Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 467, The Cause of Peace.

Before we leave behind the radicalism of the 1960s, there's one more movement I want to talk about.

First, I think any story of 60s radicalism would be incomplete without at least some discussion

of one of the great causes of the time,

and second, in Japan specifically, the movement to oppose the Vietnam War,

was very bound up with the wider world of activism.

So today it's time to talk about the Betonamuni Heiwa-Wol-Schimingol,

roughly the Citizens League for Peace in Vietnam,

though the official English name was the Peace in Vietnam Committee.

But first, we should probably talk briefly about what the Vietnam War was, and why it became such a flashpoint in Japanese politics.

So, what's now the three countries of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia was 100 years ago, a part of

French Indochina, a French colony in Southeast Asia acquired via conquests in the 1800s.

Colonialism being what it is, this was, of course course not very popular with the actual natives of the

place, and by the 20th century, there were flourishing anti-French resistance movements across

the country. The most famous of these resistance movements was led by Ho Chi Min.

Now, Ho would eventually align himself with the

Soviet-led communist bloc as part of his pursuit of Vietnamese independence, but it is worth

noting there have always been open questions about how committed he was to communism as an ideology.

Like most communist movements in the 20th century, the Vietnamese one was a mix of true

believers and Vietnamese nationalists who simply bandwagoned with the Communist Party

because it represented a valuable source of support for the nationalist movement.

Ho Chi Minh himself started out as a bit of a communist bandwagoner.

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