Blood And Rage: The Story Of The Japanese Red Army (William R.Farrell, 1990)

This one is among the very few english-written books solely on the JRA (without taking into account general sources concerning terrorism or cult activity in Japan). An intrincate and fascinating history, the JRA constituted one of the most relevant political debacles not only of postwar Japan but also of the international stage during the second half of the XX century. Now almost condemned to oblivion, along with most of the Vietnam-era politics due to our sanitized media immediatism, which never ever traces present events to the past, the JRA nevertheless remains as one of the historical cornerstones of the protest movement of Japan back in the 60s. Understanding how young students, protesting the government's complicity with America in Vietnam and the conformity of an ultracapitalist Japan, became weapon smugglers in Lebanon, fought Israel's Mossad and orchestrated attacks on embassies around the world from Paris to Kuala Lumpur really puts things in perspective. Since then, not only Japan has lost all grassroots political involvement but other terrorist threats such as Aum Shinrikyō had to deal with the fast response of pretty militarized authorities trained by their previous conflicts with the Japanese youth during the 60s.

The book dates back to the nineties, and it hasn't aged very well for the following reasons; first, William Farrell is not expert in Japanese History, rather, he was a consultant of various US government agencies including the National Security Council and the Task Force on Terrorism designed by recently deceased Bush senior. Not your best guy to confide, and as expected, the book is filled with neoconservative zeal (constant fear mongering about Libya's Qaddafi and the ''communist influence''). Secondly, the perspective of time has watered down and disclosed the events. Today and thanks to those talking points, the richest nation in Africa has midday slave markets and its infraestructure lies in ruins, all in order to take down the pretty harmless Qaddafi (Adam Curtis documentaries are pretty helpful in disclosing this). Also, the Japanese Red Army self-disbanded in the year 2000, after more than a decade of inactivity. The Soviet Union dissapeared in front of everybody's eyes without any government consultant predicting it. Lastly, William R.Farrell (willfully?) ignores the many political leanings within the original protest movement which led to massive organizations such as the Zenkyōtō and then its radical wings such as the Bund or the Anti-Security Treaty Joint Struggle. While many of these organizations were in fact left-leaning generally speaking, many others were in fact nativist, nationalistic and even ethno-centric.

These elements, the left leaning represented by the Japanese Communist Party youth and the Zenkyōtō, and the romantic nationalistic right of the 'anti-american influence' followers of Yukio Mishima (who frequently addressed them on campus) mixed in Japan along with both a cultural crisis and a strong, vibrant artistic scene. The ''return to Japanese earth'' of Butoh dance, the revolutionary underground Angura threatre scene, and the incredible psychedelic rock of the times were in full swing. Situationism and political new wave cinema explode. Molotov cocktails and university occupation ensued. Opposition to the American military bases (which remain today) and protesting the educative system became the hottest issues. It is impossible to overstate how mix all these phenomenon were; the fact that the leader of the cult band Les Rallizes Dénudés (which pioneered noise), Takashi Mizutani, was a Red Army member and hijacked a plane, is telling enough. In this context, the Japanese Red Army came to exist:

The United Red Army was a bastard child produced from parents of differing strains. One, the Red Army Faction, traced its origins to the turbulent period of the late 1960s. Those fond of genealogy can trace the roots of the group back further to the schism in the Japanese student movement of the late 1950s and to the formation of the Communist League or Bund. The Bund has been classified as a new left group that was more prone to action rather than ideological debate. But, even within its action-oriented members, differing opinions developed as to how much action and when it should take place.

William R.Farrell correctly states: ''there is a large framework of a common objective but, within that framework, each individual is engaged in constant molecular movement that is both free and unfettered''. The book does an okay job at placing the many many events within a cronological frame, identifying the leading voices within the various factions, their strenghts and weaknesses. While Farrell's framework does not so good at establishing causarion between said events or its causes, there is a lot to learn from these first chapters on the origins of the JRA.

