Japan in 1960 was insane.

Spectacles
Spectacles
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Published 2024-04-11
Seriously, it was a really wild (and dark) year.
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The research for this video video relied extensively on the book Japan at the Crossroads, by Nick Kapur.
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Spectacles is a love letter to democracy, its values, its caretakers, and its ideas. Around the world, individual rights and representative government are facing unprecedented attacks from the forces of reaction and revisionism. But despite liberal democracy’s real shortcomings and today’s all-too-fashionable cynicism, we remain committed to its preservation and improvement. Join us as we explore just what liberal democracy is, how it comes about, and how it can best be maintained in a changing world.
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SOURCES
A = Nick Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Harvard University Press, 2018)
B = Constitution of Japan
C = William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 (Little, Brown, and Co. 1978)
D = “The Miraculous Deliverance From a Titanic Tragedy,” for the National World War II Museum, 25 August 2020
E = Robert Fahey, “Japan Explained: The House of Councilors,” in TokyoReview, 18 July 2019.
F = Wikipedia, “1960 Japanese general election.”
G = Michelle Toh, “Living standards are still falling in Japan. That’s a recipe for more stagnation,” CNN 12 April 2023
H = Naoki Abe, “Japan’s Shrinking Economy,” for the Brookings Institute, 12 February 2010.
I = Modern Japan: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Nationalism, ed. James L. Huffman (Routledge, 2013)

CITATIONS (footnotes in English CC)
1. D.
2. I, 16; A, 14.
3. C, 472.
4. A, 8-9.
5. A, 9.
6. B.
7. A, 9-10.
8. A, 9-10.
9. A, 19.
10. A, 11.
11. A, 10.
12. A, 10.
13. A, 12.
14. A, 11-13.
15. A, 17-18.
16. A, 25.
17. A, 2.
18. A, 25.
19. A, 18.
20. A, 17-18.
21. A, 20-21.
22. A, 22-23. CORRECTION: The Diet session was scheduled to end on May 26. All succeeding event dates are correct.
23. A, 23.
24. A, 23.
25. E.
26. A, 23.
27. A, 26.
28. A, 27-29.
29. A, 29-30.
30. A, 31.
31. A, 32.
32. A, 50.
33. A, 34.
34. A, 169.
35. A, 34.
36. I, 16.
37. A, 74, 84.
38. A, 75-76.
39. A, 76.
40. A, 254.
41. A, 254.
42. A, 85-86.
43. A, 84.
44. A, 77-78.
45. A, 84-85, 98.
46. F.
47. A, 84.
48. A, 105.
49. A, 80-81.
50. A, 82.
51. A, 265.
52. A, 267; G; H.
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00:00 - Intro
02:19 - Occupation
06:33 - I. The Treaty
10:50 - II. The Protest
15:24 - III. The Murder
22:17 - Conclusion
All Comments (21)
  • @ElectrostatiCrow
    Fun fact Nobusuke Kishi was also the grandfather of Shinzo Abe.
  • @edie9158
    My grandparents grew up in the 60s in Japan. And I never understood why they were so… solemn and felt very isolated. The more I look into the historical development of post-war Japan, the more I realize what my family had to endure up until this point.
  • @USBearForce
    23:15 This segment about unavoidable tradeoffs reminded me of a quote from a famous Japanese sci-fi series: "A good autocracy might be better than even a good democracy, but a bad democracy is far better than a bad autocracy." -Yang Wen-li, from 'Legend of the Galactic Heroes' by Yoshiki Tanaka.
  • @gypsy547
    Remember when Kellogg’s CEO said poor Americans could eat cereal for dinner.
  • @u-mos8820
    Being able to explain very complex things in such a concise and simple way while also sneaking in a Warhammer reference has got to be a new intellectual milestone.
  • @thephelddagrif2907
    Interesting how that assassination and the assassination of shinzo abe both ended with less support for the one assassinated
  • @johnnyharris
    Such good concise writing. Thanks for this vid.
  • @historysuit9418
    This was so interesting! I always thought Japan was a perfect democracy after WW2 and then started an economic miracle. But what really happened is wild.
  • @dr.woozie7500
    The US allowed war criminals to stay in power to the point many of them are still revered today. Ironically, this is why Japan still believes they are the victim in WWII.
  • @gagamba9198
    Though he was arrested and jailed, Kishi was not charged, tried, or convicted of anything .
  • @katethegoat7507
    Yknow, I'd always assumed that Japanese people were just sort of culturally unable to do protests or demonstrations. Glad to know i was wrong.
  • @Nossieuk
    But is this Japans JFK mystery?
  • @Mori650
    Great video on how Japanese politics got to how it is today. Boring, technocratic, and probably the true embodiment of what an End of History truly looks likes. My grandma was a university student during the Anpo protests as a right-winger, but many of her friends dropped out of university and devoted themselves to left-wing politics. One of them got pregnant and then become disillusioned with politics altogether. My grandfather who was quite conservative until his death did vote against the LDP once out of complete disgust for them, he would only do this again in the 90s. Also, at the time it seemed like the socialist parties were the party of small businesses as he was a factory owner while the LDP was the party conglomerates. And in the late 60s and 70s, there was a wave of left-wing student protests which were incredibly violent. My mother's tutor from UTokyo got sent to prison for throwing a molotov at a police officer. Also during this time one of the most notorious terrorist groups in the world came from Japan. And the political infighting within the Japanese left was so bad that I think it was not until the early 2000s when there wasn't at least one person who was injured or killed from sectarianism. And I am sure a lot of people here visited Narita airport which probably represents some of the best things about Japan, but it was the battleground of a years long battle between an unusual alliance of farmers who did not want to give up their land and leftists against Japanese riot police and construction workers which got incredibly violent. There is quiet a few footage you can find of the "Sanrizuka" movement on YouTube that shows just how crazy things got. But if anyone is interested in literature from the 1960s, check out the short stories "Seventeen" and "Death of Political Youth" by Oe Kenzaburo. It is based off of the guy who murdered Inejiro Asanuma. Some of the most intense literature I have ever read.
  • @andrewhall7930
    Crazy fact: Isoroku Yamamoto, the Naval Admiral who orchestrated the Pearl Harbor Attacks, and who was in charge of the entire Japanese Navy for the majority of WWII... Was a student at Harvard University in Massachusetts, USA. before the war...
  • @kingdm8315
    crazy how the school cirriculum is allergic to teaching anything actually intresting