Japanese Red Army Leader Intends to Re-enter Political Arena

Japanese Red Army Leader Intends to Re-enter Political Arena

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An elderly Shigenobu Fusako in a mask gives a speech in front of an imposed image of the Japanese Red Army flag.
Shigenobu Fusako, former leader of the once-infamous Japanese Red Army, makes her first public appearance since release from two decades in prison.

On October 16th, Shignobu Fusako, the newly-released former leader of the now-defunct Japanese Red Army, stood on an outdoor stage in Kyoto. In front of her sat dozens of onlookers, many elderly – perhaps former comrades and supporters from the heady days of Japan’s New Left movement. Above hung a red banner bearing the words, “We Shall Change both Japan and the World! Anti-war/anti-poverty/anti-discrimination collective action in Kyoto.” (ๅค‰ใˆใ‚ˆใ†๏ผๆ—ฅๆœฌใจไธ–็•Œ – ๅๆˆฆใƒปๅ่ฒงๅ›ฐใƒปๅๅทฎๅˆฅๅ…ฑๅŒ่กŒๅ‹• in ไบฌ้ƒฝใ€‚) Shigenobu addressed the crowd in an unwavering voice, one practiced at decades of revolutionary pontification. This was her first public address since her release from prison on May 28th, following two decades of imprisonment.

Signage from the event that hosted Shigenobu. The event was held by an executive committee of citizens who had been involved in the student movement.

Shigenobu Fusako and the Japanese Red Army

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Shigenobu Fusako was infamous as one of the world’s most prominent terrorist leaders. She was the face of the Japanese Red Army, and was publically credited as the mastermind behind the Lod Aiport Massacre that killed twenty-six people (most of them Puerto Rican pilgrims) at a Tel Aviv airport in 1972, among numerous other headline-grabbing actions. Operating out of shifting bases in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley and in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, Shigenobu worked alongside the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, with which her Japanese Red Army was deeply associated.

To many in the Arab world, and especially among Palestinians living under Israeli occupation or in refugee camps in neighboring countries, Shigenobu was a hero; she was (and is) something of a legend in formerly Soviet-aligned spaces and countries where resentment towards US imperialism runs deep. In much of the rest of the world, including her home country of Japan, she was the poster child for youthful idealism taken to its most violent extreme.

Japanese Red Army: Homegrown Terror

Bombings, battles with the police, hijackings…and that was just the beginning. The tale of the birth of the revolutionary group that would shock Japan – and the world – to its core.

To learn about the genesis of the Japanese Red Army, watch episode 1 of our 5-part series on the history of the JRA.

After three decades spent evading capture by Japanese, Israeli, US, and European operatives, Shigenobu was finally arrested in November of 2000, having entered her home country on a fake passport. This was some 12 years after the final JRA operation – a bombing of a USO club in Naples in which five people died, four of whom were Italian civilians.

The bombed-out USO club in Naples, Italy.

Shigenobu faced an extended trial, taking six years to reach its conclusion; in the end, the prosection’s hoped-for life sentence was reduced to twenty-year imprisonment. The trial revolved around Shigenobu’s involvement with the 1974 French Embassy attack in The Hague, a five-day-long hostage crisis carried out by the JRA which saw a deadly bombing of a Paris Cafe used as a pressure tactic. (In 2017, Carlos the Jackal, perhaps the most infamous independent operator of the “golden age of terrorism,” was charged with carrying out the bombing.)

The most famous image of Fusako from her decades with the JRA.

Return of the “Mistress of Mayhem”

Shigenobu emerged from prison at the age of 76. She’d left for the Middle East fifty years earlier, at age 26, barely missing the horrific internal purge of her parent Leftist student faction, in which 14 members were brutally tortured and murdered. (Her close friend, Toyama Mieko, was among those killed.) For three decades, she’d helped formulate the Japanese Red Army’s Marxist rhetoric, bringing in new recruits from Japan and appearing in Arabic and Japanese language media to represent the JRA.

