the 1960 ‘anpo’ struggle in the people’s daily 人民日...

The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 10 | Issue 51 | Number 1 | Dec 16, 2012

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The 1960 ‘Anpo’ Struggle in The People’s Daily 人民日報:Shaping Popular Chinese Perceptions of Japan during theCold War　　人民日報に見る１９６０年安保闘争−−冷戦中中国の一般的日本観の形成

Erik Esselstrom

Figure 1.1 Japanese protester at the leftholds a sign that reads ‘Oppose the newsecurity treaty, Down with the KishiCabinet! Dissolve the Diet!’ to the

enthusiastic approval of the Chinesedemonstrator at the right whose signproclaims ‘Oppose the Japan-U.S. militarytreaty, Support the struggle of theJapanese people’

Introduction

Rising China-Japan friction in 2012 hascentered on territorial claims over theDiaoyu/Senkaku islands. Like many suchclashes since the early 1990s, it is bound upwith unresolved legacies of the Asia-PacificWar. As much valuable research on the politicsof memory in contemporary East Asia hasdemonstrated, the politicized anger andbitterness that characterize the China-Japanrelationship today have a complex archeologyin which popular tempers were not always soenflamed.2 For example, during the 1950s and1960s the United States, not Japan, was by farthe primary geopolitical and ideological enemyof the PRC. In that context, as the CCP aimedto lure Japan from its American geopoliticalembrace, China’s leaders also sought topersuade the Chinese people to “forgive andforget” matters of the Japanese invasion, andultimately recast popular Chinese perceptionsof Japanese society from those of wartimeenemy to regional geopolitical ally.3

This essay takes as its subject one example ofthis re-conceptualization of Japanese society inChinese political ideology – editorial cartoonrepresentations of the 1960 protests against

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the renewal of the U.S.-Japan SecurityAgreement (“anpo jōyaku” 安保条約).4 Widelyrecognized as the largest popular anti-government demonstrations in postwarJapanese history, the Anpo protests are mostoften analyzed strictly within the context ofU.S.-Japan relations.5 Looking at these eventsfrom a Chinese perspective opens up a numberof useful interpretive vantage points. While thecore editorial attack launched in these cartoonsis aimed squarely and primarily at the UnitedStates, particularly striking is the manner inwhich the CCP employed these images totransform popular Chinese perceptions ofJapan in ways that reflect the alteredgeopolitical environment of the early postwarera in East Asia.6

Scholars such as Chang-Tai Hung haveproduced excellent work on both individualcartoonists and the broader function of politicalcartoons in wartime Chinese society, andcertainly these examples from The People’sDaily in 1960, some sketched by well-knownartists such as Fang Cheng方成, are worthy ofthe same level of deep analysis.7 Suchtreatment, however, rests beyond the scope ofthis essay. The aim here is to provide a specificcase in point of how the Chinese CommunistParty employed editorial cartoons during thesummer of 1960 to shape popular opinionconcerning the U.S.- Japan relationship. AsKevin McKenna has noted in his study ofeditorial images of the United States in Pravda,Moscow’s primary media outlet during the ColdWar, political cartoons “became particularlypowerful tools of persuasion in a totalitariansociety where the state controlled andcoordinated the entire communicationsystem.”8 While the political and socialenvironments of the PRC and the Soviet Unionin 1960 defy simple comparison, The People’sDaily can be examined in a similar manner asPravda, namely in that both were critical toolsthrough which leadership in Beijing andMoscow delivered party-approved messages tothe general public. While how those messages

were received by the reading public is difficult(if not impossible) to determine, analyzing thecontent of the messages nonetheless shedslight on the political and social objectives of theauthorities projecting them.

