The Question Before Dawn: Youth and the Nation, July 1967

The Question Before Dawn: Youth and the Nation, July 1967

In 1967, Japan was in the midst of a booming economy, with cars, color TVs, and air conditioners spreading to households, and the pace of affluence was reshaping everyday life. University enrollment rates rose, campuses continued to expand, and young people flocked to universities in greater numbers than ever before. But in exchange for affluence, there was a growing sense of uniformity and control. The question of how to measure the distance between the state and the individual was becoming a heavy question in the minds of the young people.

The rift in the atmosphere was exposed in an anti-war action held in October of the same year in the vicinity of Haneda Airport. Students opposing Prime Minister Eisaku Sato's visit to South Vietnam clashed with riot police, resulting in the death of Hiroaki Yamazaki and the injury of many others. Beside the runway stretching in the direction of the nation, young people questioned how far their voices would reach. Behind the quiet life, the shadow of war and the logic of the Cold War breathed.

Meanwhile, dissatisfaction was building up inside the universities, and from the following year onward, the Zenkyoto movement spread, starting with the University of Tokyo and Nihon University. Occupations and barricades exposed the system-fatigued university administration and the issues surrounding the meaning of learning. The students upheld the idea of rebuilding the self as a subject, and the university leaned toward tightening its administration. This tension cascaded to campuses across the country and will be remembered as the University Conflict of 1988-89.

The words of the young people echoed in this magazine's dialogue are not a repetition of mottoes. Who is the nation for? Where do they place individual freedom? They refused to align themselves with the jobless reserve army, and sought the courage to step out of the cogs of society. The questions are sometimes excessive, the ideals often juvenile, and the arguments poor. Nevertheless, the simple sense of discomfort that rose up in the gap between the system and reality eventually became the root of a great swell. The youth were trying to draw their own lines on the drawing board of the times.

Looking back, the year 1967 was the calm before the storm. The stronger the economic light, the thicker the invisible shadows. Voices trying to re-measure the distance between the youth and the nation were eventually subsumed by the noise of society, but the fervor of dialogue in the foreground has not faded. A thin crack has been carved in the face of prosperity. The words that spill from these cracks continue to echo in small tones as the heartbeat of the times.