An online portal by William Andrews about Japanese radicalism, counterculture and protest movements.
The title, Throw Out Your Books, is a reference to the book, play and film by Shūji Terayama, Sho o suteyo, machi e deyō (Throw Out Your Books, Rally in the Streets). The banner image is a detail of a press photograph published in the Mainichi Shimbun in July 1969, depicting the so-called folk guerrillas who used to gather at Shinjuku Station’s West Exit underground plaza on Saturday evenings.
I am the author of Dissenting Japan: A History of Japanese Radicalism and Counterculture, from 1945 to Fukushima (Hurst, 2016) and The Japanese Red Army: A Short History (bahoe books, 2018). Read more about me.
I also used to write about contemporary Japanese performing arts on the blog Tokyo Stages.
Throw Out Your Books 