Klaus Mehnert

"Standing on East Asia is an English rendering of the Japanese language book Tōa ni tachite (1942) with explanatory footnotes and appendices provided by the editors ... there are differences between the original twelve articles in The XXth century and Tōa ni tachite's corresponding chapters."

The 1960s was the decade of social and political rebellion by the young. Ho Chi Mihn and Che Guevara were canonized, and undergraduates in New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Rome, and Tokyo quoted Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. The demonstrations for the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the Port Huron Statement, and the student riots in Berlin were followed by the outbreaks in Paris of May 1968, the confrontations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, and the violence of the Weathermen. This text examines the common strands linking such diverse events and widespread phenomena as the Beat poets, the Rock and drug culture of the 1960s, the underground press in Russia, the Prague Spring, and the Tupamaro guerillas.