Through the writer's prism: The Waseda revolt of 1917 in the life and fiction of Ozaki Shirō (1898–1964)

Abstract

Summary Not all the students at Waseda were involved in the revolt, but with numbers of participants estimated at between five hundred and a thousand, the events of September 1917 firmly established Waseda's reputation as ‘the Campus of Freedom’, a reputation which was confirmed again in the 1920s when its students occupied a position of leadership in the radical political movement second only to those of Tokyo Imperial University. H. Smith describes Waseda as ‘the only private university before the war to play a dominant role in the student movement’. Tsuzuki Hisayoshi argues that if one were tempted to compare the revolt at Waseda with the riots that Japan or Europe experienced in the late 1960s, in terms of student behaviour there would be not much ground for comparison: the Waseda students of 1917 did not do much more than distribute white roses to their followers as ‘symbols of justice’, organise a great number of meetings, make grand speeches and sing the university song many times with great vigour...