An Essay-Review of Two Books on Japanese Radicalism.

Reviews E. S. Krauss, [Japanese Radicals] [Revisited], University of California Press, 1974; and B. C. Duke, [Japan's] [Militant Teachers], University of Hawaii Press, 1973. Both books focus on manifestations of Japanese antiestablishment spirit. Krauss' book studies the left-wing radical students once they left the campus. He discovered that a substantial portion failed to enter careers in government and big business enterprises for which their training prepared them; they carried over their radical beliefs into lives as academics, researchers, media workers, and small businessmen. Duke's book of the left-wing teachers' movement in Japan is an historical account of the movement's evolution with an attempt to analyze the causes of its militancy. Duke does not see Communist influence as the decisive element in the militant actions of the teachers' organization; rather it is the consequence of the postwar poverty and of the conservative reaction to the progressive American occupation reforms superimposed on the legacy of nationalism and economic depression from prewar Japan. 6 pp.