The series of editorial cartoon examples fromthe summer of 1960 featured here illustratethree main themes, all of which are inherent inChinese political and social rhetoric of the era:the inevitable failure of American geopoliticalstrategy, the advance of a revolutionary futurethat will tear down the feudal past, and theirrepressible power of mass movements. TheCCP employed these thematic v isualrepresentations of anti-U.S. and anti-government protests in Japan for two primaryreasons: 1) to legitimatize its leadership in bothdomestic and international spheres in the eyesof popular Chinese society; and 2) to cultivateof a perception of postwar Japanese societyamong the Chinese public that differentiatedconservative, U.S.-backed political elites fromthe Japanese masses, whose interests wereideologically similar, if not identical, to those ofthe Chinese people.9

The CCP’s emphasis in this manner on apositive relationship with popular Japanesesociety during the early 1960s is strikinglydifferent from what one finds in China since theearly 1990s. More precisely, whereas the partyrelies upon the power of popular memories ofvictimization during the war against Japan tobolster nationalism in the contemporary PRC,during the early 1960s memories of theJapanese invasion did not need to serve thesame political purpose.10 That is not to say, ofcourse, that the war against Japan was entirelyignored before the 1990s. For example, theCCP rout ine ly employed h i s tor i ca lrepresentations of the war throughout the earlyCold War era, for example, in which theCommunist party played a more significant rolethan the Guomindang in defeating Japan inorder to discredit the Nationalist regime onTaiwan. The position of the United States as

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China’s main ideological opponent during thesummer of 1960, however, made it possible forthe CCP to depict Japanese society in a morecomplex and multi-dimensional light than is thecase today. As one recent study suggests, “awillingness to downplay contentious memoriesof the wartime past in order to maximize theeconomic and strategic benefits of closerrelations” is a recurring pattern of behavior inChina’s postwar foreign policy concerningJapan.11 This essay is one exploration of thatpattern.

The Inevitable Fall of American PuppetRegimes

One of the most common themes at work inthese images is that of Japanese Prime MinisterKishi Nobusuke ( 岸信介) facing the identicalfate of South Korean President Syngman Rhee(李承晩). Rhee had ruled South Korea with aniron (and fiercely anti-Communist) fist afterbeing installed as President by the UnitedStates in 1948. After widespread popularprotests against the elections that hadreaffirmed his position in the spring of 1960,Rhee fled into Hawaiian exile in late April.Chinese cartoonists made quick use of thisepisode in characterizing events that began tounfold in Japan in May.

Figure 2.12

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Figure 3.13

Figure 2 shows Prime Minister Kishi walkingthe plank, so to speak, of police brutality (警察暴力), pistol in one hand, club in the other.Kishi steps in line with the bloody footprints ofone who has already walked this path,Syngman Rhee, who is shown falling headfirstinto the abyss. Kishi blindly follows, seeminglyoblivious to the dangerous fate that awaits him.In a more gruesome depiction of the samenotion, Figure 3 shows the interior of a burialtomb where Rhee has already been laid to rest(the captions reads – ‘to be buried with thosewho came before’ 陪葬的先来). Kishi is beingbrought inside by a masked mortician to takehis place next to the largest sarcophagus in thecenter of the tomb – the one waiting empty forthe leader of the American empire ( 美帝国主文). The figure to the left is Prime MinisterAdnan Menderes

(曼德列斯)of Turkey, an association to beexplained momentarily.

Figure 4.14

Figure 5.15

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Other examples build on the comparisons toSyngman Rhee and link events in Japan torevolutionary actions in numerous parts of theworld. Figure 4 depicts a row of pillars, withAmerican capitalists hiding behind them, beingknocked down by the battering rams of popularaction. The faces visible on the pillars are thoseof Syngman Rhee and Kishi Nobusuke, andcorresponding teams of anti-Rhee SouthKorean（南朝鮮人民反対美李集团的斗争）andanti-Kishi Japanese (日本人民反対岸信介政府的斗争) protesters can be found below along withthe caption that reads - “an unstoppable force”(势不可当). The image also includes sombrero-wearing revolutionaries from South America(南美人民反独裁政府的斗争), a team of dark-toned Africans in the distance, and anti-Menderes Turks (土耳其人民反対曼德列斯政府)in the center. Similarly, Figure 5 depicts acollapsing human pyramid of puppet regimessupporting the U.S. capitalist at its apex. Kishiis positioned at the center with “SouthAmerican bases 南美基地” on his shoulders andSouth Korea (the U.S.-Rhee bloc美李集团) andTurkey (again labeled specifically as Menderes曼德列斯) under his feet. A kick from the SouthKorean people sets the tower shaking.

