Throwing ideology away: Yoshimoto Takaaki’s theory of taishū and Terayama Shūji’s film parody of the people

Abstract

Although much has been written about Yoshimoto Takaaki’s political philosophy and Terayama Shūji’s art as two of the most relevant figures in the culture of the Japanese long 1968, it has not yet been addressed how the qualitative content of their respective works displayed a similar worldview through different media to the point of generating a sort of indirect dialogue. This article aims to fill this gap in our understanding by addressing this connection through the analysis of the intersection between Yoshimoto’s influential theory of taishū (‘the masses’) and Terayama’s parody of characters, as epitomized in his most iconic film Sho o suteyo machi e deyō (Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets, 1971). Likewise, I critically explore how Yoshimoto and Terayama’s anti-establishment distrust of ideology and words contributed to the ethos of the Japanese New Left, especially its student Zenkyōtō (All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees) movement, halfway between the modern and the postmodern. The interdisciplinary approach to two such seemingly distant media as written political philosophy and cinema will dialectically contribute to our understanding of the cultural history of the Japanese long 1968 by tracing the thread of its anti-establishment imagination.