![]() Once the two groups assembled, though, three members were killed through sōkatsu, a process whereby those seen as lacking the qualities to be revolutionary soldiers were forced to undergo “self-criticism” with the professed aim of overcoming their mental weakness.Īnother man, who was not part of either of the two original groups, also joined up, and one couple among the members had a young baby. There should have been 28 members at this stage, with 9 from the Red Army faction and 19 from the Revolutionary Left. From late November 1971, however, they came together in a base on Gunma Prefecture’s Mount Haruna, living as the United Red Army. Given the difficulties of laying low in urban environments, the groups decided to establish mountain bases to live in communally.Īt first, they gathered in separate locations. Following these crimes, thorough police searches of city apartments resulted in many arrests of members and naming of wanted fugitives. Yet both saw benefits from being together, as the Red Army faction had cash seized through its “M strategy” of successive attacks on financial institutions, while the Revolutionary Left had the guns and ammunition from its firearms store raid. Police authorities saw the amalgamation as nothing more than a loose grouping that indicated how the two organizations were under pressure. The group adopted the slogan han-Bei aikoku (patriotic and anti-American), and committed itself to the teachings of Mao Zedong, including the phrase “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” It obtained shotguns and ammunition through a raid on a firearms store. The Revolutionary Left group emerged when Kawakita Mitsuo of the Marxist-Leninist Union invited Kawashima Tsuyoshi of the Marxist Front and brought members who had been expelled from or left the JCP into the Keishō (Alarm Bell) research group established in April 1966. It planned armed uprising as a preliminary stage, performing Japan’s first hijacking incident the next year-the Yodo-gō Hijack, involving Japan Airlines flight 351, a Boeing 727 called the Yodo-with the aim of establishing an international base. The Red Army faction was founded in 1969 based on the principles of its leader, Shiomi Takaya, of seeking simultaneous global revolution. Also known as the Bund, the Communist League had been formed on December 10, 1958, by members splitting away from the JCP. ![]() The Red Army faction derived from the Communist League, which had played a leading role in the 1959–60 demonstrations against the Japan-US Security Treaty. They were identified by the police as the most radical of the extreme-left splinter groups among the new left-wing organizations. Both were founded to perform acts of illegal violence at a time when the student movement seemed to be at a dead end and many students were starting to drift away from political activities. The Red Army had become reduced in numbers and the Revolutionary Left had always had few members, so the “united” organization was still small-scale and lacking in power. What kind of group was the United Red Army? It was formed on July 15, 1971, through the unification of the Communist League Red Army faction and the Japanese Communist Party’s Revolutionary Left Kanagawa Committee. Sakaguchi Hiroshi (center) surrounded by police after his arrest in Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture, on February 28, 1972. They were members of the United Red Army: Sakaguchi Hiroshi led Bandō Kunio, Yoshino Masakuni, and the teenage brothers Katō Michinori and Motohisa. The five men, who had continued to resist through attacks with tear gas and jets of water, were arrested on the evening of February 28, as the assault team captured them alive. A member of the public, who had approached the door of the lodge on February 22 and been taken for a police officer and shot by the group inside, died in the hospital on March 1, bringing the number of fatalities to three. The police stormed the building on February 28, rescuing the hostage unharmed, but two officers were fatally shot during the assault. They took the caretaker’s wife hostage and periodically fired at the police and riot squad units that surrounded and besieged the lodge over 10 days. Five young men armed with guns seized Asama Sansō, a mountain lodge owned by Kawai Musical Instruments Manufacturing in Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture. ![]() It is 50 years since the Asama-Sansō Incident, which gripped and shocked Japan from its beginning on February 19, 1972.
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