Key names among all these groups are the following: Kyōsandō [共産同] (Known as "Bund") was a marxist militia which defied the Japanese Communist Party guidelines; oriented to direct action (i.e violent protests and clashes against the police), only extreme radicals led by Tsuneo Mori [森 恒夫] would end up taking actual arms and leaving. Next, Keihin Anti-Security Treaty Joint Struggle Group [京浜安保共闘] was more prone to nationalism; to a degree Maoist, the group was led by a female pharmacy student, Hiroko Nagata [永田 洋子]. When the fringes of these two groups colluded, the briefly constitued United Red Army [連合赤軍]  came to exist. It did not last long. Retreating to a lodge in the woods in order to train and prepare armed revolution, the group purged itself out of existence by killing each other after various heated arguments and then fighting the police from a taken-over inn, which came to be known as the Asama-Sansō incident. 14 young activists died under Nagata and Mori's supervision. This is arguibly the most gruesome incident of the protest movement in Japan, roughly equivalent to Manson's crimes in his latitude; even worse considering that they trusted their own killers. In fact the United Red Army's story strongly resembles religious cults such as Jonestown way more than actual terrorism, and it has been echoed as such within Japan. Aside from the political jargon, Mori and Nagata were deeply troubled individuals (if not serial killers), and they both died in prison. Nagata in particular became sort of a pop culture figure, depicted as a demonlike killer by non other that eroguro master Shuehiro Maruo. The whole debacle was made into a movie by political new-wave master director Kōji Wakamatsu.

Yet, the actual focus of this book is on another cell, the Japanese Red Army [日本赤軍], led by female student Fusako Shigenobu [重信 房子]. Its members did not partake with the United Army; in fact, Fusako's best friend was among the victims of Nagata's group. Along with another acquatainces including film director Masao Adachi (later renowed because of his ''Red Army/PLFP: Declaration of World War''). Also a product of the political termoil at the heart of the student movement, the Sekigun faction shared the pursue of an international revolution against USA imperialism and interference in Asia, its meddling in Korea and Vietnam, along with its control of dissidence within Japan, at the time considered a firewall against the expansion of Communism in the Far East (where Maoist China had became hegemonic against the Kuomintang party in Taiwan, Korea was divided and Vietnam faced a similar situation). As different clashes between the general protest movement in Japan and the government ensued one after another, Japan began the militarization of its police departments. Banned from having an actual army due to Article 9 of its constitution (which the nationalists hated then as much as today), the massive defense budget of the country was aimed at providing the riot police with the means to push away the many violent fronts students had opened with just wood sticks, stones and molotov cocktails. Better equipment (such as reinforced PVC shields, deployment trucks and water cannons), militar instruction and a generally violent approach made a difference at putting an end to Japanese dissatisfaction.

Also, the government colluded with the educative system and the big businesses: any youngster detained or simply with an history of marching in protests (wether violently or not) was virtually excluded from the workforce. The police actively shared these expedients in order to foster a general consensus against the protestors. The media also did its part, through parody and exaggeration. As a result of these burdens, Fusako and the other radicals saw coming an end to the possibilities of revolution within Japan. So, just as the Japanese government celebrated its victory over the problems at home, the RJA flew to the Middle East and its constant strikes humilliated the government internationally, as it was continually coerced into negotiations which eventually lose. Yet, overtime, Japan was able to capture one member after another (all of them pretty pintoresque characters) at the
strangest places and plots. Even if so, the relative freedom among the ranks (many members plotted direct action without even informing their companions, separated by countries of distance) made it impossible to ever stop the organization. Just as it happened in the USA with the Weather Underground (also protesting Vietnam), the fact that so many members were young, attractive students and yet posed such a great threat for various governments, the media fawned over all detentions and turned the subject into a national drama for decades. As an example, Ayako Daidoji's detention caused such reaction; years after her detention, she wrote various books for children.

