Mei's case parallels M.I.A.'s, whose dad was a Tamil Tiger, and whose first album was named after him.

Is it safe to speculate about this? If she says she needs to keep her father's identity a secret for everyone's protection, shouldn't we take her at her word? Or do you think no one will read your blog? Or that the secret isn't really that vital?

I read the interview, and it seemed like she talked a lot about how it was important to put the Palestinian side of things out there -- but she never actually gave the Palestinian side of things. Maybe that was just an unpleasant consequence of the interview format, but it seems like a weakness to me.

terror plans to kill Puerto Ricans and protein biophysicists.

You (and Nate for that matter, and a few others here) surely do have a way of phrasing things for highest emotional impact. [i shall call it the axis of evil syndrome.

is the above statement actually acurate ?

I will not presume to know the details of Shigenobu Fusako's sexual adventures in the Middle East
there is this movie i can recomend. it's called kichiku daienkai and it might give you some clues.

on the subject of palestine here's some nice Jimmy Carter words about Hamas' new government:

http://volokh.com/posts/1147067498.shtml

If she says she needs to keep her father's identity a secret for everyone's protection, shouldn't we take her at her word? Or do you think no one will read your blog? Or that the secret isn't really that vital?

The man is a terrorist, a murderer of innocents. The preservation of his anonymity may be "vital" to his daughter, but why should it be so to the rest of us? On the contrary, I think the public good would be much better served by unveiling him than by collaborating in keeping him from the reach of the law.

Interestingly, a combination of the names George Habash and Mei Shigenobu (both typed in Jap.) turn up no results on Yahoo! Japan.

But they do have the same nose:

http://www.japantimes.com/images/photos2002/nn20020605b5a.jpg

http://www.pvda.be/images/solidair2002/sol3002/p06-Habash02_bwtif.jpg

I sat in on a talk given by film director and former JRA member Adachi Masao on the Waseda campus two years ago. I'm still not well read on that era (and now see the mistakes in my old post), but it's fascinating. Though the Lod Airport Massacre must have been a nightmare for the victims and their families.

Dzima's meditation exercise for the day:

Everybody please sit down in lotus position and then proceed to repeat the word "terrorism" all together in unison. Let's all keep an even interval between each repetition; I suggest that they happen one deep breath away from each other. While we all do that, let's try and empty our minds of any thoughts and soon enough the word "terrorism" will lose any meaning it might carry in our collective unconsciousness.

And voila! "Terrorism" won't exist in our world anymore!

(I can also assure everybody that this meditation exercise will prevent prostate cancer and other nasty stress related diseases)

Mei's case parallels M.I.A.'s, whose dad was a Tamil Tiger, and whose first album was named after him.

Mei's album is a lot less cutting-edge.

Is it safe to speculate about this? If she says she needs to keep her father's identity a secret for everyone's protection, shouldn't we take her at her word?

Probably.

is the above statement actually acurate ?

No, they planned to kill Jews, but a bunch of goyim got in their way.

there is this movie i can recomend. it's called kichiku daienkai and it might give you some clues.

That movie again...! Actually, the female character in the movie is based on Nagata Hiroko, not Shigenobu. (And isn't it totally awesome when they blow up her womb with a shotgun?! Radical!)

On the contrary, I think the public good would be much better served by unveiling him than by collaborating in keeping him from the reach of the law.

I'm not sure much will happen if the father is identified. But I can understand why the revered Mr. Habash wouldn't want a half-Japanese love child running around - if he's the father, which we are only speculating to be a possible scenario.

Interestingly, a combination of the names George Habash and Mei Shigenobu (both typed in Jap.) turn up no results on Yahoo! Japan.

Yes, I'm out on a non-Googable limb.

Dzima's meditation exercise for the day:

Whatever, dude.

That movie again.

i'm (actually not) surprised you take the effort to reply in earnest to a lame comment of mine placed there just to try make you aware of your own patronising, contemptuous tone you persistently use when describing anything outside your own little circle - be it terrorists, jap. punk trendies or anything.

in your weltanschauung anyone different is either vilified or victimized. it's chronic. I shall call it the axis of evil syndrome.

Right, just because they wanted to strategically kill Jews doesn't make them evil.

My foot is in my mouth. Again!

