Sasebo City was one of the important bases of the Japanese Navy during World War II. After the war, it also became an important base for the US military stationed in Japan and the Japanese Self-Defense Force.
In April 1967, Ryu Murakami graduated from Sasebo Municipal Kokai Junior High School and entered Sasebo North High School, beginning a three-year high school life that was of great significance to his life. The following year, the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise sailed into Sasebo Naval Port. For this reason, Japan's "Anti-Yoyogi National Student Movement Alliance" launched a massive demonstration to prevent the US aircraft carrier from entering the port. This student movement had a great impact on Ryu Murakami, a sophomore in high school, and he was once dumped by it. In the summer of his senior year (1969), Ryu Murakami and his friends occupied the roof of Sasebo North High School and displayed slogans such as "Disintegration of North High School" and "Smash the Nagasaki state-owned system". . (About this student movement, the Yomiuri Shimbun (Western Edition) published on July 20, 1969 had a detailed report.)
From 1968 to 1969, in order to cooperate with China's "proletarian culture "Great Revolution", the "All-Japanese Struggle" left-wing student movement broke out in Japan. The one at Sasebo North High School aimed at destroying the graduation ceremony in March 1970, and many people dropped out of school.
During the three months of suspension of classes for reflection, Murakami began to come into contact with the hippie culture represented by anesthetics and rock and roll. On the eve of graduation in March 1970, he began to form a rock band and shoot 8mm films. And participate in theater performances and activities. Ryu Murakami was 17 years old at the time. He was at an age where he had nowhere to vent his passion, and he was ignorant and immature. He also lived at the Nishikyushu base where the US military was stationed. Western culture brought by television, movies, newspapers, rock music, and poetry is unstoppably affecting the writer's incarnation in the novel, Kensuke Yazaki, and his peers.