Hello and welcome to witness history podcast from the BBC World Service, with me Emily

Finch.

Today I'm taking you back to 1968, to some of the most violent and widespread protests

Japan has ever seen.

A series of student protests took place at 152 universities throughout the country, starting

yet Nihon University in Tokyo, and later the elite University of Tokyo, where the majority

of the country's prime ministers are educated.

This year, graduation at the prestigious University of Tokyo was not quite like other years.

Disgruntled medical students, demonstrating outside the assembly hall, refused to allow

the graduation ceremony to take place.

They were protesting on behalf of a classmate dismissed for kidnapping a teacher in an earlier

protest against the faculty.

I've been speaking to Kazuki Kumamoto, who was a first-year engineering student at the University

of Tokyo in 1968.

He took part in the protests, which led to a violent two-day siege of the university's

main hall by hundreds of students.

The protests at Tokyo University started at the medical school, when a group of students

were dismissed from their course.

Their dismissal from the university was considered unjust by all the remaining students in that

department.

At first, it was just the students at the medical school who were protesting, but the

riot police were brought in.

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