Book Review: Nick Kapur. Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise After Anpo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018)

Reviewed by: Simon Avenell
Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. By Nick Kapur. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2018. 325 pages. $39.95.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

As the title of this impressive book suggests, Nick Kapur wants to reposition the massive Anpo protests of 1960 as a critical "inflection point" in postwar Japanese history, when earlier developments were "accelerated" or "rerouted" to alternative "trajectories" thanks to the "gravitational force of the crisis" (p. 271). The book presents a great deal of evidence for the victory of compromise, the weakening of democracy, and the revitalization of the far right after Anpo, but Kapur also recognizes the creative energy of this moment, for example in "new forms of literary and artistic expression," greater "mutuality" in U.S.-Japan relations, new forms of social activism, and practices of "tolerance and patience" in politics. Indeed, for Kapur such changes also mark Anpo and its aftermath as a "kind of revolutionary moment"—albeit revolution with a small "r" (p.7)...