Japan Uprisings Are Reactions to Rightism, Eyewitnesses Declare

Last spring's rioting shows that the Japanese people are "ever in vigilance" against a return of their World War II experience, Akira Iriye, teaching fellow in History, asserted last night. Iriye and three other panelists, all eyewitnesses to the massive demonstrations, discussed the uprisings in a packed lecture room at 2 Divinity Avenue.

"Consciousness of the last war is the basic motive of all Japanese political movements," Iriye contended. He attributed the demonstrations to the people's fear of a "resurgence of rightism," and their "determination not to repeat the wartime experience of a totalitarian, autocratic government."

Rockefeller Notes Negative Attitude

John D. Rockefeller IV '58, agreed with this interpretation. "I have never seen so many people afraid of war and hateful of war as the young Japanese," he said. But most of the demonstrators, he noted, were educated after the war and have no personal knowledge of the war's experiences.

Tatsuo Arima, teaching fellow in Government, emphasized that the demonstrations brought about the "question of the preservation of parliamentarism in Japan."