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14 Comments

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  saborichan at 09:10 AM JST - 8th January

  Did anyone see much about the protests against the G8 summit held last summer? I recall reading that the protestors were shunted out of sight to a nearby field or something for their protests, well out of view of the erai foreign guests. Would that have really made for good pictures?

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  Nessie at 09:25 AM JST - 8th January

  The "Japanese activism since 1970" section fills an entire broom closet.

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  bakabaka at 09:30 AM JST - 8th January

  actually it must be a very small broom closet :)

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  wanderlust at 12:38 PM JST - 8th January

  The only book Japanese wrote on activism - Japanese seeking a Better World - was printed in Hawaii, as no publisher in Japan would handle it...

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  borscht at 02:30 PM JST - 8th January

  If he's comparing real Japanese women with geisha, he needs to dig a bit further into Japan.

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  Helly at 05:03 PM JST - 8th January

  'Japanese protesting for equal rights' I laughed so hard I nearly peed my pants.

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  GenevaMan at 08:23 PM JST - 8th January

  The student movements in US and Europe brought a whole lot of new ideas and reforms. It brought some change and allowed society to get a bit more free. Nothing of this happened in Japan. The japanese student movement was a gray, violent and ultra-nationalistic movement. Those students didn't fight for any other cause than their beloved homeland. That's why they didn't bring any changes to the Homosexuals, women, koreans and all the groups that are oppressed by the mighty homo japonicus.

  The japanese student movement was NOT a leftist movement, but a firmly nationalistic violent enterprise, that didn't give anything to Japan, except those terrorist leftist sects in the 70's. They were unfunny and deeply negative. \

  Comparing the lesftists in EU and US to the japanese student movements is a big joke,, if you ask me.

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  GenevaMan at 08:26 PM JST - 8th January

  And saying that women took an active part in the student movement is NOT true. They were allowed to demonstrate with some male escorts, but usually didn't take any part in it and were preparing the bento. On the other hand, the terrorists groups in the 70 (especially Sekigun), had some prominent female members.

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  GenevaMan at 08:27 PM JST - 8th January

  And Celine Dion is not american. And she is quite a lame singer and a lame choice for this kind of exhibition.

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  Dogdog at 01:32 AM JST - 9th January

  Good post Geneva Man,

  It makes me laugh when I hear some Japanese compare their 60's movement to Europe or the US civil rights movement.

  However I still think that if the US draft hadn't been introduced, most of the 60's movement wouldn't have happened and the protesters, most white middle class Americans, would have been indifferent about African Amaricans and working class white Americans dieing in Vietnam.

  However as a final note, the US civil rights movement was the real thing and I can't wait for the 20th. I hope MLK is watching from a spiritual afar

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  MeanRingo at 06:24 AM JST - 9th January

  In winter... it is too cold.

  In summer... it is too hot.

  This is the extent of the protest movements I've witnessed in Japan. Though, there was that time the Korean seal hung around in Japanese coastal waters for a time and the Governor of the prefecture wanted to give it J-citizenship. Then all the Japanese-born Koreans started asking for the same deal. But I guess that doesn't count as Japanese civil rights activism because they were only born and raised here.

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  NeoJamal at 06:28 AM JST - 9th January

  The japanese student movement was NOT a leftist movement, but a firmly nationalistic violent enterprise

  Japanese resistance against US occupation = Japanese Nationalism

  duly noted.

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  Betzee at 12:30 AM JST - 11th January

  They were allowed to demonstrate with some male escorts, but usually didn't take any part in it and were preparing the bento.

  Liberation from the gender division of labor doesn't occur in tandem with protesting your country's foreign policy. I remember once hearing Francis Ford Coppola, in a documentary film on feature films of the 1970s, remark that as the 1960s counterculture movement played itself out, female participants became aware of their support status and began to ask, "Why do I always have to make the coffee, why can't we take this to the next level?"

  Women's liberation didn't become a movement until the 1970s. Women were still routinely referred to as girls as evidenced by the Newsweek cover caption from 1975 "The Girl Who Shot President Ford" accompanied by a photo of 28-year old Mansion cult member Squeaky Fromme. (Many people date the end of the counterculture movement in the USA to the horrific murders of Sharon Tate and her friends in 1969.)

  By the time I started college in the late 1970s, there were two options for those with a bent toward activism. One was protesting South Africa through divestiture aimed at isolating the white regime. This involved high-profile stuff like sleeping outside the president's house and demonstrating outside board meetings. Those involved saw themselves as heirs to the 1960s protest movement.

  The other was getting the recycling movement off the ground. Creating awareness of finite resources and organizing collection of newspapers, etc. The people involved in this were a different sort, really low profile. But their efforts had a lasting impact on the college and broader society even though they will never be recognized by any public exhibit.

  That being said, I would like to see this one if it's on national tour. I recently saw "TransPop and Images from the Vietnam War." It was cool.

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  Spidey at 11:50 AM JST - 16th January

  Japanese activism...now there's an oxymoron if there ever was one!

  S

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