Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Description
On 20th April 1969, students at the University of Tokyo published a collection of self-styled ‘Captivity Epistles’, letters written by student radicals imprisoned during the 1968/69 university campus battles. These Captivity Epistles, the title a reference to a collection of four letters written by St. Paul (Phillippins, Philemon, Colossians and Ephesians) while imprisoned in Rome, were justified in the first edition as a method of ‘overcoming the thick wall of power’ and facilitate ‘human’ communication and solidarity between the ‘captives’ and society as a whole. This paper will explore these Epistles, asking how they help us understand the motivations of the student radicals, how the students tried to engage with the wider public through this medium, and how the publication fit into the next phase of their struggle: the ‘battle through the courts’.