Book Review: Stories from Saddle Mountain: Autobiographies of a Kiowa Family by Henrietta Tongkeamha and Raymond Tongkeamnha

Abstract

affected the dynamics between working class and student youth activists. It could also have been further enriched through the inclusion of the voices of young workers and their life histories—something the author provides in fascinating detail in the following chapter on the Red Army. This chapter provides a lively history of the JRA by tracing the trajectories of Shigenobu Fusako and Wakamiya Masanori and highlighting the local and global connections of the group. Its conclusion points out that Shigenobu was complicit in reinforcing the gender hierarchy of a masculine polis through her propaganda messages. While the author illustrates this complicity in convincing detail, one can question if it completely “eclipsed” Shigenobu’s ideological visions. The gender norms of mainstream society powerfully affected members of the JRA, as did the pervasive consumer culture of early 1970s Japan. However, should we conclude that these influences and the JRA members’ active embrace and enactment of these norms defined them? The chapter’s framing suggests that we should; its rich and lively contents suggest that we should not. The chapter raises questions for further research concerning the intersections between gender norms and activism in Shigenobu and other women activists, as well as their differently gendered portrayals in the mainstream media. While the first two chapters focus on nonstate actors on the Far Left, the last two examine the Far Right. In the early 1950s, “reverse course” became a phrase encapsulating the reactionary turn in Japanese society and politics under the Cold War, with transwar figures escaping the postwar purge and rehabilitating themselves into positions of power. While the phrase was no longer widely used by the late 1960s and early 1970s, the case studies of Kodama Yoshio and Sasakawa Ryoichi illustrate how the trend it referred to continued well into this period. One “Old Left” activist once quipped to the effect that postwar Japan has been on the “reverse course” trajectory for so long, by now it should be in the Stone Ages. However, the last two chapters of this book remind us that generational, class, and gender intersected in ways that preclude a simple portrayal of a linear movement backward in time. Here, one can question the author’s framing of his subjects of analyzes as “nonstate actors” of the Far Left and Right. As the author shows in vivid detail, Far Right activists of the transwar generation enjoyed state establishment connections and resources to a degree that casts doubt on their position as “nonstate actors.” The boundaries between state and nonstate were significantly blurred on the Far Right. On the Far Left, the boundaries were clear and to a degree that was likely higher than most when viewed in global context. While the capacity of social movements to unite and enable political change may have been “a high standard” that was generally not attained in the global 1960s, there were also significant differences in the degree of state (and mainstream society’s) exclusion of these social movements, as well as the degree to which the Sixties generation eventually came to embrace the political status quo. Overall, Mobilizing Japanese Youth is a valuable contribution to our understanding of youth mobilization in Cold War-period Japan. The reviewer is grateful for the book’s insights and richly illustrative material, as well as the questions it raises, but not for Grandpa Sasakawa’s “Fire Safety Song” now stuck inside his head.