Japanese Students In Campaign Against U.S.

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31649, 8 April 1968, Page 10

Japanese Students In Campaign Against U.S.

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) TOKOROA, April 5.

A fierce and sometimes bloody campaign of rioting and demonstrations against the United States is taxing the Japanese Government, one of Washington’s main Asian allies.

At the heart of the campaign is a small, but resolute, splinter group of Marxist university students who are determined to turn Japan away from the United States and towards China.

Their campaign began in October of last year, when the Prime Minister (Mr Eisaku Sato) visited the United States and South Vietnam. Before each trip, students rioted at Tokyo Airport in attempts to prevent him reaching his plane. One student was killed and hundreds injured in the protests, which marked the reemergence of students as a significant factor in the Japanese political scene. In the latest demonstrations 202 persons were arrested. Spurred on by press and television publicity, the students have gone on to new causes.

They took to the streets of Sasebo, in southern Japan, in

January to protest against the courtesy visit of the United States nuclear attack carrier Enterprise. In February, and again last week, they fought with police over United States proposals to open a military hospital in Tokyo to cope with the increased flow of Vietnam war wounded to Japan. The hospital is due to open next month. They have also rioted against the Japanese Government’s proposals to build a second international airport for Tokyo, on the grounds that the civil airport could have military uses. Student unrest is endemic in Japan, where the years at university represent almost the sole opportunity for a Japanese to break out of the country’s conformist pattern of society. The students belong automatically to the national student federation, the Zengakuren, which in 1960, put thousands of students into the streets to protest against the signing later that year of the Japan-United States Security Treaty, and against a visit to Japan by President Eisenhower, which had to be cancelled. But it is not the factionridden federation which is staging the current riots, but a tiny element within it, the Sampa Rengo, an alliance of three Trotskyite - Marxist

splinter factions which regards the orthodox Japanese Communist Party leaders as “backsliding revisionists.” Sampa Rengo can muster about 2000 students, who appear wearing plastic industrial helmets, carrying clubs and armed with revolutionary zeal to risk their safety and even their lives.

The Public Security Investigation Agency estimates that the three factions have a yearly income of about $75,000, mostly from student subscriptions and from Japanese companies trading with China.

Their declared aim is to force the Japanese Government to revoke the security treaty with the United States in 1970, when it can be reviewed. The agreement merely provides that, if either party wishes, a second look can be taken at the agreement which assures Japanese security in return for the use of Japanese bases. Japan, under Mr Sato's Liberal Democratic Government, has been moving steadily closer to the United States, and the students’ chances in present circumstances of forcing any meaningful changes appear slender. But they have shown that during the next two years they are going to try hard.