Hirohitler on the Rhine: Transnational Protest Against the Japanese Emperor’s 1971 West German State Visit

Abstract

This article explores transnational connections between anti-imperialist groups in West Germany and Japan through an examination of the protest around the Japanese Emperor’s state visit to Bonn in 1971. Although anti-imperialist movements in Japan and West Germany had many similarities and moments of contact, there are few treatments of these groups in transnational perspective. The event offers a unique moment of entanglement between New Left groups in the global 1960s and a rare moment of mutual discussion of the Japanese and German wartime past. The Showa Emperor (better known as Hirohito) traveled to Europe as a way to promote a new, peaceful, Japan; however, his role as a wartime leader complicated this image. Hirohito’s presence in West Germany presented major issues of wartime crimes that were filtered through German’s own memory of perpetration and victimhood. Radical students in and West Germany responded to the Emperor’s visit by cooperating with Japanese exchange students to analyze and protest the history of Japanese militarism and fascism – and also its postwar attempts to regain an empire, especially in Southeast Asia and Vietnam. These concepts were seen, therefore, on another level: the US war in Vietnam, and Japanese and West German complicity in this conflict.