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Scholars such as Patricia G. Steinhoff, who carried out a correspondence with Shigenobu, have argued that Shigenobu’s role in directly planning or ordering deadly attacks has been exaggerated. Nonetheless, Shigenobu publically associated the JRA and her leadership with operations like the Lod Massacre (an attack led by her own paper husband Okudaira Tsuyoshi), seen as a great victory for the Palestinian cause in much of the Middle East but as a terrible slaughter of civilians elsewhere. After two decades in prison, during which she survived cancer, the question on the minds of many has been what this final period of Shigenobu’s life will represent.

The aftermath of the Lod attack.

The speech in Kyoto is the first real sign we have of what Shigenobu intends for her last years, and represents something of a change (if an unsurprising one). In 2001, while awaiting trial, Shigenobu officially disbanded the Japanese Red Army; in the many years since, she would often reflect on “mistakes” made by the JRA and the outmoding of its violent methods. In 2017, for example, she wrote:

“The Japanese Red Armyโ€™s tactics were naive and had some faults. Our tactics werenโ€™t aligned with the realities of Japanese society, and you could say we had a string of failures. People who werenโ€™t targets of the armed struggle got dragged into it because of our weaknessโ€ฆ.I donโ€™t believe there is any need for a modern-day equivalent of the Japanese Red Army in Japan.”

Letters sent to the media in the days before her release stated that “…my life after release will be filled with apologies, gratitude, rehabilitation, and fighting my illness.โ€

Shigenobu Fusako: Terror in Tel Aviv

How the vestiges of Japan’s ultraviolent left fled the country – and inflicted decades of terror upon the world. This is the story of the Lod Airport Massacre. Part four of a five-part series on the Japanese Red Army.

Episode four of our five-part series on the JRA focuses on Shigenobu Fusako and the Lod Massacre.

Starting Afresh?

Shigenobu Fusako’s words during Sunday’s speech, however, indicate a desire to return to more active involvement in politics – although this time at an individual level, working from within the normative framework of Japanese society. A far cry from her former role leading Japan’s most radical band of violent international revolutionaries.

Shigenobu addressed the crowd for around ten minutes. Part of her speech was devoted to her recent, extended experience with the Japanese legal system:

“I spent 22 years experiencing the violation of my human rights. You don’t even have the freedom to take a breath.”

She continued on with remarks related to her desire to contribute to social activism.

“I’ve been walking the path of revolution since I was 19, and there were both mistakes and good things that came of all those battles. After twenty-two years in prison, I’d like to start afresh. Just where can real democracy be found? We must change our politics. Change the LDP [Liberal Democratic Party]. My intention is to participate in these changes as a single individual.”

Following in her Mentor’s Footsteps

Shigenobu stated that she intends to work alongside citizen’s rights groups. In re-entering the political arena following a long stint in prison, she’s in fact following in the footsteps of her late mentor, Shiomi Takaya.

Shiomi was the founder of the Japanese Red Faction, the same group that Shigenobu became involved with in the early years of her student activism. He helped plan a thwarted abduction of the Prime Minister, and was imprisoned just before other RAF members conducted Japan’s first-ever commercial airplane hijacking. Shiomi was released from jail in late 1989, nearly two decades after his imprisonment; he went on to pursue an unsuccessful political career within the confines of the law, doing so while holding a low-paying job as a parking lot attendant. He died in 2017 at age 76 โ€“ the same age his younger protegee, Shigenobu Fusako, was at the time her own release from two decades in jail.

The difference, however, was that Shiomi’s Red Army Faction never reached the level of infamy (or, from another perspective, success) of Shigenobu’s successor organization, the international Japanese Red Army. Shiomi was imprisoned while still young, and despite audacious actions like the 1970 hijacking of Japan Airlines Flight 351, his RAF was never directly responsible for the murder of civilians. Shigenobu’s JRA invaded embassies, hijacked numerous planes, engaged in multiple violent stand-offs with governments the world over, and was directly involved in the deaths of dozens of non-combatants. Whether any of these deaths were directly ordered by Shigenobu or no, she was the spokeswoman and face of one of the Cold War era’s most infamous terrorist groups.

