ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 examines how New Leftists continued their commitment in the 1970s. Many Japanese New Leftists left the movements around 1970, but this does not mean that those movements had completely disappeared. In tracing the New Left during this period, this chapter focuses on demonstrating how the discourse of New Left movements evolved. First of all, I will explore the destiny of New Leftists in the 1970s: many were disturbed by intra-or inter-group violence, and were haunted by a sense of powerlessness. In this difficult situation, some New Leftists sought to find a way of making their commitment sustainable and began to organise the “alternative learning movement”; that is, a combination of learning and activism. While the activists were committed to the alternative learning movement, they visited local communities affected by pollution, and came to see the residents as a mirror in transforming “everydayness”. Second, this chapter examines the New Left’s international exchange. In the 1970s, some of the New Leftists were also engaged in activities that provided support to people’s movements for democratisation in other Asian countries. Through these activities they met Asian people whose livelihoods had been destroyed by development projects promoted by Japanese transnational companies. This revealed how Japanese people’s affluence was realised at the cost of the suffering of other Asian people. They resolved to work hard to redress the unjust relationship. This chapter thus aims to trace the history of Japanese New Left movements in the 1970s and to explore their influence on its civil society.
