrible fire-bombings of the people of Tokyo in May 1945 and the atomic bombing of the population in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. This was the first cataclysm through which the yakeato generation survived. The second was the overthrow of imperial power, of the divine authority of the emperor stretching back thousands of years, and its replacement by a democratic constitution. A third crisis was the betrayal of the will of the people by Japanese politicians in signing the revised Security Treaty with the United States in 1960 despite massive protests by the population throughout Japan.