Fusako Shigenobu (; ; born September 28, 1945) is a Japanese communist activist, writer, and the founder and leader of the now-disbanded militant group Japanese Red Army (JRA).
Born in Japan, Shigenobu became involved in New Left activism while attending night school at Meiji University in Tokyo. In 1969, she joined the Red Army Faction (RAF), a communist group that advocated immediate, armed revolution against the governments of the United States and Japan. Eventually becoming one of its senior leaders, Shigenobu played a significant role in establishing the International Relations Bureau for the organization.
In 1971, she helped found the JRA as an offshoot of the RAF. That same year, Shigenobu and the JRA relocated to the Middle East in an effort to start a world revolution, therefore she came in contact with terror groups within Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). During the 1970s and 1980s, members of the JRA took part in a number of violent incidents, including bombings, mass shootings, and hijackings. Although Shigenobu did not directly participate in these activities, during this time she attained international fame as the leader and public-facing spokesperson for the JRA.
Under her leadership, the JRA allied with Palestinian militant groups to carry out high-profile terrorist attacks globally, most notably the Lod Airport Massacre (at what is now Ben Gurion Airport) on May 30, 1972.
Arriving in the baggage area, the gunmen pulled assault rifles and grenades from violin cases and fired indiscriminately into the crowd. 26 people were murdered (mostly Puerto Rican pilgrims and Israeli citizens) and over 80 were injured.
Two attackers died during the assault, while the third, Kozo Okamoto, was captured. Shigenobu coordinated logistics and provided political backing for the attack.
Despite initially supporting Terror acts, in later years Shigenobu expressed remorse about her involvement with violent militancy, and focused on grassroots support for and solidarity with the Palestinian people. Throughout her years in hiding and later imprisonment, Shigenobu authored 10 books, including a book of poetry.
Following her arrest in 2000 after several years of hiding, Shigenobu was put on trial for passport forgery and conspiracy involving an attempted hostage-taking operation at the French Embassy in The Hague in 1974. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2006 and released in 2022.
Early life Shigenobu was born on September 28, 1945, in the Setagaya ward of Tokyo.Shigenobu Fusako. りんごの木の下であなたを産もうと決めた. ("I Decided to Give Birth to You Under an Apple Tree"). Tokyo: Gentosha, 2001. p. 15 Her father had served as a major in the Imperial Japanese Army and had been dispatched to Manchukuo. Prior to his military service, he was a teacher at a (or temple school) for poor village children in Kyushu. A right-wing ultranationalist, he had been implicated in a failed prewar coup d'etat by military officers. After the war, he worked as a grocer and Shigenobu grew up in relative poverty. Although he remained staunchly right wing, Shigenobu's father was sympathetic to her activist impulses, and respected her militancy. In later years, he consistently refused to apologize on behalf of his daughter for her actions, despite an intense pressure campaign to do so.
After high school, Shigenobu went to work for Kikkoman in a soy sauce factory while taking night courses at Meiji University.Shigenobu Fusako. りんごの木の下であなたを産もうと決めた. ("I Decided to Give Birth to You Under an Apple Tree"). Tokyo: Gentosha, 2001. p. 36 She eventually received a Bachelor of Arts in political economy and history. In 1965, she joined the student movement at Meiji University that was protesting an increase in tuition fees. In 1966, she joined the New Left group the Communist League, better known as the "Second Bund," and in 1969 she became a leading member of the group's "Red Army" splinter faction, which would eventually evolve into a separate group called the Japanese Red Army. During this time Shigenobu, renowned within the movement for her beauty and sex appeal, worked in a Tokyo hostess club and loyally turned over all her earnings to support the movement.
JRA movement
By 1970, Shigenobu had risen to become the only woman on the Central Committee of the Red Army Faction. However, she began to grow disenchanted by what she viewed as the sexism inherent in the Japanese New Left movement and the RAF in particular, and increasingly intrigued by the possibility of making common cause with the Palestinian liberation movement as a stepping stone on the path to world revolution. In February 1971, Shigenobu decided to relocate to the Middle East with a self-appointed mission to establish an international branch of the RAF for these purposes. To this end, she entered into a sham marriage with fellow militant Tsuyoshi Okudaira to secure his last name, because while "Fusako Shigenobu" was known to Japanese police, "Fusako Okudaira" was not. Arriving in Beirut, Lebanon, in March 1971, the two activists did not act as a couple and lived in separate apartments.
Soon after arriving in Lebanon, Shigenobu split with the Red Army Faction in Japan due to both geographical and ideological distance, as well as a personal conflict with the new leader, Tsuneo Mori. Mori's faction went on to link up with the Maoist Revolutionary Left Wing of the Japanese Communist Party to form the United Red Army, a separate group from Shigenobu's JRA. Upon hearing about the internal purge the United Red Army carried out in the winter of 1971–1972, Shigenobu recalled her shock and sorrow. She and Okudaira wrote My Love, My Revolution (わが愛わが革命) as a response, the title of which was a reference to Mitsuko Tokoro's influential essay collection My Love and Rebellion.
