The 'Season of Schisms': When Japanese student protests turned inward

History · Published 19 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: In the late 1960s, Japanese university campuses became battlegrounds. But the most intense fighting wasn't always against the police; it was between the protesters themselves. This era of radical activism devolved into a bizarre cycle of internal violence, where students fought each other with wooden staves and colored helmets.

The Japanese New Left emerged in the 1960s as a radical alternative to the 'Old Left,' specifically the Japanese Communist Party (JCP). While the JCP initially pushed students into 'mountain village guerrilla squads' in 1950, a disastrous reversal of policy by 1955 and the 1956 'Secret Speech' by Nikita Khrushchev caused a massive rift. Dissident students broke away to form groups like the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League (Kakukyōdō) and 'The Bund.' By 1959, these groups seized control of the Zengakuren student federation, shifting the movement toward confrontational 'direct action.'

A fierce peak occurred for the group amidst 1960 Anpo demonstrations concerning the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. On June 15, 1960, a bloody struggle at the National Diet compound resulted in the death of Bund activist Michiko Kanba. Although the protests forced the resignation of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, they failed to stop the treaty's revision. This failure, combined with the perceived 'stifling hierarchy' of the Old Left, caused the movement to splinter into numerous warring 'sects' (sekuto).

This period became known as the 'season of schisms' (bunretsu no kisetsu). Radical groups engaged in uchi-geba—internal violence—where activists armed themselves with wooden staves (gebabō) and helmets to battle rival factions. While some sought broader unity through groups like Beheiren or Zenkyōtō, others became obsessed with abstract philosophical concepts like 'self-negation.' By 1969, public backlash and new legislation allowing police to smash campus barricades effectively crippled the movement's momentum.

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