Under the Lights of the Groping House: Reverberations of the Zenkyoto (early 1970s)

Under the Lights of the Groping House: Reverberations of the Zenkyoto (early 1970s)
Akiyuki Nosaka said in a statement in the early 1970s that he was still associated with the Zenkyoto. In an era after the student movement had already met with defeat and the barricades of the city had collapsed, these words were not mere nostalgia, but a sign of ideological solidarity. The "Gropesha," a small publishing house founded in 1968, was a spiritual refuge for young people and intellectuals of the time, as "another cultural circuit" that turned its back on commercialism.
While inheriting the ideals of the Zenkyoto generation, Gropesha dealt with issues related to freedom of speech, such as censorship, obscenity trials, and press regulations, as real struggles. Nosaka himself had an experience in which his work was censored for extreme sexual expression and was put on trial. Through that incident, he said, "To protect freedom of speech is to protect the right of human beings to live. This perspective is a testimony to a time when the student movement, even though it had lost its form, was still alive as a "culture of resistance.
In the early 1970s, society was sinking into an equilibrium between stability and indifference as it adapted to the system in the shadow of rapid economic growth. However, the underground publishing and independent cultural movements centering on the Gropesha continued to maintain the ethic of "speaking for life. When Nosaka spoke about politics and literature as an extension of these movements, he was not merely being "anti-establishment," but was expressing his pride as an "individual who will not be silenced.
Even after the defeat of the Zenkyoto, the Gakusha continued to exist as a "refuge of expression. Nosaka's attitude reflects the pride of postwar intellectuals who sought to balance resistance to power and cultural independence. As Nosaka saw the setback of the youth as "not a defeat, but a struggle for survival," his interaction with the Gropesha was one of the lights that transformed political defeat into cultural inheritance.