Japan's student movement ended with a whimper instead of a bang. Activists shed their fighting sticks and helmets for briefcases and suits, and everyone went back to the business of Japan Inc. But while it lasted, radicals and leftists of various stripes wreaked havoc on academia.
One such person was a scrappy lad from Kyoto, son of a building demolition subcontractor who employed workers from the lowest rungs of society, which meant it also had close ties to criminal syndicates. Unlike most of his peers, however, Manabu Miyazaki had an intellectual bent and -- as somewhat of an exception among children of such backgrounds -- gained admittance to prestigious Waseda University. This was the 1960s, when "radical student" was an oxymoron.
A dedicated member of the Japan Communist Party, Miyazaki spent most of his time networking, organizing, campaigning and demonstrating. The movement was rife with factionalism, and battles frequently flared between rival organizations. In one such battle, he writes, "we lifted [one rival] onto our shoulders and banged him against the wall of the student union a few times to quiet him down. We then took him to . . . Ome, where we beat him till he fainted. But after that, all we did was force . . . whiskey down his throat and then, when he was good and drunk, strip his clothes and set him loose."