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Abstract
Although much has been written about Yoshimoto Takaaki’s political philosophy and Terayama Shūji’s art as two of the most relevant figures in the culture of the Japanese long 1968, it has not yet been addressed how the qualitative content of their respective works displayed a similar worldview through different media to the point of generating a sort of indirect dialogue. This article aims to fill this gap in our understanding by addressing this connection through the analysis of the intersection between Yoshimoto’s influential theory of taishū (‘the masses’) and Terayama’s parody of characters, as epitomized in his most iconic film Sho o suteyo machi e deyō (Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets, 1971). Likewise, I critically explore how Yoshimoto and Terayama’s anti-establishment distrust of ideology and words contributed to the ethos of the Japanese New Left, especially its student Zenkyōtō (All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees) movement, halfway between the modern and the postmodern. The interdisciplinary approach to two such seemingly distant media as written political philosophy and cinema will dialectically contribute to our understanding of the cultural history of the Japanese long 1968 by tracing the thread of its anti-establishment imagination.
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Notes
1 Guarné and De Vargas (Citation2021, 121–125) define the ‘Japanese long 1968’ as a period of political revolts led by the student movement from 1966 to 1972. The main areas of activism making up this historical phenomenon were the anti-Vietnam War protests, the occupation of university campuses by the student Zenkyōtō movement, the Sanrizuka Struggle against the construction of the Narita International Airport, the demonstrations for the return of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty, and the campaign against the second renewal of the Anpo.
2 As Ridgely (Citation2010, 116) points out, the film’s title, Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets, was likely taken from the afterword to André Gide’s book Les nourritures terrestres (The Fruits of the Earth, 1897), in which the narrator repeatedly demands that his imagined reader throw out the book. This is consistent with Terayama’s own words in one of his essays: ‘When you finish reading this, it’s okay to rip it up and yell “this is bullshit!” That energy will be the moral gasoline that incites you to live your tomorrow.’ (Noonan Citation2012, 22).
3 On October 21, riots broke out in Shinjuku, Tokyo, with the degree of violence employed by protestors going beyond previous demonstrations. As Marotti (Citation2009, 134) points out, ‘the events in Shinjuku established a new equilibrium between state violence and public opinion, restoring legitimacy to police suppression, and threatening to once again reduce activists’ voices to mere noise’. He adds: ‘New confidence by police and courts in public support against “protester violence” enabled escalated measures, including mass arrests, extended pretrial detentions, searches […] and finally, full-scale assaults against barricaded campuses.’ (loc cit.). The photographer Moriyama Daido, who extensively collaborated with Terayama Shūji, said: ‘It was like that was an epoch-making day. […] It is the date Shinjuku will be remembered for. For me, October 21 stands out over and above the politics’ (Nishiyo Citation2010).
4 For insight into the Zenkyōtō movement, see Yasko (Citation1997).
5 For insight into the relationship between Yoshimoto Takaaki and Mishima Yukio, see Tomioka (Citation2012).
6 The inability to connect with the masses sometimes revealed itself as an ultimate consequence of the lack of priority interest in such a connection, as the following words by a student activist suggest: ‘We seek solidarity, but don’t fear isolation.’ (Muto and Inoue Citation1985, 68)
7 For insight into the ATG, see Alekseyeva (Citation2021).
8 Yoshimoto critically saw the process whereby Marx’s ideas became an ideology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as similar to the process whereby the ideas of the Buddhist monk Shinran (1173–1263) became ideology after his death in the thirteenth century. According to Yoshimoto, Shinran broke with the prevailing Buddhism of his time, which he considered to be a set of dogmas removed from the real and concrete day-to-day experience of the masses. However, his doctrine also became dogma over time and was used by elites to prevent the emancipation of the masses on which that discourse was built (Yang Citation2005, 193–194). In this regard, Yoshimoto’s criticism of ideologies was independent to his criticism of modern and Western thought, since the processes whereby ideas become ideologies that idealize the masses take place at any time in history.
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Ferran De Vargas
Ferran de Vargas is a postdoctoral fellow at the ALTER research team, Open University of Catalonia. His investigations focus on the intersection between modern Japanese aesthetic movements and intellectual history, and have led to the publication of several articles in academic journals such as positions, Arts, The Sixties and Film-Philosophy.