A massive 1968 student protest turned Tokyo's busiest train station into a battlefield
A massive 1968 clash at Shinjuku Station saw thousands of anti-war protesters seize one of the world's busiest transit hubs, leading to a violent confrontation that fundamentally changed Japanese civil protest laws.
During the height of the Vietnam War in 1968, Tokyo's Shinjuku Station became a literal battlefield. Thousands of student activists and anti-war protesters occupied the station to block trains carrying fuel for the U.S. military. The demonstration escalated into a riot involving nearly 60,000 people, forcing the government to invoke the Riot Act for the first time in the post-war era.
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