Shinjuku Station

This guide to Shinjuku Station in Tokyo opens on the night of October 21, 1968, when twenty thousand people set fire to the station's west entrance during an International Anti-War Day protest. It traces the freight train explosion a year earlier that turned this commuter hub into a flashpoint over the Vietnam War, and the standoff between protesters and riot police before dawn. Stand near the west entrance and picture the tracks torn up beneath the crowd.