In reply to Momus I do think there's a difference between the Tamill Tigers
http://www.tamiltigers.net/
and groups involved with the PLO
While both are fighting against "occupation" of their lands the story of Israel is certianly more complicated, after all both Jordan and Egypt were offered the land that now constitutes Israel, passed on it, then proceeded to deny it exists when the jews took it. While Palestine might be occupied, the PLO's refusal to even accept the existence of Israel coupled with Palestine's history (if you think the way Jews treat Palestinians today is bad during WWI the ottoman ran government essentially tried to elimenate all jews in Palestine systematically) and blah blah blah: "The British hoped to establish self-governing institutions in Palestine, as required by the mandate. The Jews were alarmed by the prospect of such institutions, which would have an Arab majority. However, the Arabs would not accept proposals for such institutions if they included any Jews at all, and so no institutions were created." My point being the Tamills were forced from their land and then watched as settlers took over it, Palestine is now run by the ethnic minorities the Arabs have repressed for thousands of years. While I don't think Israel's military actions are moral, the PLO is essentially trying to restore a historically repressive system and unlike the Tamils their claims to have originally occupied the lands of Israel aren't entirely true, the area has always been more diverse than just Arab.

yatta. I got mentioned on the collaborator roll.

This is the first (maybe 2nd) post I've read here where I really haven't a clue what's going on. is marxy adding JPN336 "History of Post-War Radicalism in Japan" to the pre-reqs?
"fluent in four languages", writes books and shit, and the best work she can find is still eikaiwa. english teaching really does pay far too well here.

You would think she would temp for a "Terrorist Travel Agency" - sending impressionable, ideology-lacking young Japanese leftists off to foreign countries to provide violent manpower for other people's revolutions.

The difference between the JRA and the Tamil Tigers is that the Tamil Tigers actually have some kind of historical link to the Sri Lankan struggle - i.e., it's their struggle. The JRA showing up and killing people indiscriminately in Israel is like me going to Western China and blowing myself up for the Uighurs.

Boom boom, Thane Camus/I said uh, whump hey! Thane Camus/I'm talking looky now, Thane Camus/Oh will yuh break it down, Thane Camus

Simply, "Thane!"/That's the name o' the game/runnin' and gunnin' with his bun in yo oven

He hott/hott to trot/He on fie-yah/T-townz Messiah

Thiggidy Thane! (say what?!)/ Check it, Thane! (say who?!)

Thane

Mr. Camus to you

me going to Western China and blowing myself up for the Uighurs.

Lord Byron fighting for the Albanians, right?

Monty Pythons Life of Brian pretty much ruined my ability to deal with popular fronts for anthing.

actually the mother's story somewhat reminds me of LeCarre's Little Drummer Girl as well (book not movie)

chris,

that's nishi-shinjuku hospital on your blog right? that system's unreal. i watched it for tens of minutes. thought of doing a video of it. (there seems to be no comments button on yr blog/ sorry marxy) maybe, to bring it closer to the topic of this entry it could be called 'Different Trains'.

alin,

its kokusai kokuristu byouin (IIRC). No comments and barely any text on my photo journal, I made it mostly for myself anyways.

excuse my ignorance but what is IIRC??? where is 国際国立病院 ? the only hospital i've been inside in tokyo is in nishi-shinjuku, off omekaidou and it had an instalation like in your pix, just that it was multileveled, which your pix don't show.i was wondering if it's a generic item or just a one-off. whatever it is, it's here to stay - at least as long as the haneda monorail

marxy, i'm wondering if the term 'ideology-lacking leftist' is actually accurate.

Mei (May) Shigenobu is cute... She's really HOT :P

marxy, i'm wondering if the term 'ideology-lacking leftist' is actually accurate.

What, exactly, was Shigenobu's ideology? In theory, the JRA wanted to overthrow the emperor, but in practice, they were guns-for-hire, desperate for opportunities to actually get to kill people and make up for the embarassment of the URA lynchings. The PFLP gave them their big break, and they always felt dependent upon them - until making connections to Libya in the 80s and doing jobs for them. The JRA were terrorists by act, but primarily nihilistic - wanting to live the exciting, real-life terrorist experience more than resorting to strategic violence in order to work towards some deeply-held political plan. Most of their strikes were targeted at raising money - ostensibly for other jobs which never happened. They targeted Japanese firms and employees abroad more for the cash than to send a message back home.

