Demonstrators take part in a protest organized by student collectives and trade unions in Paris on Thursday. | REUTERS

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.…