En el desempeño del cargo

We, the Japanese were on the side of the killing of the Vietnamese people. As this recognition grew, I clearly understood our past. Vietnam was moral and logical issue for me (Oda Makoto)

The Vietnam War was an undeclared war. The US bombing campaign to North Vietnam in February 1965 triggered Takabatake Michitoshi, a professor of political science at the Rikkyo University at the time, to launch a movement to oppose the bombing. Born in 1933, Takabatake was one of those children who was born in the 1930s. He consulted his older friends Tsurumi Shunsuke (born in 1922), a philosopher, then a professor of journalism at the Doshisha University, and Kuno Osamu (born in 1910), also a philosopher. Three of them had already known each other through the Science of Thought and the Voiceless Voices. They wanted a new movement as the Voiceless Voices style—independent of any political affiliation or ideology.

They agreed that the traditional top-down organizations such as the Japan Communist Party (JCP) and the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), would not work for their purpose.

As a reaction to the Old Left’s hierarchical structure, they wanted to make a new movement that was individual, voluntary and horizontal (Kuno & Oda, 1998, p. 490; Tsurumi, Ueno, & Oguma, 2004, p. 361). This group of intellectuals had learned their hard lessons from the traditional top-down system of the Old Left, so they wanted someone from a younger

generation, independent from the JCP and the JSP, and someone who did not take the leadership roles during the 1960 ANPO protests to lead the grassroots antiwar movement (Kuno & Oda, 1998, p. 486: Tsurumi, Ueno & Oguma, 2004, p. pp. 360-361). Tsurumi came up with the idea to

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recruit Oda Makoto, the young bestselling author of Nandemo Miteyarō [I’m gonna look at everything], the travelogue that Oda made after his study at Harvard University as a Fulbright scholar, which contributed to the backpacker boom in Japan. Oda did not participate in the ANPO protests because he caught malaria during this trip and was lying in bed during the ANPO protests. These facts made Oda a perfect candidate for Tsurumi, Takabatake, and Kuno. They believed that Oda would be a good person to lead the new movement. Kuno (1998) recalled.

Tsurumi was interested in Oda after he read Oda’s bestseller book, Nandemo Miteyarō, but he didn’t know him personally. I had heard about Oda as an interesting guy from my young friends who lived with Oda at the time…Oda had just returned from the US, wrote a book, went to Korea, and didn’t particularly do anything political. When I met him at the insistence of my friends, Oda was such an attractive person, a guy that you would be unlikely to meet in academia.

We all thought Oda would be the most suitable guy for a self-starting civic movement, and no one opposed it (p. 486).

Tsurumi then gave Oda a call. He was impressed with his quick response.

I called him. He was in Nishinomiya (near Kobe). Within just a few minutes, despite a call from a stranger, Oda said, “Let’s do it!” He told me he would come to Tokyo, so let’s meet at the fruit parlor in Shinbashi station. When we met him, he had already prepared a simple appeal that people could easily relate with…A common feeling that we don’t want to be killed and we don’t want to kill…a really common feeling (Tsurumi, 2010).

This appeal that Oda wrote on the train to Tokyo was used as fliers calling for the first demonstration of Beheiren.

We are ordinary citizens. Ordinary citizen means, office workers, elementary school teachers, newspaper reporters, florists, people who write novels, and boys learning English. That is, it’s you who is reading this leaflet. All that we want to say is “Peace in Vietnam!” (Beheiren Nyūsu

#1, 1965, p.1).

Responding to Oda’s call, a total of 1,500 people took to the street on April 24, 1965. They walked to the American Embassy in Tokyo, and to the residence of Prime Minister, Kishi

Nobusuke. The Voiceless Voices also joined. Kobaysahi Tomi recalled how a group of 40 people ended up with 1,500.

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About 40 of us gathered in the Shimizudani Park. There was a yellow Beheiren banner. The cleaning shop owner brought a banner that said, “Koe naki koe no kai [Voiceless Voices].”

Takabatake also prepared a big banner that said, “Citizen’s demonstration. Anyone can join.

Peace in Vietnam!” As we walked, men and women after work, housewives with grocery bags, children and elderly people joined us...I think it was because there had been no space for ordinary people to express their feelings. When I looked back, I saw various colors of banners and

balloons. I think the passers-by were also angry at America’s bombing campaign in North Vietnam. Many people joined us, I think because the atmosphere of our demonstration was calm and loose, so it was easy for people to casually join. At the end, it swelled to a total of 1,500. Oda Makoto handed his fliers to the passers-by and to everyone who walked with us (Kobayashi, 1969, pp. 180-181).

