Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

Other accounts of individuals asserting themselves were eminently serious. Shortly after surrender, students at a high school in Mito city attracted nationwide attention by boycotting classes and forcing their militaristic principal to resign. In Tokyo, female students at an upper-level secondary school caused a sensation by denouncing their male principal as corrupt and demanding classroom reforms. Their actions—doubly defiant in involving not only students but women—were followed by spontaneous protests at a number of higher schools and universities calling for the resignations of militaristic administrators and teachers and the granting of greater student rights. In November 1945, university students in Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagoya, and Kyushu began establishing autonomous student federations that laid the basis for the postwar student movement.29