Anpo protests

Origins

Many on the Japanese left, and some on the right, were united in hoping to chart a more neutral course in the Cold War, and thus hoped to get rid of the treaty and the U.S.–Japan Alliance entirely. Therefore, even though the revised treaty was manifestly superior to the original treaty, these groups decided to oppose ratification of the revised treaty.

Kishi anticipated that such protests might arise, and in the fall of 1958 attempted to pass a "Police Duties Bill" which would have given police in Japan new powers of warrantless search and seizure in order to target protesters ahead of treaty ratification. However, this proved to be a miscalculation, as the law reminded many in Japan of pre-World War II authoritarianism and provoked widespread popular outrage. A nationwide coalition of political and civic organizations coalesced to oppose the Police Bill, and Kishi was forced to withdraw it.

This victory emboldened the protestors, and rather than disbanding, the anti-Police Bill coalition remained active and recruited new member organizations to oppose the revised Security Treaty, which was in the final stages of negotiation. Rebranding itself the People's Council for Preventing Revision of the Security Treaty (Anpo Jōyaku Kaitei Soshi Kokumin Kaigi) in the spring of 1959, the coalition coordinated a series of "united actions" in which thousands of local "joint struggle councils" around the nation would take part in coordinated protest activity on specified days.

Growth

Over the rest of 1959 and into 1960, the protest movement continued to gradually grow larger, especially as heightening Cold War tensions inspired fear that the new treaty would lock Japan into one side of a dangerous global conflict. The April 1960 revolution in Korea that forced US-backed strongman Syngman Rhee from power proved an inspiration to Japanese protesters, as it showed that autocratic governments could be defeated by popular protests, even if they had the backing of the United States.

Then on May 1, the U-2 Incident shattered the amiable "Spirit of Camp David" that had prevailed between the United States and the Soviet Union since Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's visit to the United States the previous September. In the aftermath of the incident, the Soviet Union disinvited Eisenhower from his planned visit to the USSR the coming summer and the brief thaw in the Cold War came to an end. It also came to light that some of the U-2 spy planes that were used to surveil the Soviet Union were based at US bases in Japan, further fueling fears that in the case of a nuclear war, Japan might become a target.

May 19th Incident

Meanwhile, in the National Diet the revised treaty faced an arduous path to ratification. Although the opposition Japan Socialist Party (JSP) controlled only about a third of the seats in the Diet, and thus lacked the votes to prevent ratification, the Socialists used a variety of parliamentary tactics to drag out debate, in hopes of preventing ratification before Eisenhower's planned arrival on June 19, and giving the extra-parliamentary protests more time to grow.

With Eisenhower's visit approaching, Kishi became increasingly anxious to ratify the treaty in time. Moreover, the Diet session was scheduled to end almost a month earlier, on May 26. Late in the evening on May 19, Kishi took the desperate measure of suddenly and unexpectedly calling for a 50-day extension of the Diet session, in defiance of longstanding parliamentary norms and over the opposition of many members of his own ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). When Socialist Diet members staged a sit-in in the halls of the Diet, Kishi took the unprecedented step of calling 500 police officers into the Diet chambers and having opposition lawmakers physically removed from the premises. Thereafter, with only members of his own party present, he passed the extension of the Diet Session. A final shock came after midnight, just after the extension was approved, when Kishi then called for immediate ratification of the treaty. With only members of Kishi's own party present, the revised Security Treaty was approved by the Lower House of the Diet with no debate and only a voice vote. According to Japanese law, if the Upper House failed to vote on the treaty, which seemed highly likely given the political chaos, the treaty would automatically take effect 30 days later on June 19, just in time for Eisenhower's arrival.

Kishi's "anti-democratic" actions during this May 19th Incident (五・一九事件, Go-ichi-kyū jiken) stunned the nation and even much of his own party. Kishi received criticism from across the political spectrum, with even conservative newspapers calling for his resignation. In late May and into June, the anti-Treaty protests greatly increased in size, as many ordinary citizens took to the streets to express their outrage, and the aims of the protests expanded from protesting the Security Treaty to ousting Kishi and "protecting democracy."

Large protests around the National Diet, the US Embassy, and the Prime Minister's Official Residence in Tokyo occurred on a near daily basis, and large-scale protests were staged in city centers all over Japan. In June, the Sōhyō labor federation carried out a series of nationwide general strikes. The June 15 strike involved 6.4 million workers across the country, making it the largest strike in Japan's history.

Hagerty Incident

On June 10, Eisenhower's Press Secretary James Hagerty arrived at Tokyo's Haneda Airport to make advance preparations for Eisenhower's impending arrival. Hagerty was picked up in a black car by US Ambassador to Japan Douglas MacArthur II (the nephew of the famous general), who deliberately provoked an international incident by ordering that the car be driven into a large crowd of protesters. The protesters surrounded the car, cracking its windows, smashing its tail lights, and rocking it back and forth for more than an hour while standing on its roof, chanting anti-American slogans and singing protest songs. Ultimately, MacArthur and Hagerty had to be rescued by a US Marines military helicopter, creating indelible imagery of the so-called Hagerty Incident (ハガチー事件, Hagachii jiken) that was transmitted by newswires around the world.

