ABSTRACT
As in France 1968, Japan’s ruling conservatives in 1960 emerged from the popular upsurge as shaken but stronger; while the scale of the protests instilled an acute sense of crisis, subsequent elections in both countries amply confirmed political status quo. The conservatives’ hold on the government in Japan thereafter was solidified in their growth-adapted agenda setting, to which the policy-incompetent socialists had nothing to offer, producing a glaringly unequal party competition based squarely on conservative territory and terms. The 1960 events were transitional in another sense, representing the culmination of the party/union-centred mobilizations of the 1950s, alongside exhibiting autonomous activism that was to acquire increasing significance. Nonetheless, treaty’s evident insertion in the US military machine ensured continued eruptions of protests when things took an ominous term, although on a far smaller scale then in 1960.
