NoaIzumiAnime Classroom: the Japanese Red Army
March 3rd 2009 17:16
Anime, educational? Sure!
In episodes twelve and thirteen of the popular anime Black Lagoon, the Black Lagoon Company is hired to deliver a briefcase with information on an upcoming Islamic terrorist attack. During delivery, Rock is captured by the bad guys and, in one of the more interesting interplays of the series, comes face-to-face with Masahiro Takenaka, an affable, middle-aged, Japanese man who happens to be a career terrorist. The episode never says specifically, but Takenaka-san is almost certainly a former member of the Japanese Red Army.
The Japanese Red Army was a radical leftist group, the Japanese equivalent of the Red Army Faction in Germany (AKA, the Baader-Meinhof Gang) or Action Directe in France. It was founded in February 1971, with the purpose of overthrowing the Japanese government and monarchy and replacing them with a socialist state. On May 30, 1972, three JRA members carried out its most famous attack, the Lod Airport Massacre. Armed with assault rifles and grenades, the terrorists killed 24 people at Lod Airport in Tel Aviv before they were stopped by Israeli police. The attack was thought to have carried out on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Airport security was focused on the possibility of a Palestinian attack, so the Japanese were able to slip in. The scenes in Black Lagoon where Takenaka-san is talking with the family man in the airport may be an intentional allusion to this incident.
Lod Airport Massacre, at Wikipedia
That attack was the JRA’s high point. It stayed active for the next two decades, but never enjoyed as much support as its European counterparts did, and had a maximum claimed strength of only forty members. The group disbanded sometime in the 1990s, with most of its members dead, in prison, or hiding out in North Korea.
Takenaka-san himself is most likely based on Kozo Okamoto, the sole terrorist survivor of the Lod Airport attack (one of his comrades was killed in the shootout with the police, while the other committed suicide with a grenade). He was sentenced to life in an Israeli prison, but was later released in a prisoner exchange. He is currently residing in Lebanon, the government of which granted him political asylum, but in a recent interview, he expressed a desire to return to Japan.
Japanese Red Army Member Okamoto Wants to Return to Japan
Nowadays, few people remember them, even in Japan. The Japanese Liberation Army remains a small, brutal, but interesting, footnote in Cold War and Japanese history.
In episodes twelve and thirteen of the popular anime Black Lagoon, the Black Lagoon Company is hired to deliver a briefcase with information on an upcoming Islamic terrorist attack. During delivery, Rock is captured by the bad guys and, in one of the more interesting interplays of the series, comes face-to-face with Masahiro Takenaka, an affable, middle-aged, Japanese man who happens to be a career terrorist. The episode never says specifically, but Takenaka-san is almost certainly a former member of the Japanese Red Army.
The Japanese Red Army was a radical leftist group, the Japanese equivalent of the Red Army Faction in Germany (AKA, the Baader-Meinhof Gang) or Action Directe in France. It was founded in February 1971, with the purpose of overthrowing the Japanese government and monarchy and replacing them with a socialist state. On May 30, 1972, three JRA members carried out its most famous attack, the Lod Airport Massacre. Armed with assault rifles and grenades, the terrorists killed 24 people at Lod Airport in Tel Aviv before they were stopped by Israeli police. The attack was thought to have carried out on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Airport security was focused on the possibility of a Palestinian attack, so the Japanese were able to slip in. The scenes in Black Lagoon where Takenaka-san is talking with the family man in the airport may be an intentional allusion to this incident.
Lod Airport Massacre, at Wikipedia
That attack was the JRA’s high point. It stayed active for the next two decades, but never enjoyed as much support as its European counterparts did, and had a maximum claimed strength of only forty members. The group disbanded sometime in the 1990s, with most of its members dead, in prison, or hiding out in North Korea.
Takenaka-san himself is most likely based on Kozo Okamoto, the sole terrorist survivor of the Lod Airport attack (one of his comrades was killed in the shootout with the police, while the other committed suicide with a grenade). He was sentenced to life in an Israeli prison, but was later released in a prisoner exchange. He is currently residing in Lebanon, the government of which granted him political asylum, but in a recent interview, he expressed a desire to return to Japan.
Japanese Red Army Member Okamoto Wants to Return to Japan
Nowadays, few people remember them, even in Japan. The Japanese Liberation Army remains a small, brutal, but interesting, footnote in Cold War and Japanese history.
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