MacArthur had hoped that the image of the car surrounded by protesters would incentivize the Japanese government to crack down harder on the protests. However, his actions backfired by suggesting instead that Eisenhower's safety would be at risk if he continued with his plans to visit Japan.

June 15th Incident

On June 15, as part of the anti-Treaty coalition's 24th united action, hundreds of thousands of protestors marched on the National Diet in Tokyo. In the late afternoon, the protestors were attacked by right-wing ultranationalist counter-protestors, who rammed them with trucks and attacked them with wooden staves spiked with nails, causing dozens of injuries from moderate to severe, including several hospitalizations.

Just a few minutes later, radical left-wing activists from the nationwide student federation Zengakuren smashed their way into the Diet compound itself, precipitating a long battle with police, who beat the unarmed students bloody with their batons in front of mass media reporters and television cameras. The police finally succeeded in clearing the Diet compound after 1 a.m., but in the struggle, a young female Tokyo University student and Zengakuren member named Michiko Kanba was killed.

After this violent June 15th Incident (六・一五事件, Roku-ichi-go jiken), pressure mounted on Kishi to cancel Eisenhower's visit. Kishi hoped to secure the streets for Eisenhower's visit by calling out the Japan Self Defense Forces and tens of thousands of right-wing thugs that would be provided by his friend, the yakuza-affiliated right-wing "fixer" Yoshio Kodama. However, he was talked out of these extreme measures by his cabinet, and thereafter had no choice but to cancel Eisenhower's visit and take responsibility for the chaos by announcing his own resignation on June 16.

On June 17, newspapers across the nation, which had previously supported the protestors in their struggle to oust Kishi, issued a joint editorial condemning violence on both sides and calling for an end to the protest movement. Nevertheless, the largest single day of protests in the entire movement took place on June 18, the day before the treaty would automatically take effect. Hundreds of thousands of protesters surrounded the National Diet, hoping to somehow stop the treaty at the last moment. The protestors remained in place until after midnight, when the treaty automatically took effect.

With the treaty in force and Kishi's resignation becoming official on July 15, the protest movement lost momentum. Although the anti-Treaty coalition held a few more "united actions," turnout was low, and the movement died away.

Aftermath and consequences

The 1960 Anpo protests had ultimately failed to stop the revised US-Japan Security Treaty from taking effect, but they did force the resignation of the Kishi Cabinet and the cancellation of Eisenhower's planned visit. Kishi was succeeded as prime minister by Hayato Ikeda, who took a much more conciliatory stance toward the political opposition, indefinitely shelved Kishi's plans to revise the Japanese Constitution, and announced the Income Doubling Plan to redirect the nation's energies away from contentious political struggles and toward a nationwide drive for rapid economic growth.

The anti-American aspect of the protests and the humiliating cancellation of Eisenhower's visit brought US-Japan relations to their lowest ebb since the end of World War II. However, the incoming administration of President John F. Kennedy responded by taking a more gentle approach to US-Japan relations. Kennedy appointed sympathetic Japan expert and Harvard University professor Edwin O. Reischauer as ambassador to Japan, rather than a career diplomat. He also invited Ikeda to be the first foreign leader to visit the United States in his term in office, and at their 1961 summit, promised Ikeda he would henceforth treat Japan more like a close ally such as Great Britain.

In Japan, the protests spurred a new wave of right-wing activism and violence, including the assassination of Socialist Party chairman Inejirō Asanuma during a televised election debate in the fall of 1960. Asanuma's assassination weakened the JSP, which was further riven by conflicts over the conduct of the anti-Treaty protests, leading to the splitting off of the breakaway Democratic Socialist Party.

The Anpo protests also influenced a series of transformations in Japanese art and literature, as disillusionment with the failure of the protests to stop the treaty led more artists and writers to experiment with new types of artistic and literary forms.

Japanese students who were in college or graduate school between 1960 and 1970 and protested against the Security Treaty are often remembered as the Anpo Generation (安保世代, Anpo sedai), suggesting the defining role the anti-Treaty protests had in their lives. However, the protests had a splintering effect on the student movement, as heated disagreements over who was to blame for the failure to stop the treaty led to infighting. In the immediate aftermath of the protests, the previously unified nationwide Zengakuren student federation disintegrated into numerous warring factions, paving the way for the rise of the radical New Left sects that would play a leading role in the 1968-69 Japanese university protests.

1970 Anpo protests

Throughout the 1960s, left-wing activists looked forward to the end of the revised treaty's initial 10-year term in 1970 as an opportunity to try to persuade the Japanese government to abrogate the treaty. In 1970, in the wake of the 1968–69 Japanese university protests in Japan, a number of student groups, civic groups, and the anti-Vietnam War organization Beheiren held a series of protest marches against the Security Treaty. However, prime minister Eisaku Satō (who was Kishi's younger brother) opted to ignore the protests completely and allow the treaty to automatically renew.