The United Red Army on Screen: Cinema, Aesthetics and The Politics of Memory Cinema, Aesthetics and The Politics of Memory

This book investigates how films made about the URA since the 1990s have engaged with, reproduced and contested cultural memories of the organisation, discussing how directors have addressed questions of narrativization, trauma, intergenerational connection, and political subjectivity as they engage in the politics of cultural memory on screen. In 1972, the radical left wing United Red Army (URA) became notorious in Japan when, after a protracted police siege, news emerged that the group had killed 12 of its own members during physical and ideological training exercises. In the wake of these revelations, media coverage produced a particular aesthetic for sensing the incident characterized by madness and aberrant sexuality. This aesthetic went on to delimit what was perceptible about the incident and the politics it came to represent, putting an end to the already dwindling Japanese New Left movement, but also having a lasting impact on political activism in Japan. This book investigates how films made about the URA incident since the 1990s have engaged with, reproduced and contested this aesthetic of remembering the URA, discussing the very different ways in which directors have grappled with questions of narrativization, trauma, intergenerational connection, and political subjectivity as they engage in the politics of cultural memory on screen "In this important treatment of Japanese cinematic memory texts dealing with the United Red Army, Chris Perkins brings together politics, aesthetics and history to offer a new interpretation of how the events surrounding the United Red Army's descent into violence have been represented and read as an ongoing trauma for Japanese society, and for the Left in particular. The dominant aesthetic of politicised and gendered kyoki (madness) surrounding the URA creates through its universalism a 'trap'; violence and madness appear to be the natural ends of all left wing politics. Perkins traces the emergence of this dominant aesthetic alongside resistant processes. In doing so, he offers a new and challenging take on the generalised 'trouble with history' in Japan - the desire to suppress the past and the simultaneous searching in history for political relevance for the present condition." - Mark Pendleton, University of Sheffield, UK Cover 1 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of Illustrations 7 Acknowledgements 8 Note on Names and Transliteration 9 1 The URA, Politics and the Aesthetics of Memory 10 2 The Japanese New Left and the URA 27 3 A Spectacle of Sex, Violence and Madness 56 4 Horror, Sympathy and Empathy 77 5 The Image, Seeing and the Siege 101 6 Conclusion 130 References 138 Index 149 Front Matter....Pages i-viii The URA, Politics and the Aesthetics of Memory....Pages 1-17 The Japanese New Left and the URA....Pages 18-46 A Spectacle of Sex, Violence and Madness....Pages 47-67 Horror, Sympathy and Empathy....Pages 68-91 The Image, Seeing and the Siege....Pages 92-120 Conclusion....Pages 121-128 Back Matter....Pages 129-147