This is how Beheiren was born. After this first demonstration, Shimizudani Park, half an hour walking distance from the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, became the starting point of

Beheiren’s monthly demonstration. Writers, philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, professors, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and TV producers, joined. Many of them already had

transnational networks. In fact, Tarrow (2005) suggests that scientists are a prime example of

“rooted cosmopolitans” as they owe their training, resources, and primary opportunities to their roles in our society, but their membership in international professional societies and their devotion to the universal values of science provide them with perspectives and professional ties that bring them close to colleagues abroad, even at the height of the Cold War (p. 195).

Likewise, artists and musicians could easily be rooted cosmopolitans.

The upbringings and experiences of Tsurumi Shunsuke and his family members and Oda produced a synergy effect and contributed to the extension of the already existing transnational civic network in Beheiren. As Keck and Sikkink (1998) suggest, setting aside domestic and international differences, the network concept travels well because it stresses fluid and open relations among committed and knowledgeable actors working in specialized issue areas (p. 8).

This description seems to fit Beheiren as well. When there was no Internet or cell phone, unlike today, Beheiren’s loose nature fit well into the transnational antiwar network in the

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counterculture era of the1960s. Beheiren was, in a sense, started by rooted cosmopolitans, who already had transnational networks. College and high school students and thousands of ordinary citizens joined into this mix, that would later change their lives. They created regional Beheiren groups across towns, cities, and campuses. It was the biggest and the first antiwar movement in Japan’s history (Havens, 1987, p. 6 & 261).

Three-Head Leadership

The idea of launching a new movement that opposed the war in Vietnam was suggested by Takabatake Michitoshi, and many prominent figures from diverse fields joined in the project.

Countless ordinary citizens and students also joined, and they formed the style, direction and culture of Beheiren. Anyone, regardless of their name recognition, was free to speak and write what they think. They were independent thinkers. Because of its operational style, Beheiren was often said to be a ‘leaderless’ movement. Yet, based on my research, it was clear to me that Beheiren had three beloved leaders: Tsurumi Shunsuke, Oda Makoto, and Yoshikawa Yūichi.

Sekiya, who was involved in various aspects of the movement and the co-editor of the 1998 collection Tonari ni dassōhei ga ita jidai confirmed this three-head leadership style.

Yes, Beheiren was operated by these three figures. A three-head system. With the out-of-

ordinary capacities of Oda and Tsurumi, the movement functioned. Tsurumi was highly respected and was influential in a different way from that of Oda. He really understood human psychology and could read the future. Yoshikawa was like a super-capable top bureaucrat who was good at everything and could manage and carry out anything…Yoshikawa’s organizational skill was unmatched. Although most of the decisions were made by each regional individual and group, when something unexpected or big issues came up, the advice from at least one of the three was sought (Sekiya, 2016, personal interview).

I have already mentioned and quoted Tsurumi, Oda, and Yoshikawa, in the previous narrative and their names will appear hereafter as well. All three of them have passed away, but the former activists I interviewed kept talking about them respectfully, and they all agreed that

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these three were the most influential figures of Beheiren. McAdam (1982) stressed the importance of leaders or organizers to generate of social insurgency, and that the established leaders are among the first to join a new movement by virtue of their central position within the communities (p. 47). As the impact of these three leaders of Beheiren on individual activists and overall movement was significant up to this day, introducing them upfront as central figures seems critical to understanding Beheiren. Each of them had multifaced capacity of its own.

Tsurumi Shunsuke (1922-2015)

Understanding Tsurumi Shunsuke, a gentle-mannered philosopher, is a complicated task.

Suzuki Masaho (2016), a former student activist of Beheiren and the current Kyoto councilman, described Tsurumi in one word—Gandalf—a wizard character from Tolkien’s novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (personal interview). Born as a member of the well-established family in Japan, Tsurumi Shunsuke had a complex childhood. His maternal grandfather was Goto Shinpei, who filled various Cabinet posts, and was the first President of the Manchuria Railroad Company during the time Japan colonized Manchuria. His father was Tsurumi Yūsuke, the former Minister of Public Welfare, whom Tsurumi was critical of as a brilliant student of

‘Number 1 disease,’ who always needed to be Number 1, who wanted to be Prime Minister.