While the South Korean connection has beenexplained, the link with Turkey is less obvious.The Turkish Prime Minister, Adnan Menderes,had come under fierce pressure from thecountry’s military establishment in early May1960 in the form of demands for politicalreforms and an end to corruption. While thecoup d’état that later drove Menderes frompower was hardly a popular revolution,Menderes was considered to be pro-Americanby his political opponents in Turkey, thusresistance to his administration could beemployed in China as an example o fwidespread dissatisfaction around the worldwith U.S.-backed governments. It is notunreasonable to assume that memories ofTurkey’s involvement in the Korean War adecade earlier might also have given theChinese reason to celebrate any opposition to

the government of President Celâl Bayar andhis Prime Minister Menderes.16 Figure 6reflects this by suggesting the volcano ofpopular energy then erupting in Japan was onepart of a worldwide seismic event that includederuptions in South Korea and Turkey (thecaption reads - “in the days when the world isturned upside down 在天翻地夏复的日子里”).The cartoon also references the recentlypublicized U-2 incident, in which a secretAmerican reconnaissance plane had been shotdown over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960.That pilot Francis G. Powers’ aircraft waspermanently based in Turkey perhaps adds tothe logic of including Turkey within this groupof U.S. satrap regimes around the world. TheUnited States, represented by a haplessEisenhower, is being blown sky high by thesevolcanic explosions of popular resistance toAmerican-backed puppet leaders.17

After a military coup drove Menderes fromp o w e r i n l a t e M a y , i t s e e m e d t h a tprognostications of anti-American movementsaround the world were proving true. Figure 7,published after the coup in Turkey, reflects thisby showing a cowering Eisenhower, labeledagain as the ‘leader of the American empire’ (美帝国主文), having the teeth of his puppetsRhee in Korea and Menderes in Turkey pulledout by the calipers of the people in bothnations, with Japan in the center to follow. Infact, the comic in Figure 3 (published beforethe coup), which depicts Menderes lying deadin a tomb, proved eerily prescient – Mendereswas later executed in September 1961 after atrial by the military junta that unseated him.

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Figure 6.18

Figure 7.19

What all these examples share is an emphasison the notion that U.S.-backed regimes aroundthe world will not – indeed, cannot – survive,because they stand in opposition to popularwill. Linking events in South Korea, Turkey andJapan to this general principle of Maoistrevolutionary thinking was a useful tool forillustrating the universality of the CCP’sstrategic vision. Moreover, it encouraged theviewer to see the fate of popular resistance toU.S. aggression in Japan as linked to that ofChina’s own popular struggle against foreignimperialism.

Kishi as Fascist Thug and Feudal Clown

Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke provided theemblematic comic depiction of Japan during thesummer of 1960. Not only was Kishi Japan’s topleader, but he had been jailed as a war criminalduring the U.S. occupation period because ofhis influential position within Japan’s imperialadministrative machinery of control inManchuria. Having been released in 1948,however , K ish i was soon pol i t ica l ly

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rehabilitated, like many other previously jailedwar criminals, with the end of the USoccupation in 1952.20 Kishi was thus known inChina for having played a key role in Japan’sbrutal wartime occupation, making him aparticularly inviting target for ridicule.Moreover, Kishi had personally spearheadedthe effort to renew the US-Japan SecurityTreaty in 1960, making him the primarydomestic target of most Anpo-related protestsin Japan. By focusing on Kishi, the CCP couldthus draw a clear distinction between Japan’sconservative political elites and the Japanesepeople as a whole. Doing so made it possible tocondemn the Japanese government and itsAmerican backers while simultaneouslycultivating sympathetic support for theJapanese people.

