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Japan's Streets of Rage: The 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty Uprising and the Origins of Contemporary Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Nick Kapur
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Abstract

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This excerpt from the author's recent book Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Harvard University Press, 2018) describes the dramatic climax of the massive 1960 protests in Japan against the US-Japan Security Treaty (abbreviated Anpo in Japanese), which is the treaty that continues to allow the United States to station troops on Japanese soil to this day. Events described include the May 19th incident, in which Japanese prime minister Kishi Nobusuke shocked the nation by ramming the treaty through the National Diet after having opposition lawmakers physically removed by police; the Hagerty Incident of June 10, in which a car carrying US envoys was mobbed by protesters, necessitating a dramatic rescue by a US Marines helicopter; and the June 15 incident, in which radical student activists forced their way into the National Diet compound, precipitating a bloody battle with police during which a young female university student was killed. Shock at these events accelerated a variety of transformations in US-Japan relations and Japanese politics, society, and culture that continue to shape contemporary Japan and which are described in detail in the book excerpted here.

Keywords

AnpoUS-Japan Security TreatyKishi NobusukeHagerty IncidentKanba Michiko
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 18 , Issue 11 , May 2020 , e3
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2020

References

Notes

1 Hirata Tetsuo, Gendai Nihon no keisei (Tokyo: Kōkura Shobō, 1983), 147.

2 Hidaka Rokurō, ed., 1960-nen 5-gatsu 19-nichi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1960), 46.

3 The first time was on June 2, 1956, in a clash over the law that did away with the locally elected school boards established during the US Occupation in favor of more centralized decision-making at the prefectural level. On June 3, 1954, police entered the Diet building, but not the actual Diet chambers. See Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860–1960 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), 143–150.

4 For example, Fukumoto Kunio, who at the time was the personal assistant of Kishi's chief cabinet secretary Shiina Etsusaburō, recalled being dispatched by Shiina at the height of the crisis to meet with a group of top bankers at a geisha house in Yanagibashi where he was told, “The general desire of the financial world is that Kishi should resign and that Ike's visit should be cancelled.” He was also told, “Please replace [Kishi] with Ikeda [Hayato].” When Shiina reported this to Kishi, Kishi reportedly became enraged and threatened to cut off loans from the Japan Development Bank. Fukumoto Kunio, Omote butai, ura butai: Fukumoto Kunio kaikoroku (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2007), 32–34.

5 Asahi Shinbun Hyakunen-shi Henshū Iinkai, ed., Asahi Shinbun shashi: Shōwa sengo hen (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1994), 289.

6 Quoted in Edward Whittemore, The Press in Japan Today: A Case Study (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1961), 54–55.

7 This incident is described in the records of the Tokyo District Court, which are cited in Tanaka Jirō, Satō Isao, and Nomura Jirō, eds., Sengo seiji saiban shiroku, 5 vols. (Tokyo: Daiichi Hōki Shuppan, 1980), 3:245–246.

8 See MacArthur to Department of State, June 10, 1960, in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States 1958–1960, vol. 18, Japan; Korea, ed. Madeline Chi and Louis J. Smith (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1994), 331–332; and MacArthur to Department of State, June 12, 1960, reproduced in Documents on United States Policy toward Japan III: Japanese Internal Affairs as Seen by the American Diplomats, 1960, 9 vols., ed. Ishii Osamu and Ono Naoki (Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō, 1997), 2:219–222.

9 MacArthur to Secretary of State, June 16, 1960, White House Office Records, Records of the Staff Secretary 1952–61, International Series, Box 9, Folder “Japan—Vol. III of III (1),” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

10 Quoted in Mainichi Shinbunsha, ed., Iwanami Shoten to Bungei Shunjū: Sekai, Bungei Shunjū ni miru sengo shichō (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1996), 323.