Chronicle of Fire, Revolution, and Young Blood" -- Records of 1968-44

Chronicle of Fire, Revolution, and Young Blood" -- Records of 1968-44

That year, I was in a branch school of a university. No, "attending" a branch school doesn't quite cover it. We were "boarding" there. Liberal arts? We didn't have time to live up to that name. I found myself chairing a university-wide strike. The strike was called off, but the next year I was let go. The school told me, "You can't come here anymore. What a dramatic way to get kicked out, right?

Those were the days when Molotov cocktails were flying around. The Communist Party and other sects in the area were all holding up a sea of fire as proof of their righteousness. I, too, was sucked in by that fever at one time. But I became disillusioned quickly. Something in me cooled down before I got involved in the violence. Terayama Shuji's words stuck in my mind more than Miyamoto Kenji's speech. At the time when Rokusuke Ei was holding the microphone on the street, I was looking for my own words.

That's where it all started. That's when I started re-reading history myself. I holed up on the back shelf of a used bookstore with a pen instead of a Molotov cocktail. I read hundreds of books. I even read Tadashi Ishimoda's history books and Koichiro Ueda's theories on communism. But in the end, what remained was not anyone's theory, but my own experience.

History is not about the years written on a blackboard in a lecture room. It was the memory of a sleepless night with the smell of gunpowder still on my temples. I wanted to put it into words, so I began to write a novel. Losing my dream of revolution, I was looking for fire in words. I wanted to give the middle finger to the "political," not to Masao Maruyama, but to the "political.

Defeated in the struggle, I ran away. But I didn't just run away. I wanted to make history in my own way, with a different weapon, with a different way of fighting. That year, I was in collision with an era, for sure. Was I young?　Yes, I was young. But I didn't tell a single lie.

[Related materials

Japan's 1968: What We Dreamed of, Kiyotada Tsutsui, ed.
Revolutionary Impulse in 1968," Satoshi Ukai, ed.
Todai Zenkyoto 1968-1969," Yoshitaka Yamamoto
Politics and Culture in the 1960s" Toshiya Yoshimi
Ministry of Justice data on the "Anti-Defense Law" (in Japanese)