There are two common themes in thesedepictions of Prime Minister Kishi – fascist thugand feudal clown. Returning to the image inFigure 2, Kishi is donning garb that looksremarkably similar to that of a Nazi SS officer(complete with a German luger-style pistol),with his high-stepping march in black bootsperhaps reinforcing the same impression. Moreexplicitly, in Figure 8 Kishi presides grandlyover the Diet session in which the U.S.-JapanSecurity Agreement has been successfullyratified, but the hall is emptied by Kishi’s club-wielding police goons driving the last remnantsof opposition out of the room. The captionreads sarcastically, “‘unanimously’ passed” (‘一致’通过 ). Moreover, Kishi’s kimono is linedwith swastika trim, making the Nazi referenceless than subtle. In short, the message is thatKishi has employed fascist violence to crushpopular will and ram through his pro-U.S.agenda, depicted here as the Anpo treatywrapped around a missile.

Figure 8.21

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Figure 8.21

With equal consistency, however, Kishi is alsodepicted as a kimono-clad, geta-wearing relic ofJapan’s feudal past, as seen in the imagesbelow. In part, of course, this is meant to makeKishi look foolish, weak and incompetent. Theconsistency with which Kishi is shown in‘traditional’ Japanese garments and footwear,however, also suggests that he represents afeudal

Figure 9.22

Figure 10.23

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Figure 11.24

Figure 12.25

past that wi l l soon be overcome by arevolutionary future. Such a feeling is reflectedwell in Figure 13, which juxtaposes a kimono-clad Kishi against the more ‘modern’ looking

six hundred million Chinese workers whoseadvance compels him to scamper away in hiswooden sandals alongside Eisenhower in hissuit and tie. In Figure 14, while Kishi appearsin a Western suit, the seal with which he istrying to ratify the security agreement istopped with a sword-wielding Japanesemilitarist of the 1940s, again implying thatKishi represents the continuation of prewarmilitarism in postwar Japanese society, as thecaption reads – “catch the hand of evil 抓住罪悪的手.”

Figure 13.26

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Figure 14.27

In each of these examples, there is a unifyingconcept. The popular Japanese struggle againstrenewal of the security treaty is more than justa contemporary political confrontation; it isalso a battle between the progressiverevolutionary vanguard that will determineJapan’s future and the reactionary elements ofJapan’s feudal tradition that desperately clingto power in opposition to it. Such dramaticdepictions of the danger posed by the insidiouspersistence of conservative, counter-revolutionary elements in society would havelikely resonated powerfully within a Chinesesocial environment so recently wracked by theanti-Rightist campaigns of the late 1950s.

Popular Protest as a Force of Nature

In many of these cartoons Japan’s physicalgeography is appropriated to depict popularanger toward the Kishi cabinet in dramatic andrecognizable ways, such as in these uses of Mt.Fuji imagery28 The scene featured previously in

Figure 6, for example, shows PresidentEisenhower being blasted skyward by aneruption of Fuji, with volcanic explosions inSouth Korea, Turkey and several otherunidentified locales in the distance. Figure 15takes a different approach, focusing on Kishiinstead of the U.S. President, but theunderlying message is identical. Kishi isperched atop a Japan (represented figurativelyby Mt. Fuji) that is simmering with popularanti-American struggle ( 日本人民反美斗争)sure to explode at any moment, burying Kishiand the Anpo treaty with it. Similarly, in Figure16 Kishi vainly attempts to cap the explosivepower of the Japanese people (againrepresented by Mt. Fuji) with his club of ‘policebrutality’ ( 警察暴力 ) in the service of the Anpotreaty carried upon his back. The captionreads: “What a pathetic pillar of support” (可怜的支柱 ). In all three examples, the volcanoembodies popular revolutionary energy thatcannot be suppressed.

