Anpo protests

The Anpo protests, also known as the Anpo struggle (安保闘争, Anpo tōsō) in Japanese, were a series of massive protests throughout Japan from 1959 to 1960, and again in 1970, against the United States–Japan Security Treaty, which allows the United States to maintain military bases on Japanese soil. The name of the protests comes from the Japanese term for "Security Treaty", which is Anzen Hoshō Jōyaku (安全保障条約), or just Anpo (安保) for short.

The protests in 1959 and 1960 were staged in opposition to a 1960 revision of the original 1952 Security Treaty, and eventually grew to become the largest popular protests in Japan's modern era. At the climax of the protests in June 1960, hundreds of thousands of protestors surrounded Japan's National Diet building in Tokyo on nearly a daily basis, and large protests took place in other cities and towns all across Japan.

On June 15, protestors smashed their way into the Diet compound itself, leading to a violent clash with police. During the confrontation, a female Tokyo University student, Michiko Kanba, was killed. In the aftermath of this incident, a planned visit to Japan by United States president Dwight D. Eisenhower was cancelled, and conservative prime minister Nobusuke Kishi was forced to resign.

A second round of protests occurred in 1970 at the time of the 1960 Anpo treaty's automatic renewal. Although shorter in duration, these later protests also achieved significant size.

Background

The original US-Japan Security Treaty had been forced on Japan by the United States as a condition for ending the US military occupation of Japan following the end of World War II. It was signed on September 8, 1951, along with the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, formally ending World War II in Asia.