Interview With Muto Ichiyo

Abstract

Muto Ichiyo,* founder and a director of the Pacific Asia Resources Center in Tokyo and of AMPO: The Japan-Asia Quarterly Review, is a radical theoretician, critic of contemporary imperialism, and an activist. In the sixties he was a leader of Beheiren, a mass citizens movement active in the anti-Vietnam War struggle, and in the campaign against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty; he has subsequently worked closely with the farmers' movement to block the Narita International Airport, with people's movements in Southeast Asia, attempting to resist the inroads of Japanese imperialism, and with militants in the Japanese labor movement. His full analysis of Japan's postwar development is currently being carried serially in AMPO (P.O. Box 5250 Tokyo International, $14 per year).

This interview was conducted by Paul Dieterich and Mark Selden in May 1981 during Muto's tenure as adjunct lecturer at SUNY-Binghamton.