Figure 15. 29

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Figure 16.30

A different use of Mt. Fuji is employed inFigure 17. Here the mountain is shown in thedistance behind the peace memorial statue inNagasaki commemorating those who perishedthere in the atomic attack of August 9, 1945.The mountain serves as a metonymic symbol ofJapan (as Mt. Fuji is, in fact, not visible fromNagasaki), complete with cherry blossoms,while the ominous American bomber flyingoverhead carries a massive bomb labeled ‘U.S.-Japan military alliance’ ( 日美軍事同盟 ). The

caption at the right can be read as ’Here we goagain’ (又来了), an unambiguous suggestionthat the U.S.-Japan alliance will likely bringnuclear disaster to Japan a third time.

Figure 17.31

Even more striking is the use of tsunamiimagery to represent the unstoppable energy ofpopular action against the Kishi regime and itsAmerican backers. More than just a generalsense of the power unleashed by tidal waves,the images referenced a specific event. In earlyMay 1960, a massive surge triggered by a highmagnitude earthquake in Chile slammed uponJapan’s northeastern coast, the same regiondevastated by the March 11, 2011 tsunami,leaving dozens dead and thousands morehomeless. Soon thereafter, cartoonists in ThePeople’s Daily appropriated imagery of thedisaster to dramatize the political and socialdisturbances then taking place in Japan. Figure

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18, for example, shows crowds of Japaneseprotesters standing on the coast, fists raisedhigh and banners flying, as giant waves sweepthe United States (and its weapons) from theislands, and a massive hand plucks Kishi (inkimono and wooden clogs) from the swirlingfoam below. The caption reads: ‘The SecurityTreaty’ provides no security ( ‘ 安全条約 ’　不安全). In Figure 19, enormous fist-shapedswells emblazoned with the moniker

Figure 18.32

Figure 19.33

‘Japanese People’ (日本人民) lift Kishi up everhigher as he desperately tries to ride the waveson his flimsy wooden club/canoe of ‘policebrutality’. Like a volcano, a tsunami possessesunfathomable power, but the tidal wave alsocarries with it an association of relentlessforward movement, making it an especiallyeffective visual metaphor of revolutionaryaction in 1960.

Broader Significance

A brief comparison with several images fromcontemporary American sources highlights thedeeper meanings behind the many examplesfrom The People’s Daily explored here. First,Figure 20 makes clear from a U.S. perspectivethat the greatest threat facing Japan isexpansive

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Figure 20.34

Figure 21.35

Soviet communism, represented by ferociousbear claws grasping the hammer and sickle,and the U.S.-Japan security agreement makes itpossible for a towering Uncle Sam to protectJapanese society from that danger. For theJapanese to think they can do it withoutAmerican help, is made to seem a laughableproposition. Figure 21 goes even further bysuggesting that Japanese society will commitnational suicide, depicted here by the act ofseppuku (ritual death by disembowelment)using a Soviet-style hammer and sickle, if thesecurity treaty is abandoned. In fact, in this

comic Kishi is cast in the heroic role ofpreventing the fatal swipe of the blade.

In Figure 22, as in the previous example, thehammer and sickle of the Soviet Union is theprimary instigator behind the protests in Japan,as the hapless protester is spurred to actionsolely by the prick of the blade, while thecaption sarcastically labels it a “spontaneousuprising.” Also worth noting, however, is thatthe wooden clogs (geta) worn by the protesterin this case, here shown to be the SocialistParty, represent his backwardness andincompetence much as such footwear was usedin People’s Daily depictions of Prime MinisterKishi. For the American audience, then,Japanese demonstrators are an unruly and un-‘civilized’ mob, while for the Chinese audienceJapan’s political leadership represents feudalremnants of the past.

