Michiko Kanba
{{Short description|Japanese communist and Zengakuren activist (1937-1960)}}
{{Infobox person
| pre-nominals =
| name = Michiko Kanba
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| image = Michiko_Kanba.jpg
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| native_name = 樺 美智子
| native_name_lang = jpn
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| birth_date = {{Birth date|1937|11|8}}
| birth_place = Tokyo, Japan
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1960|6|15|1937|11|8}}
| death_place = South Gate of the National Diet Building
| death_cause = Police clash
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| known_for = The Smile Nobody Knows
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| father = Toshio Kanba
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{{nihongo|Michiko Kanba|樺 美智子|Kanba Michiko|November 8, 1937 – June 15, 1960}} was a Japanese communist, University of Tokyo undergraduate, and a Zengakuren activist. She died in clashes between demonstrators and police at the South Gate of the National Diet Building in central Tokyo at the climax of the 1960 Anpo Protests against the US–Japan Security Treaty.{{Cite book|last=Kapur|first=Nick|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Re5hDwAAQBAJ|title=Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2018|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|pages=30|isbn=9780674988484}}
Activism and writing
Michiko Kanba was born in Tokyo. Her father was Toshio Kanba, a sociologist and professor at Chuo University.{{Cite web|url=http://www6.plala.or.jp/guti/cemetery/PERSON/K/kanba_t.html|title=樺俊雄の墓}}
Kanba was raised in a middle-class Christian household, and entered University of Tokyo in 1957 and joined the Japan Communist Party on November of that year. After that, she became a leader in the New Left organization "The Bund" and participated in the massive Anpo protests against the revisions of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan.{{Cite book|title="Sensô taiken" no sengoshi sedai, kyôyô, ideorogii「戦争体験」の戦後史 世代・教養・イデオロギー|last=Fukuma|first=Yoshiaki|publisher=Chûkô shinsho|year=1990|pages=117}}
Kanba was one of the 76 student activists who were arrested at a January 26, 1960 sit-in at Haneda Airport.{{Cite book|title=Gekidô Showashi genba kenshô: sengo jiken fairu 22 「激動昭和史現場検証 戦後事件ファイル22」|last=Gôda|first=Ichidô|publisher=Shinpûsha|year=2005|pages=238}} She also participated in protests around the Diet Building. She was killed just inside the South Gate of the National Diet Building after a group of students broke into the gate and clashed with riot police. An autopsy later determined that she died from chest compression and intracranial bleeding. Police claim that she was knocked down and trampled to death, while students blamed her death on physical assaults by police officers.
After her death, Kanba's personal writings and political essays were collected and published under the title "The Smile Nobody Knows" (Japanese: 人しれず微笑まん).{{Cite book|title=Hito shirezu hohoeman 「人しれず微笑まん」|last=Kanba|first=Michiko|publisher=San'ichi shinsho|year=1960|location=Tokyo|ISBN=4380600025}} In her writings, she discusses her life and activism.
Legacy
Kanba's death was widely covered at the time, and is seen as a symbol of the 1960 mass protests against the revised Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan. A political cartoon that ran in the popular journal Sekai a month after Kanba's death depicted a yakuza gangster lighting a cigarette for a policeman as they both stand over her dead body in front of the National Diet Building.{{Cite journal|last=Siniawer|first=Eiko Maruko|year=2013|editor-last=Bridenthal|editor-first=Renate|title=Befitting Bedfellows|journal=The Hidden History of Crime, Corruption, and States|publisher=Berghahn Books|pages=112}}
Historian Nick Kapur argues that nationwide shock at Kanba's death helped force the resignation of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and the cancellation of a planned visit to Japan by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower.{{Cite book|last=Kapur|first=Nick|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Re5hDwAAQBAJ|title=Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2018|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|pages=32–33|isbn=9780674988484}} Kapur says Kanba's death was viewed as a "triple tragedy," first because she was so young, second because she was a student at Japan's most elite university, and third, because she was a woman, at a time when it was still novel for women to participate on the front lines of street protests.{{cite podcast |url=https://soundcloud.com/harvardusjapan/japans-1960-protests-and-the-contemporary-world-nick-kapur-rutgers-university |title=Japan's 1960 Protests and the Contemporary World |website=Soundcloud |publisher=Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University |host=Nick Kapur |date=September 25, 2018 |time=15:52 |access-date=June 10, 2021}} Eiji Oguma has contended that Kanba's death evoked recent memories of the many young people who lost their lives in World War II.{{Cite book|title=Minshu to aikoku: sengo Nihon no nashonarizumu to kōkyōsei (Democracy and Patriotism: Nationalism and Community in Postwar Japan)|last=Oguma|first=Eiji|publisher=Shinyōsha|year=2002|location=Tokyo|pages=530–539}} Hiroko Hirakawa framed Kanba's posthumous status as a "maiden martyr" as reflecting contemporary expectations about middle-class femininity and motherhood.{{Cite journal|last=Hirakawa|first=Hiroko|year=2017|title=Maiden Martyr for "New Japan": The 1960 Ampo and the Rhetoric of the Other Michiko|journal=U.S.-Japan Women's Journal|volume=51|pages=12–27|doi=10.1353/jwj.2017.0003|s2cid=191528863}} Chelsea Szendi Schieder argues that the global 1960s began in Japan with Kanba's death.{{Cite web|url=https://mronline.org/2010/06/15/two-three-many-1960s/|title=Two, Three, Many 1960s|last=Schieder|first=Chelsea Szendi|date=2010|website=Monthly Review Online}}
Photographer Hiroshi Hamaya captured the events of the night Kanba was killed.{{Cite web|url=https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/tokyo_1960/anp2_essay05.html|title=Tokyo 1960: Days of Rage and Grief|last=Jesty|first=Justin|website=MIT Visualizing Cultures|access-date=March 8, 2018}}
Akiko Esashi wrote a biography in Japanese on Kanba in 2010, under the title Michiko Kanba: Legend of a Sacred Girl (Japanese: 樺美智子ー聖少女伝説).{{Cite news|url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2010/06/11/national/legacy-of-1960-protest-movement-lives-on/#.WqDu-JNua1s|title=Legacy of 1960 protest movement lives on|last=Hirano|first=Keiji|date=June 11, 2010|work=The Japan Times}}
References
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{{New Left in Japan}}
{{Communism in Japan}}
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Category:Protest-related deaths
Category:Japanese women activists
Category:20th-century Japanese women writers
Category:University of Tokyo alumni