Participation in Urban Protests as a Street Gathering

Bystanders and Urban Space in the 1960 Anpo Protests

Abstract

In previous discussions, despite their analytical importance, the spatial dynamics of protests and the roles of bystanders, downtown streets, and sidewalks have been less examined. This paper studies how non-partisan onlookers participated in the street demonstrations in the 1960 Anpo Protests, which represent the struggle against the US–Japan Security Treaty in 1960.

Prior research has emphasized participants' political ethos of being “citizens” and the social background of post-war Japan as the direct incentives for taking action. These factors, however, cannot explain why the demonstrators initially hesitated to join the march before finally deciding to participate. The question here is how the bystanders alongside the street, who were strangers to each other, could join and then actively take part in the protest. This paper understands the anti-Anpo demonstrations as a highly urban phenomenon of gathering on the street and elucidates its process through focusing on their corporeal performance in an urban space.

The light-hearted atmosphere of demonstration, which was expressed through the protestors' easy-going appearance and attitude, encouraged the undecided onlookers to participate in the march. They experienced the protests as highly festive events with a cheerful ambience composed of the clothes of marchers, bystanders on the sidewalks, street vendors, and the grandeur streetscape of the downtown area. The agency of protesting was performatively exercised through the practice of demonstrating the boulevard together with strangers. The participants who had once been bystanders actively performed the demonstration, not through the medium of language communication but through sensing and touching each other's bodies while gathered in the same place.

This paper presents an alternative model of urban protests as the gathering of bodies by highlighting bystanders and downtown urban spaces and critically develops the studies on spatial dynamics of protest, which, to date, have mainly concentrated on the ideologies of activists and demonstrations.