While Farrell does not deep dive into many of the historical characters, his book is among the very few which contains biographical information on Fusako Shigenobu. How she was inspired by her father, who was also very political but in the pretty opposite sense. A member of the Ketsumeidan [血盟団], a terrorist ultra right wing secret society guided by a buddhist master during the 1930s, he later became a member of the tought police or Kenpeitai [憲兵隊] during the Pacific War. Guided by both devotion to the Emperor but also by the romantic agrarian and almost equalitarian ideals shared by many right wingers of low social extraction, the Ketsumeidan used to strike capitalists for deviating from political orthodoxy or 'bleeding the countryside for the benefit of the cities'. Thus, even if poor, he was a pretty stern yet idealistic person.

He once told her 'A persons's nobility is determined by its convictions, and he must not be judged by either his authority, knowledge, or ability....A person gains values by being faithful to his convictions (...) she recalled walking with her father through the streets to the many flea market areas that were so common in the immediate post-war era (...) there were always amany disabled war veterans. She would stare at these men in their torn and tattered uniforms. Some had missing limbs and other disfigurements. Now they were forced to beg to survive. (...) If human values and convictions were so important ¿why did people look down on the poor just because they had less material things?

The wounded veterans (an image that the underground theater and media took with profusion) represented not only the past, that is, ignorant fanaticism and nationalism, but also embodied values precious to the young: a stern idealism to the last breath, opposition to American invansion and also the rejection of consumer society and materialism as a whole. When Fusako turned to marxism, her father actually supported her, happy that she was also to be a political actor and not a simple consumer, happy to get by. Her main points of assertion were the rejection of capitalism and American meddling in the world, from Palestine to Korea. As she left for Lebanon, she would never see him again: Shigenobu did not return to Japan until the year 2000, when she virtually handed herself to the police.  By then the JRA was already becoming a ghost of the distant past for many Japanese, as the media focus began to fade out due to the scarcity of new material.

Of course, this is a book written during the eighties and published in 1990; it was not very prescient about the future of the organization. While Farrell considers the RJA with disdain along the book (their desorganization, their laziness compared with the PLFP members, their numerous errors, their idealism), he surprisingly thought it was to became a major threat to the ''western world'' in the following years. These two lines of approach dwindling when reaching its conclusions, Blood And Rage ends with outdated advice from the author: it will be necessary to be tough with Colonel Qaddafi in order to put a stop to international communist terror groups. The USA did destroy Libya, way after the Soviet Union had collapsed and the RJA had dissolved in the year 2000 (Shigenobu is currently imprisoned until 2022). Qaddafi was actually killed in 2011; the result?: the once rich nation became a

haven for terrorist cells such as ISIS; illnesses and brutal conditions remain there, without a functioning government. USA salafi allies such as Saudi Arabia rejoice before the fall of a country very much opposed to its goals (theocracy). USA itself rejoiced, given the fact that Qaddafi was orchestrating a panafrican currency to counter the petrodollar. Could it be that such was the actual goal after all, and both Qaddafi and the JRA were paper tigers all along, just as the Soviet Union was during its last years? Afghanistan, another invasion under the pretense of fighting communism, is now also old enough to drive.

All in all, another conflict Shigenobu was interested on, Israel-Palestine is still escalating and very much due to USA influence. Donald Trump puts a an entitled and cruel face on the same American Imperialism Barack Obama hid under a smile. The one state solution destroyed recently with Jerusalem as undivided capital and Gaza in tatters, there seems to be no way out for the arabic population. Today, USA exterior policy targets Iran again after destroying its democracy during Shigenobu's years, causing the Islamic Revolution against their puppet dictator. Also, after meddling in Latin American policy for centuries, USA now threats Venezuela as it destroyed Salvador Allende's government in Chile during Shigenobu's generation. The piles of corpses in Panama or El Salvador, as well as the cruel bombing of Laos and Cambodia during the Nixon Administration and its 'international crusade against communism', really should make us sceptic of any and all justification for unidirectional action by the government of the United States and anyone that, as Farrell, tries to justify it. All these concerns of the 60s generation are today as poignant as they were back then, if not more, considering how close we are to, again, fall into the repetition of History.