Japan
World War II: a people's war? - Howard Zinn
Historian Howard Zinn critically analyses the conception that World War II was really a "people's war" against fascism, as opposed to yet another inter-imperialist conflict with nothing to offer working people.
Zengakuren: Japan's Revolutionary Students
This is an excellent historical introduction to the period of Japanese student radicalism that began after the war in the wake of the increasingly ineffective strategies of the Japanese Communist Party and which culminated in massive social unrest and change around the Japanese school system and society in general.
Chapters:
1. Historical Background
2. Origins of Zengakuren
3. The Anti-Ampo Struggle
4. The University Problem
5. The University Struggles
6. Kakumaru - Portrait of an Ultra-Radical Group
7. The Future...?
Who's Who in Zengakuren and the Youth Movement in 1969
Download the PDF to read the book.
Berlitz launches legal blitz against striking instructors in Tokyo
Berlitz General Union Tokyo (Begunto) supported by the National Union of General Workers (NUGW) have launched a strike against the international language school Berlitz.
The rotating strike is in its 14th month, and Berlitz is trying to break the strike with a lawsuit directed at the five teachers who serve as volunteer Begunto executives, as well as two officials of the National Union of General Workers (NUGW) Tokyo Nambu: President Yujiro Hiraga and Louis Carlet, the deputy general secretary and case officer for Begunto.
1945: US responses to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Selected quotations from US officials about the dropping of nuclear weapons on Japan which demonstrate that the bombing was not to end the war, but was to issue a warning to its Cold War rival.
"...the greatest thing in history."
- Harry S. Truman
President of the United States during the Atomic Bombing
"It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse."
- General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold
Commanding General of the U.S. Army
Air Forces Under President Truman
The Chinese anarchist movement
A history of the Chinese anarchist movement in France, Japan and China itself from 1900 up to the formation of the Chinese Communist Party.
R. Scalapino and G.T. Yu.
Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, 1961
Contents
Editor's Note
Preface
The Origins of Chinese Anarchism
Anarchism and the Nationalist Revolution
The Work-Study Movement
The Anarchist Conflict With Marxism
Editor's Footnote
Editor’s Note
1918: Rice riots and strikes in Japan
From July-September 1918, Japan was swept with a wave of riots from rural fishing villages to major industrial centres and coal fields, in what was the largest upheaval in Japan to date, and the widest ranging popular disturbances since the unrest during the Meiji restoration of 1868.
1905-1918 in Japan was called the Era of Popular Violence (民衆騒擾期, minshû sôjô ki). This began with the Hibiya Incendiary Incident (日比谷焼討事件, Hibiya Yakiuchi Jiken) - a citywide riot in Tokyo that started with a banned protest in Hibiya park; against the terms of the Portsmouth Treaty which ended the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905.
Sakae, Osugi, 1885-1923
A biography of Japanese anarchist Osugi Sakae.
1. Ōsugi and Bakunin
Narita Airport riots (video clip)
A video of the riots against the construction of Narita Airport in Tokyo, Japan during the 1970s.
The video is hosted on YouTube and has English subtitles. The riots included students and farmers protesting against the airport's construction, and involved pitched battles against the police with molotov cocktails and explosives.
Precarious workers and the cyber-homeless - Mayday march in Japan
There are 2.3 million young casualised and part-time workers in Japan.
Takeshi Yamashita does not look like a homeless person. From his carefully distressed jeans to his casual-cool navy striped T-shirt, he is every bit the trendy Tokyoite. Yet the 26-year-old has been sleeping in a reclining seat in an Internet cafe every night for the past month since he lost his steady office job and his apartment.
1990: Worker insurgency in Osaka
You must help yourself: Neo-liberal geographies and worker insurgency in Osaka.
YOU MUST HELP YOURSELF:
NEO-LIBERAL GEOGRAPHIES AND WORKER INSURGENCY IN OSAKA
"I realize as the train pulls in that the station is on fire. The platform is aflame and below the streets are empty with people running past occasionally. Something is happening. I pick up some rocks and start throwing them at a police line."
-anonymous rioter at Kamagasaki
