Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast episode 570, The Revolutionary Part 5.

I think the way that the college career of the yakuza-turned-communist agitator Miyazaki Manabu ended,

really summed up both his own time in college and the student movement of the 60s in general.

After the end of the fighting at Tokyo University,

Miyazaki had actually left Tokyo behind for a time,

returning to Kyoto and working on construction sites

with the help of his father's gang, the Teramuragumi,

because Yakuza and construction, or just organized crime in construction,

are one of those classic matches made

in heaven. But in March 1969, they got a call from some of his old friends in Tokyo. It was

graduation time for Miyazaki's year, and his fellow Mincei and communist-affiliated students,

especially those who had been in the Action Corps, wanted to know if they were doing

anything special, so to speak, for graduation. Miyazaki, of course, didn't take much convincing,

and so as one last hurrah, he and the small band of 50 of his remaining followers

decided to interrupt the graduation of Waseda University for the 68-69 academic year.

I think what comes next could best be described as a farce.

Miyazaki and his JCP followers, plus a small contingent from other old left groups,

stormed the stage during graduation, managed to drive off the lead speaker, Sony Chairman Ibuca Masaru,

and then, having sieves the stage, Miyazaki, of course, grabbed the microphone to demand a

bargaining session with the school leadership to redress past injustices going back to the

tuition hike and, etc. The school leadership, led by the dean of students, Kamisawa Soichiro, were shockingly sympathetic

to this. They allowed Miyazaki to give a speech if he would then agree to allow graduation to happen.

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