Tsurumi particularly criticized his father’s tenko (ideological conversion) from liberal to ultra-nationalist and his support of the war. Tsurumi is also a relative of Sano Manabu, the most influential figure of Japan’s prewar Old Left who co-authored the tenko statement that I

introduced in chapter two. Sano Manabu’s nephew, and Tsurumi’s cousin is Sano Seki, a social activist and theatric producer who lived in exile in Mexico after being deported from the Soviet Union.

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According to Ono Nobuyuki, a lawyer who worked with Beheiren to defend American deserters, Tsurumi always wanted to be arrested if possible, but police never arrested him as they knew if they arrested him, it would have been big news because his family name was too big in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan’s dominant power (Ono, 2016, personal interview).

Tsurumi also stated in many occasions that conflict with his unusually strict mother made his childhood so miserable, and he eventually became a delinquent. Although he had read a tremendous amount of books by the end of the elementary school, Tsurumi was only an

elementary-graduate in Japan. Worried, his father sent him to the US in 1938, where he began to study seriously, and was accepted to study at Harvard University. As I described in the previous chapter, after the Pearl Harbor Attack, he and his sister Kazuko who was also studying at

Columbia University, returned to Japan in the last repatriation ship in 1942. Sekiya Keiko, Sekiya’s wife who took care of Tsurumi Shunsuke in his last days, recalled.

When he knew Japan would lose, he was physically in the winning side (the US). But he wanted to be in the losing side (Japan)…Tsurumi always said “I want to be among the losing side when we lose…” I think it was the aesthetic that Tsurumi possessed…he always preferred to be away from the center of power. He always said that it was best to see things from the losing side because we could not see things if we were in the center…it was his aesthetic (Sekiya Keiko, 2016, personal interview).

This describes his life. This is also a noteworthy account because when Tsurumi returned to Japan in 1942, Japan was still fighting hard in the war, believing in her victory, but then a 20 years old Tsurumi already recognized at that point that there was no way that Japan would win and he “wanted to be in the “losing side.” Although it was clear to certain people that Japan would lose, this was the time that expressing that Japan would lose was risky behavior worth being sent to jail.

Right after they returned to Japan in 1942, Tsurumi received a physical examination for

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the draft. Already having antiwar sentiment and knowing that Japan would lose, he enlisted in the Navy as a civilian employee, and was sent to Java to serve as an interpreter. Tsurumi

described his days in Navy as “Every day was horrible” (2004, p. 52). As a civilian employee, he did not have a gun, and suicide was not even an option. He stole opium to commit suicide in case he was placed in a position where he needed to kill someone, and he didn’t want to, but the problem was he did not know what the lethal dose was (Tsurumi, 2004, p. 52). Eventually his caries (tuberculous osteitis) became worse, and he was sent back to Japan in 1944.

When Tsurumi started his new life as a founder and chief-editor of the Science of Thought journal, he and his sister Kazuko played significant roles in forming intellectual

networks in the immediate postwar era that generated critical discourse. Tsurumi also started his professorship at Kyoto University in 1948, then moved to Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1954, and then to Doshisha University in 1961. He quit Tokyo Institute of Technology to protest Kishi during the ANPO protests and again quit Doshisha University in protest of police violence against the students in 1970 as described in the previous chapter.

According to Tsurumi, his childhood fondness for Pyotr Kropotkin since age 15 was very influential to his thinking (Tsurumi, 2004, p. 134, 149, 186). Besides Kropotkin, individuals who influenced him in the US, include Alfred Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, Willard Quine, Tsuru Shigeto (whom Tsurumi later invited to join the Science of Thought group), William James, and particularly, Charles Peirce (Tsurumi, 2004 & 2009). At Harvard, he learned semiotics, linguistic philosophy, and pragmatism. Ono (2016) pointed out that in relations with “America,” if ANPO was one point of contact between Japan and America, another point of contact was Tsurumi Shunsuke (personal interview).

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Tsurumi’s position toward Marxism was clear. He saw feudalism and patriarchy as the foundation of Marxism. Yet, Tsurumi describes himself as anti-anti-Marxist. Having been a fan of Kropotkin, Tsurumi learned how Marx monopolized power. As a result, he did not ‘need’ to become a Marxist, yet he opposed those who opposed Marxism (Tsurumi, 2004, p. 149;

Tsurumi, 2009, pp. 122-123). Tsurumi however differentiates Karl Marx himself from Marxism.

