France is still cleaning up after demonstrations on Oct. 16 that escalated into three days of rioting and looting, damaging more than 3,000 businesses and resulting in more than 2,500 arrests. The protests, led by students demanding improvements to the education system, resumed this past weekend, but with less arson and property damage, partly due to curfews in some areas.

Japanese media have reported on the unrest largely as a matter of fact, but I have found little analysis of its broader significance or potential impact on France, Europe, the United States and Japan. Although it may be too early to draw conclusions, the events remind me, as someone who lived through the 1960s and 1970s, of the old adage that history does not repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes.

Large-scale protests are hardly unusual in France. Since World War II, the French Republic has seen at least four major waves of civil unrest. Analyzing how these past demonstrations compare with today’s crisis may shed some much-needed light on the current political landscape.

The historic May 1968 uprising immediately comes to mind. I was in high school when the monthlong rebellion began. Led initially by university students, the movement quickly swept in the working class, fueling demands for education reform alongside anti-war and anti-American protests. Beneath France’s rapid economic growth, youth frustration had reached a boiling point. The younger generation was fed up with an inflexible university system and Charles de Gaulle’s authoritarian, conservative government.

The May 1968 uprising ran parallel to similar........

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