In Mobilizing Japanese Youth published by Cornell University Press in 2021, Christopher Gerteis examines how non-state institutions in Japan—left-wing radicals and right-wing activists—attempted to mold the political consciousness of the nation's first postwar generation, which by the late 1960s were the demographic majority of voting-age adults. 

During the 1960s and early 1970s, Japanese youth were profoundly influenced by a transnational flow of ideas and people that constituted a unique historical convergence of pan-Asianism, Mao-ism, black nationalism, anti-imperialism, anticommunism, neo-fascism, and ultra-nationalism. Gerteis will speak about how the social conservatism that underlay 1960s radicalism exacerbated the levels of social and political alienation expressed by young blue- and pink-collar working men and women into the 1970s and beyond.

“Gerteis works with a fascinating range of sources, from labor union publications to agitprop and pink movies, punk music, raunchy sports newspapers, children's cartoons, NHK surveys, and CIA documents to  provide a rich image of social ferment at the alienated fringes and in the mainstream of Japanese society during the turbulent 1950s–60s and since” (Professor David Ambaras, North Carolina State University,  Raleigh, author of Bad Youth). “The work is informed by class and gender perspectives often obscured and offers an alternate view to the typical image of cooptation and political apathy” (Associate Professor Emeritus Wesley Sasaki-Uemura, University of Utah, author of Organizing the Spontaneous).

Christopher Gerteis is a historian of modern and contemporary Japan at SOAS University of London and The University of Tokyo Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia.  He is the author of Gender Struggles: Wage-earning Women and Male-Dominated Unions in Postwar Japan published by Harvard University Asia Center in 2010 and Series Editor of the SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan, published by Bloomsbury in association with the SOAS Japan Research Centre.

Doors open at 6:00 pm. Dinner is served from 6:15 pm. The presentation starts from 7:15 pm.

Menu: Salad with Tuna and Edamame/ Roasted Lamb with Mustard/ Cassis Mousse flavored with Orange/ Coffee or Tea with One Drink. Book Break charges are 3,000 yen/ 4,000 yen (members/ non-members) per person.

FCCJ members can sign up at the reception desk. Reservations cancelled less than 72 hours in advance will be charged in full.

Non-members can reserve at the reception desk by email (front@fccj.or.jp). Payment is in advance till Friday, June 10th, 2022. No refund is available unless the event is cancelled by FCCJ.

Online attendance (via Zoom) is available at 550 yen per person. Please indicate the intention to attend online when signing up. Details on how to join online will be sent to individual emails after their reservations are confirmed. 

Attendees with food restriction should inform the reception desk (front@fccj.or.jp) three days before the event. We kindly ask for your cooperation with Covid-19 prevention measures at the reception and to wear a mask in the premises. Thank you.

(The talk will be in English)

Library, Archives & Workroom Committee