Marx proved himself as a great philosopher in Das Kapital, but to me, Marxism was like a religion in which justice and power are merged…Marxism is the ideology of “you are wrong. I am right.” So, mistakes will not become energy. The power of thought comes when we slap our knees as we realize “oh, I was wrong!” (Tsurumi, 2004, p.121).

In regard to the emergence of deserters, Tsurumi (2009) admitted that they were not prepared for that scenario but thanked Peirce’s pragmatism in moving forward.

We were not prepared at all despite handing out the fliers to GIs and putting up fliers in cafés or bars in Yokosuka, to encourage GIs to desert. No one thought it would happen…but it happened.

It was a surprise…so as for deserters, both Oda and I made a wrong forecast. To begin with, Beheiren is fallibilism. The term fallibilism was created by Charles Peirce, one of the founders of pragmatism. We get energy by making mistakes, and then move forward (p. 121).

Besides publishing numerous books in diverse fields, Tsurumi was also a dedicated activist.

Even after his death in 2015, everyone I interviewed shared stories of Tsurumi. He left a lasting impression particularly on then young Beheiren activists. What kind of activist was Tsurumi Shunsuke? They agreed that Tsurumi was not the kind of person who would push himself to the forefront. He would stay away from power. He was not interested at all in obtaining power or playing the power game. This is very different from the image of a leader of social movement in Japan, who would agitate loudly on the streets, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, and engage in power struggles. They also agreed that Tsurumi was amused with anything, and enjoyed

everything, especially when he was talking with young people. Those who were students at the time all said that Tsurumi was good at praising them, and they really treasured their interaction

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with him. It was during the particularly tumultuous period when the radical New Left student revolt occurred across Japan. Iwase Jōko, a former supporter of Beheiren, and now a writer of children’s literature, fondly recalled of Tsurumi.

There is probably no scholar who was so loved by young people…He praised everything and everyone…He was the opposite of regular adults…he believed that it was young people who should have opinions…he once told me, “You know, the soles that we stand on are so small”

(Iwase, 2016, personal interview).

According to Watanabe Takesato (2017), a professor emeritus at Doshisha University, who was one of Tsurumi’s last students at Doshisha, upon resigning from the school, Tsurumi told the school, “I cannot stay in the school that let riot police into the school to repress students” (2017, personal communication). Apparently, Tsurumi was very critical of people in power and the establishment, but kind with ordinary citizens. Tsurumi explains why.

I do criticize intellectuals, but I’m not equal to the task of lecturing ordinary people. I am a skeptic in the first place and have no universal ethics. I would only say, “I’m thinking to live this way, and I have lived this way.” That’s all (Tsurumi, 2004, p. 358).

Watanabe revealed that he was one of Tsurumi’s students who had sheltered American deserters.

Eric Seitz, a civil rights lawyer in Hawai‘i, who worked with Beheiren in early 1970s told me about Beheiren’s leadership this way.

The leadership of Beheiren was phenomenal…such a high quality of leadership. They were philosophical people. Tsurumi was the one I worked with most closely. I was in constant contact with him. It was delightful…I don’t know what to tell you…I was just so impressed. Tsurumi was very approachable, very interested in everything we were doing, easy to talk to, extremely

principled, I don’t know what to tell you…it was terrific…I was very lucky (Seitz, 2016).

It should be noted that Tsurumi’s cousin, Tsurumi Yoshiyuki (1926-1994), an

anthropologist and Asian Studies scholar, was also deeply involved in Beheiren, and was an influential figure, especially in the Tokyo area. He was born in Los Angeles as a son of Tsurumi Ken, a diplomat. Tsurumi Yoshiyuki worked at the International House of Japan from 1955 to

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1986. A few Beheiren activists whom I interviewed in Tokyo talked more about Tsurumi Yoshiyuki than about Tsurumi Shunsuke. It probably is because Shunsuke’s base was in Kyoto, whereas Yoshiyuki lived in Tokyo. According to my interviewees, Tsurumi Kazuko, Tsusumi Shunsuke’s sister, a sociologist and the professor of Jōchi University at the time, had also

1986. A few Beheiren activists whom I interviewed in Tokyo talked more about Tsurumi Yoshiyuki than about Tsurumi Shunsuke. It probably is because Shunsuke’s base was in Kyoto, whereas Yoshiyuki lived in Tokyo. According to my interviewees, Tsurumi Kazuko, Tsusumi Shunsuke’s sister, a sociologist and the professor of Jōchi University at the time, had also