A Surreal Situation

All this makes Shigenobu Fusako’s low-key speaking engagement in Kyoto feel a bit surreal. Shigenobu, now 77, looks for all the world like any older Japanese woman you might encounter in a covered shopping mall in the countryside. As she concluded her speech, her audience clapped for her, and joined arm-in-arm to sing old student movement songs.

Yet in police boxes throughout Japan, red-colored wanted posters still bear the likenesses and names of her comrades in the JRA. Many, like the infamous Bando Kunio, who was part of the United Red Army purge and the following siege of the Asama Sanso Lodge, are still on the lam; Okamoto Kozo, one of the three Japanese terrorists who committed the Lod Massacre, is known to have found sanctuary in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. Their former leader, however, is now talking about engaging in peaceful political activism during her golden years as a free Japanese citizen.

Japanese Red Army posters in a Japanese police box.
Wanted posters; the green poster is for the Red Army Faction hijackers, stuck in North Korea since 1971. The red poster is for Japanese Red Army operatives still on the run these many decades. (Photograph by Noah Oskow.)

In truth, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has stated that she will remain under surveillance. Shigenobu Fusako is free, but she is not unwatched. Around the world, people raise cheers in her honor (perhaps with the “Okamamoto Kozo” branded beer bottled out of Brazil), speaking of her in the same breath as her old comrade Leila Khaled of the PFLP. In other locales, her return to normal civilian life is viewed with deep suspicion. For those who view Shigenobu Fusako as either hero or monster, her coming actions will bear watching.

When Tokyo was Socialist: the Story of Governor Minobe

Sources:

MBS News. 10/16(ๆ—ฅ). ใ€Œๆ–ฐใ—ใ„ๆฐ—ๆŒใกใงๅ†ๅ‡บ็™บใ—ใŸใ„ใ€ๆ—ฅๆœฌ่ตค่ปใƒป้‡ไฟกๆˆฟๅญๅ…ƒๆœ€้ซ˜ๅนน้ƒจใ€€ไปŠๅนด5ๆœˆใฎๅ‡บๆ‰€ๅพŒใ€ๅˆใ‚ใฆใฎ่ฌ›ๆผ”ใ€€ไบฌ้ƒฝๅธ‚. Yahoo! Japan News.

2022ๅนด10ๆœˆ16ๆ—ฅ. ๆ—ฅๆœฌ่ตค่ปใƒป้‡ไฟกๆˆฟๅญๅ…ƒๆœ€้ซ˜ๅนน้ƒจใŒไบฌ้ƒฝใฎ้›†ไผšใซ็™ปๅฃ‡ใ€€ๅ‡บๆ‰€ๅพŒใ€ๅˆใฎ่ฌ›ๆผ”. Asahi Shimbun Digital.

2022ๅนด10ๆœˆ17ๆ—ฅ(ๆœˆ). ๆ—ฅๆœฌ่ตค่ปใฎ้‡ไฟกๆˆฟๅญๅ…ƒๆœ€้ซ˜ๅนน้ƒจใ€Œๆœฌๅฝ“ใฎๆฐ‘ไธปไธป็พฉใฏใฉใ“ใซใ‚ใ‚‹ใฎใ‹ใ€ๅ‡บๆ‰€ๅพŒใงๅˆใฎ่ฌ›ๆผ”. TBS News Dig.

Steinhoff, Patricia G. (1996.) Three Women Who Loved the Left: Radical Woman Leaders in the Japanese Red Army Movement. In Re-Iminaging Japanese Women.

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Noah Oskow

Serving as current UJ Editor-in-Chief, Noah Oskow is a professional Japanese translator and interpreter who holds a BA in East Asian Languages and Cultures. He has lived, studied, and worked in Japan for nearly seven years, including two years studying at Sophia University in Tokyo and four years teaching English on the JET Program in rural Fukushima Prefecture. His experiences with language learning and historical and cultural studies as well as his extensive experience in world travel have led to appearances at speaking events, popular podcasts, and in the mass media. Noah most recently completed his Master's Degree in Global Studies at the University of Vienna in Austria.

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