Shigenobu remained in the Middle East for more than 30 years. Her move reflected the concept of "international revolutionary solidarity," with the idea that revolutionary movements should cooperate and eventually lead to a global socialist revolution. She originally joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) as a volunteer, but eventually the JRA became an independent group.Shigenobu. "A Personal History of the Japanese Red Army". She mentions in several of her books that "the mission's purpose was to consolidate the international revolutionary alliance against the imperialists of the world."
On May 30, 1972, three members of the JRA led by Okudaira carried out the Lod Airport massacre at Lod Airport in Israel. The attackers killed 26 civilians, but one of the attackers was killed by friendly fire, and Okudaira was killed by a mishap with his own grenade. Shigenobu seems to have had advance knowledge of the attack, as she had written to friends in Japan advising them to be on the lookout for a "historic event" in the revolutionary struggle to take place in May 1972.
On March 1, 1973, in Beirut, Lebanon, Shigenobu gave birth to her first and only daughter, Mei Shigenobu. The identity of the father remains a secret to the public, with it being reported that he was a militant for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Shigenobu has since written a book about her relationship with her daughter.
On July 20, 1973, a group of hijackers led by JRA member Osamu Maruoka hijacked Japan Air Lines Flight 404 en route from Paris to Tokyo, demanding the release of JRA prisoners held by Israel and the Japanese government. When both governments refused their demands, they flew the plane to Libya where they blew up the 747 aircraft on the tarmac as a symbolic victory. The hijackers were arrested by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi but Shigenobu negotiated their release in 1974.
On September 13, 1974, three JRA members stormed the French embassy in The Hague, taking the ambassador and ten other people hostage, to demand the release of a fellow JRA member. A five-day standoff with police resulted in the release of the JRA member requested by the hostage-takers, the safe release of the hostages, and a safe flight out of the Netherlands for the attackers. Following the attack, Shigenobu was listed as a wanted person by the Interpol.
On August 5, 1975, five JRA militants stormed the American Insurance Associates Building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, taking more than 50 hostages, including the United States consul and the Swedish chargé d'affaires. The hostage takers demanded the release of seven Red Army prisoners in Japan, to which the Japanese government felt forced to comply (although two of the seven later refused to be released).
Similarly in 1977, five JRA militants hijacked Japan Airlines Flight 472 over India and forced it to land in Dhaka, Bangladesh, forcing the Japanese Government to free six imprisoned members of the group and pay a $6M ransom.
Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978, Shigenobu and other militants were forced to flee to Libya. Thereafter, Shigenobu issued statements saying that the JRA would henceforce renounce "terror" tactics and pursue legal means. Nevertheless, JRA members continued to become involved in violent incidents, including car bombing the Canadian embassy and firing mortar rounds at the American and Japanese embassies in Jakarta in 1986, and similar attacks against the American and in Rome in 1987, as well as a rocket attack on the US ambassador in Madrid that same year. Shigenobu herself was also connected to the kidnapping of a Japanese businessman in the Philippines in 1986.
The final JRA-linked attack occurred on April 14, 1988, when a powerful car bomb exploded outside the United Service Organizations (USO) military recreational club in downtown Naples, Italy, killing five people (only one of them an American), and injuring 15 others. The attack was carried out by JRA member Junzō Okudaira (the younger brother of Shigenobu's deceased husband Tsuyoshi Okudaira), and occurred on the second anniversary of the 1986 United States bombing of Libya, where Shigenobu and the other JRA members were then residing under Colonel Gaddafi's protection.
Arrest Shigenobu was arrested on November 8, 2000, outside a hotel in Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture,Fighel, Jonathan (Col. Ret.) (November 9, 2000) Japanese Red Army Founder Arrested in Japan , International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, Retrieved January 16, 2016 after entering Japan illegally through Kansai International Airport using a forged passport that she obtained by impersonating another person some time between 1997 and 2000. The same day she was transported to Tokyo to be interrogated by the Metropolitan Police Department although it was reported that she refused to answer any of her interrogators' questions.
In April 2001, while imprisoned awaiting trial, Shigenobu formally disbanded the Japanese Red Army in a statement to the press faxed from her prison.
Trial After a lengthy trial, Shigenobu was sentenced to 20 years in prison on March 8, 2006.
The prosecution charged her on three counts, the use of forged passport, aiding another member in the JRA in obtaining a forged passport, and attempted manslaughter by planning and commanding the 1974 occupation and hostage taking at the French embassy in The Hague, the Netherlands. Shigenobu pleaded guilty to the first two charges, but not guilty to the charge linking her to the 1974 embassy hostage taking. Among the witnesses that appeared in her court for the defense was Leila Khaled, known for the 1969 hijacking of TWA Flight 840, and currently a member of the Palestinian National Council.