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Figure 2236

The notion that popular Japanese anger overthe security agreement and its autocraticratification has a legitimate foundation isdismissed out of hand in all three of theserepresentations. Interestingly, China is alsolargely irrelevant in these depictions from theU.S. side; American cartoonists depicted Anpoprotesters as stooges and dupes of Sovietagitation. Moreover, the dimension of classstruggle so dominant in Chinese depictions isentirely absent from the American examples.While these comics cannot be taken as a directstatement of U.S. policy in East Asia, theynonetheless reflect a fairly common sentiment

in American political and public opinion at thetime – sinister Soviet intrigue lay behind most,if not all, anti-American movements in East Asiaand around the globe.37

PRC cartoonists, by contrast, depict the realaggressor in East Asia in 1960 as the UnitedStates, as in the following two cartoons. Bothembrace a critique of police brutality as it wasw i d e l y e m p l o y e d a g a i n s t p o p u l a rdemonstrations during the summer of 1960 inTokyo. Figure 23 shows Prime Minister Kishi’sface on the head of a police Billy club beingsnapped in half by

Figure 2338

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Figure 2439

the power of popular struggle against hisgovernment in the form of the righteous fist ofthe Japanese people delivering a blow to theAnpo Treaty. Notably, U.S. President DwightEisenhower is gently pushing Kishi under thefist with a caption reading: “Hold out as long asyou can!” In Figure 24, Kishi and Eisenhowermerge into one as they stand together under amilitary helmet labeled ‘ anpo’ (安保), whileclubs reign blows upon them with the captionreading ‘neither safe 不安, nor secure不保’ , aclever play on the term anpo by making both ofits component parts negative. In both, theUnited States, of course, is the main target ofcriticism, with Japanese society at largeportrayed as the weak victim of Americanmanipulation.

To understand why this was such a dominanttheme in the sources explored here, we mustremember that images in The People’s Dailywere intended primarily for domesticconsumption. Why then did the CCP devote somuch space in its flagship newspaper to thecelebration of these seemingly revolutionaryevents in Japan during the summer of 1960?Indeed, front page headlines such as this one -

“The Chinese and Japanese People Rise UpTogether, Down with American Imperialism!” -were quite common for several weeks in Mayand June of that year.

Figure 2540

The CCP anchored its legitimacy as the rulingparty of China in part in its role as a leader ofrevolutionary movements in Asia and beyond.Perhaps then, by illustrating to the Chinesepeople that anti-American movements werebreaking out around the world in 1960, a trendmade possible by PRC leadership, the successof the party in both transforming China andinspiring popular resistance in neighboringsocieties such as South Korea and Japan couldbe reinforced. Such a message was importantat a time when the disasters of the Great LeapForward were evident to many (although notdiscussed openly), since one of the core goalsof the GLF had been to rocket China forward toa position of leadership in global affairs.Moreover, 1960 saw the further deteriorationand ultimate collapse of relations between thePRC and the Soviet Union. The image of aunited Asia, under ostensible Chineseleadership, standing up to defeat American-backed authoritarian regimes could provide aweapon in ideological polemics against theSoviet Union. Through these cartoons thereader could see that the USSR was no longerthe vanguard of world revolution – that role

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now belonged to the PRC.

The most striking of these cartoons, however, isthe visual representation of domestic strife inJapan using revolutionary imagery that waseasily accessible and understandable to thegeneral Chinese audience – inevitable successof revolutionary forces, bitter conflict betweenprogressive and reactionary elements, and theirrepressible force of mass movements. Sincethe Korean War, the CCP had sought to drive awedge between Japan’s political elites underthe thumb of American power and the Japanese‘masses’ who could be seen as victims ofAmerica’s Cold War strategy of remilitarizingJapan.41 By dramatically depicting the massuprising of Japanese citizens in a bitterstruggle to free themselves from Americandominance during the summer of 1960, theCCP could continue this redirection of popularanger away from Japan and toward the U.S.,and even cultivate a feeling of popular unitybetween the peoples of China and Japan, Whilethis general strategy of “people’s diplomacy” asarticulated by key party leaders such as ZhouEnlai has long been recognized by historians ofthe era, these cartoons from The People’s Dailyprovide a specific and highly illustrativeexample of precisely how this message wascommunicated to the Chinese people.Furthermore, while it was only a brief episodein the long term reconstruction of postwarChina-Japan relations, these sources remind usnonetheless that the Anpo crisis of 1960 was anevent of import in East Asian internationalaffairs beyond just the U.S.-Japan relationship.