They left Japan in the eary 70s looking for terrorist jobs, and Palestine had open positions. It's hard to say that some intial ideology towards Communism in Japan was the driving force for their actions.

Orthopraxical terrorism? All form, no content.

Orthopraxical terrorism

Check mate. The combination of well-rehearsed moves and a tabu subject. Lethal. You've won and proven right all your entries for the past year or so. Congrats.

Maybe I should do some study before returning here.

I understand (and greatly welcome) detailed debate positions from alternate philosophies. I don't understand the "Marxy exasperation" - the generic, vague "Oh, I give up dealing with you!" as if I were the troll and this is your blog.

I understand (and greatly welcome)

ok , you surely like to think you do but in practice both your standpoint and your rethoric are so narrow and stubborn and, to make it worse, spiced up with defensive sarcasm that for someone like me, probably dzima too and others there remains no choice but to be trolls (i.e. terrosists) on this blog.

Okay, see you next post.

she is hot ...

trolls (i.e. terrosists

next post's the type only omnipresent, omniscient momus can take on, so to get back to my previous line of thought, don't you find it strange that more often than not, and not very often at all, in your posts about japan the few comments by (possibly kurds using) japanese (names) also have the same troll/terrorist tone. {please don't ask me to single them out coz i hate searching}. so , the fact that it is your own blog and you can do whatever you want on it aside, i'd say you are basically using 'occupation' strategies. does this make sense ?
what was the JRA doing in palestine? i find your answer quite bit superficial on more than one level. let's not ask what nato&co are doing in many places they shouldn't be doing(oh, but they do have an ideology ok) but let's expand the paradigm and compare it to say british people adopting romanian orphans boom in the early 90s. what the fuck were they adopting 'romanian' orphans for? that's like you going to Western China and blowing myself up for the Uighurs. let the romanians adopt their own fcuking orphans. and what's sir geldof doing he should've cared about irish peasants and belfast streetkids right. ok, even keeping your binary thinking you should still see that they're two sides of the same coin, not some freak-out exception to the human race. there are aussies in the al-quaida , mate. etc

Marxy out of Neomarxisme!

on the lighter (and much more easily comprehensible) side. I have to disagree with the local consensus.

she looks funny to me, based on that picture. not hot. not everyone can pull off mixed race... hell it's hard enough to pull off just one.

In re 'the pre-recs for the class'

Hi Marxy-
I'm an American grad student doing work on the Japanese left/'subculture' (and I guess in a position to teach that class mentioned above, eventually). I had some questions about the stuff you put up-mail me off-list if you have the chance.

1) Where does the bit about the JRA 'overthrowing the emperor' come from? I'm not saying that it's not true, It's just that I've never run across it in what I've read. If anything, the Red Army's stance and that set of issues leaned to the nationalist end (describing deaths in firefights as 'gyokusai', etc.)

2) As far as JRA 'not really having anything to do with' Palestine, I don't know about that. The PFLP was a Marxist Internationalist organization at the time that Shigenobu et al. got connected with it. It was an alliance that made sense at the time. And I don't think, for better or worse, than we can disconnect the red army from the marxist left, or the idea of the 'new left' from violence.

By the way, one of the (very few) people who (sort of) defended Okamoto Kozo and the Lod Airport massacre was none other than Terayama Shuji. It's in shisha no sho ('the book of the dead'-I might be garbling the title with the Origuchi Shinobu film that was out, but it's something close to that).

As a second aside, I'm not a big internet person or knowledgable about trolls or anything, but what's up with some of the racist/misogynist crap on this thread? Is the next big thing in 'Japan Cool' going to be 'Kenkanryuu'? Is this 2chan?

hanseishiru,

Max

thank heavens someone who knows what they're talking about dropped by.

Mei was born on March 1st, 1973, which makes her ... a Pisces and an Ox.

Max -

Where does the bit about the JRA 'overthrowing the emperor' come from?

This may not be an actual JRA position, but I seem to recall reading that in relation to at least the RAF and URA. I think some of the CIA-factsheets on terrorism list this as a JRA goal, but perhaps this is not factual. I would guess that reading Shigenobu's early work would illuminate this.

As far as JRA 'not really having anything to do with' Palestine, I don't know about that. The PFLP was a Marxist Internationalist organization at the time that Shigenobu et al. got connected with it.

