The Burning Youth of the Medical Department: The Struggle for the University of Tokyo and the Era of Katsunori Honda (1968-1969)

The Burning Youth of the Medical Department: The Struggle for the University of Tokyo and the Era of Katsunori Honda (1968-1969)

At the end of the 1960s, the world was in turmoil. The May Revolution in Paris, the anti-war movement in the U.S., the Cultural Revolution in China-these waves reached the Far Eastern island nation of Japan, and the anger of students shook the campuses. The so-called Todai Struggle that erupted at the University of Tokyo between 1968 and 1969 is a historical event that fundamentally challenged the educational, political, and social structures of postwar Japan.

At the center of the struggle was the protest against the "intern system. The post-licensure internship system at the University of Tokyo Hospital was rife with unpaid work, long hours, and inhumane conditions. Young medical students stood up against the system, appealing for university administration, academic freedom, and human dignity.

At the heart of this movement was the "University of Tokyo Zenkyoto (University of Tokyo Zenkyoto Council). Unlike the existing student government, the Zenkyoto was a nonpartisan, noncongress organization that brought together students and dissident faculty members who did not belong to any sect. The Zengakkoto used debate and occupation as weapons to shake the very foundations of the university system.

The internal structure was as follows:

- The active bodies were organized by department, with the School of Medicine, the School of Law, the School of Letters, the School of Liberal Arts, etc., forming their own Zenkyoto and cooperating with each other in the Zenkyoto Conference.
- The leadership was composed of rotating discussion meetings, without a clear leader, and based on the principle of "thorough discussion.
- Many of them were anti-authority, anti-capitalism, and anti-managerial education, and denounced the police power and bureaucratic university administration as "violent apparatuses.
- While they were distinct from armed sects, they attempted to transform the university into another public space through barricades and independent lectures.

In the midst of this movement was a doctor named Katsunori Honda. He was a rare individual who, despite being a member of the First Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Tokyo, sympathized with the student movement and threw himself into the movement for change from within the system. Normally, the medical office is at the bottom of the system, and is a place that keeps a distance from the movement. However, Dr. Honda raised his voice from within the stronghold of knowledge that is the medical office.

In January 1969, the symbolic end came when riot police stormed the university, "normalizing" it and forcing students into a period of silence.

Although institutional reforms were gradually implemented, the postwar "ideal of university autonomy" lost its luster. However, the light that burned in the medical office in that winter was not a wasted effort. Katsunori Honda's name is only mentioned in a single line in the "Story Special" magazine as "a person of great activity," but behind the story there was indeed a quiet revolution by an intellectual who linked knowledge and action.

It was one of the last flames of an era in which people risked their lives to ask "Why do we learn?" and "For whom do we work?"