It is also worth noting that many of the imagesand themes prevalent in Chinese editorialcartoons concerning the 1960 Anpo strugglecan be found in Japanese editorial cartoons ofthe same time. In fact, at times they wereidentical, as in the case below of a People’sDaily cartoon that was reprinted from anoriginal drawn by Nasu Ryōsuke 那須良輔 forthe Asahi Shinbun朝日新聞. The cartoon showsa dark-suited American spy, complete with

cowboy hat and holstered revolver (and labeledas a U-2 spy plane) being helped over a wall byPrime Minister Kishi in order to carry out hisespionage missions in China and the SovietUnion. Such a critique of Japanese statedupl ic i ty with aggress ive Americaninterference in Asian affairs was

Figure 26.42

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Figure 27.43

something shared quite comfortably by theChinese Communist Party and manyprogressive intellectuals, writers, politicians,artists and cartoonists in Japan in 1960.

Indeed, during the late 1950s and early 1960s,many people in China and Japan hoped toembark on a path toward reconciliation toprotect their shared national interests against apowerful U.S. aggressor. That thesecommonalities served to bind together certainelements of both societies during the early ColdWar is worth remembering, especially at a timewhen political and territorial disputes pittingChina against Japan over the Diaoyu/SenkakuIslands threaten to destabilize the entireregion. While political elites in both societiescontinue to perpetuate negative popularimages of the other for the sake of placatingcertain domestic constituencies, these

examples from the summer of 1960 remind usthat the content and aims of such manipulationcan change quickly in response to alteredgeopolitical conditions.

Erik Esselstrom is Associate Professor in theDepartment of History and Director of theAsian Studies Program at the University ofVermont. He is the author of Crossing Empire’sE d g e : F o r e i g n M i n i s t r y P o l i c e(http://amzn.com/0824832310/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) and Japanese Expansionism inN o r t h e a s t A s i a(http://amzn.com/0824832310/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) (University of Hawai’i Press, 2009).

Recommended citation: Erik Esselstrom, "The1960 ‘Anpo’ Struggle in The People’s Daily 人民日報: Shaping Popular Chinese Perceptions ofJapan during the Cold War" The Asia-PacificJournal, Vol 10, Issue 51, No. 1, December 17,2012

Notes

1 Renmin ribao人民日報, June 15, 1960. Allvisual materials from The People’s Dailyprovided in this essay were scanned fromoriginal issues of the paper held in the centrallibrary of Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. Ithank Professor Aono Toshihiko and hiscolleagues at Hitotsubashi for sponsoring myappointment there as Visiting AssociateProfessor.

2 The literature is too vast to summarize here,but one excellent example that includesanalysis of historical memory in numerousAsian societies is Sheila Miyoshi Jager andRana Mitter, eds., Ruptured Histories: War,Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia(Harvard University Press, 2007).

3 See Rana Mitter, “Old Ghosts, New Memories:China’s Changing War History in the Era ofPost-Mao Politics” Journal of Contemporary

http://amzn.com/0824832310/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20








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History 38:1 (January 2003): 117-131; JamesReilly, “Remember History, Not Hatred:Collective Remembrance of China’s War ofResistance to Japan” Modern Asian Studies45:2 (2011): 463-490.

4 A useful recent study of the general history ofChinese political cartoons is Tao Ye陶治,Chūgoku no fūshi manga中国の風刺漫画(Hakuteisha 白帝社, 2007).

5 The classic work on the Anpo protests isGeorge R. Packard, Protest in Tokyo: TheSecurity Treaty Crisis of 1960 (PrincetonUniversity Press, 1966). A recent study is LindaHoaglund’s film, ANPO: Art X War - here(http://www.newday.com/films/anpoartxwar.html).

6 A valuable discussion of how popular Chineseperceptions of the United States changedduring the immediate postwar years is HongZhang, America Perceived: The Making ofChinese Images of the United States,1945–1953(Westport: Greenwood, 2002).