My point was that Palestine was not a big Leftist issue in Japan in the 60s and the JRA's connection to the PFLP could be considered one of pragmatism, not of initial ideology. Of course, "Marxism" was the link between the JRA and the PFLP but it is unclear that Shigenobu left Japan with the idea that Israel was the best battleground for the Red Struggle. Their connection certainly had many features of traditional ningen kankei as the fundamental point of relation.

Okamoto Kozo and the Lod Airport massacre

Shigenobu's "ideology" is one thing, but Okamoto alone kind of calls the entire JRA into question. He was literally just "some kid" who found himself shooting up people in the Middle East in a vague attempt to reconnect with his brother. And just like the URA lynchings, the party leadership had no problem sending the ground troops to their deaths to achieve their fame and glory. Kozo wasn't supposed to come back alive from the airport attack.

That being said, my opinion on this matter is one of light social criticism and not formal academicism. I think the JRA can probably be placed into a nice, cozy content and made sense of, but at the same time, there is still the fundamental mystery: why did three Japanese men march into an Israeli airport and kill 23 people in revenge for an Irgun attack? All the Red Armies put the final nail in the coffin for Leftism in Japan, and I find it hard to really find some kind of positive legacy of the JRA in particular.

mysogyny? That she's pretty or not? I'm glad I decided not to go to grad school in america. I'm not prepared to think I hate the gender of anyone who I find attractive (or not).
It's just us plebes who don't have the pre-reqs (or interest) joking around and accessing this story on a level we can. Like how the average academic type would probably be more interested in the audience than the race itself if he/she went to a nascar race.

three Japanese men march into an Israeli airport

i think another factor that can be thrown in the equation is that, save a couple of taisho arty types, this is the first generation of japanese 'world citizens'. there is something 'radical' to anyone of this generation who chose to do so and they're pretty much the ones who opened the way for HISers to bring shibuya-key and teriyaki chicken to your shores.

three Japanese men march into an Israeli airport

when you quoted that, I thought you were gonna make a joke, according to form.

according to what ????!????

ah, ok.

nate: yeah, it looked like a lead in didnt it

alin: take a pill or get outside and get some fresh air or something.

Nate:

I'm not trying to shoot you down, or anyone else. People should say what they want to say: if I didn't think that was the case about the Red Army, I'd be producing tiny-type monographs for the CIA, not posting on blogs.

When I say 'misogyny', I'm not trying to nail you or anyone else as a 'misogynist'. I'm talking about the atmosphere on the thread.

The reason this matters (because it's not like there isn't this kind of thing elsewhere on the internet) is that at the time, there actually was a lot of heavy-breathing speculation about the sordid love lives of people in the Red Army, mostly in weekly magazines. There still is, in fact. A lot of it is crass; but some of the stuff about Nagata Hiroko, for example, was sordid. Now, what Nagata Hiroko did, herself, was also pretty sordid. But there were actually attempts to claim, for example, that Nagata killed people -because- she had Graves' Disease (a form of thyroid cancer). Now, how is that remotely plausible? You invoke the stereotype of the hysterical woman and then note she had this weird disease that nobody understands very well.

So May is mixed-race, right? Well, the other half of that situation is that for most of her life she's been deprived of Japanese nationality (partially her mother's fault, BTW), meaning that she could end up eternally detained 'somewhere' without a visa or a government to look out for her, that her mother had to write an autobiography in jail to get her the right to, say, live in Japan at all, and so on.

For reasons I'm not going to drone on about here, 'Familial Relations' are basically what -make- you a national citizen in Japan. And a lot of people who don't get to be Japanese Nationals (like DPRK-affiliated Koreans) also live lives that have something to do with communism-rather conveniently for the Japanese far right.

I don't want to beat you over the head with the worst of Japanese history just to call you wrong. My point is that there is a really deep context to the situation of these people who were tied up with the Red Army and that race/gender stuff is tied up with that as well.

Personally, I think she's cute, BTW.

-Max

context, yes, context

context enlightens it some, but that the huser housing scandal dude was on tv most recently for having been seen with a young potential mistress would suggest that the crime we commit in attatching sordid affairs to world history is general tabloid salaciousness.

marxy was only being tabloidy from the outset in guessing at her parentage. the situation (fathers ID is double super secret) sort of begs some speculations of the sort, doesn't it?