I’ve known many leftist intellectuals who judge the 1960 Anpo (US-Japan Security Treaty revision) struggle to have ended in defeat. I didn’t get that sense from Tawara-san, so I asked him. He said that nothing good came from pronouncing the defeat of movements and analyzing the causes, which inevitably led to finger-pointing by the participants and their splintering. Rather, it was important to see what had been achieved and to build on it.
I’m tempted to say it’s the new left (Bund in _Organizing the spontaneous_ ) intellectuals in contrast to JCP members or sympathizers who experienced Anpo as a defeat, but my sample isn’t remotely big enough. I also know a JCP literary critic who says he experienced Anpo as a defeat, but then said laughingly that he was an “action leftist–act first, think later.”