7 See Chang-Tai Hung, “The Fuming Image:Cartoons and Publ ic Opinion in LateRepublican China, 1945 to 1949” ComparativeStudies in Society and History 36:1 (January1994): 122-145, “War and Peace in Feng Zikai’sWartime Cartoons” Modern China 16:1(January 1990): 39-83, and War and PopularCulture: Resistance in Modern China,1937-1945 (Berkeley, CA: University ofCalifornia Press, 1994).

8 Kevin McKenna, All the Views Fit to Print:Changing Images of the U.S. in Pravda PoliticalCartoons, 1917-1991 (New York: Peter Lang,2001), 15. An older but highly useful study onSoviet era political cartoons is MichaelMilenkovitch, The View From Red Square: ACritique of Cartoons from Pravda and Izvestia,1947-1964 (New York: Hobbes, Dorman andCo., 1966).

9 Both of these points are consistent with the

basic principles of China’s ‘people’s diplomacy’strategy concerning Japan in the 1950s. See HeYinan, “Remembering and Forgetting the War:Elite Mythmaking, Mass Reaction, and Sino-Japanese Relations, 1950-2006” History &Memory 19:2 (Fall/Winter 2007): 43-74.

1 0 See Parks M. Coble, “China’s ‘NewRemembering’ of the Anti-Japanese War ofResistance” The China Quarterly 190 (June2007): 394-410.

11 James Reilly, Strong Society, Smart State:The Rise of Public Opinion in China’s JapanPolicy (New York: Columbia University Press,2012), 55.

12 Renmin ribao, May 23, 1960.

13 Renmin ribao, June 24, 1960.



16 John M. Wander Lippe, “Forgotten Brigade ofthe Forgotten War: Turkey’s Participation inthe Korean War” Middle Eastern Studies 36:1(January 2000): 92-102.

17 For a contemporary discussion of theincident, see Qunicy Wright, “Legal Aspects ofthe U-2 Incident” The American Journal ofInternational Law 54:4 (October 1960):836-854.



20 Mark Driscoll provides an especially damningportrait of Kishi’s role in overseeing Japaneseexploitation of Chinese labor in Manchukuo inChapter Eight of his Absolute Erotic, AbsoluteGrotesque: The Living, Dead and Undead inJapan’s Imperialism, 1895-1945 (Durham, NC:Duke University Press, 2010).

http://www.newday.com/films/anpoartxwar.html



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22 Close-up from Figure 17. Renmin ribao, May22, 1960.

23 Close-up from Figure 5. Renmin ribao, May 6,1960.





28 For additional discussion of Mt. Fuji imageryin wartime Japan and beyond, see H. ByronEarhart, “Mt. Fuji: Shield of War, Badge ofPeace” in The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue2 0 N o 1 , M a y 1 6 , 2 0 1 1 ( h e r e(https://apjjf.org/-H__Byron-Earhart/3528)), aswell as Earhart’s book, Mt. Fuji: Icon of Japan(University of South Carolina Press, 2011).






34 The Japan Times, June 15, 1960.

35 The Japan Times, July 8, 1960.

3 6The New York Times , June 12, 1960(reprinted from the original cartoon in the TheGreensboro Daily News)

3 7 In consider ing other comparat ivepossibilities, it might prove fruitful to examineeditorial cartoons in Pravda during the late1950s when popular protests against U.S.missile deployments in West Germany werefairly widespread. While I have not examinedthose sources (and specifically relevantexamples are not discussed in McKenna’s Allthe Views Fit to Print), I would not be surprisedto find the CPSU making similar use of thoseWest German protests for domestic propagandavalue just as the CCP was doing with protestsin Japan in 1960. I thank my colleaguesSusanna Schrafstetter and Alan Steinweis forsuggesting this possibility to me after readingan early draft of this paper.


39 Renmin ribao, May14, 1960.

40 Front page of Renmin ribao, May 12, 1960.

41 He, “Remembering and Forgetting the War,”47.

42 Mainichi shinbun, May 9, 1960.


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the 1960 ‘anpo’ struggle in the people’s daily 人民日...

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