1.0 Introduction
Notorious, shadowy, and relentlessly ideological, the Japanese Red Army emerged from the flames of the Japanese New Left, carving a bloody trail through the 1970s in the name of international revolution.
From hijackings and embassy sieges to alliances with Palestinian militants and North Korean spies, this small but deadly group stunned the world with its audacity and brutality.
In this article, we trace the roots of the Red Army from Japan’s postwar student movements, dissect its inner workings and global operations, unveil the faces behind the masks, and explore remnants and successors that linger in today’s radical landscape.
2.0 Origins of the JRA
2.1 New Left Legacy
The Japanese Red Army did not emerge in a vacuum. It was the product of a long and turbulent evolution within Japan’s radical left. Its roots stretch back to the postwar student uprisings of the 1950s and 60s, when organizations like the Zengakuren and the Bund challenged the status quo with mass protests and violence.
But as idealism gave way to radicalism, a new breed of revolutionaries began to turn inward, splintering into increasingly militant and divided factions. Out of this crucible came the Red Army Faction. Angry, armed, and unflinchingly radical they culminated in the violent birth of both the United Red Army and the Japanese Red Army.
This section traces that ideological lineage and demonstrates how factionalism, division, and revolutionary ambition gave birth to one of the most feared terrorist groups of the 20th century.
2.1.1 Zengakuren Legacy
The Zengakuren emerged in post-war Japan’s university space, as the higher education system grew larger and larger with new American-led education reforms. These were self-governing associations of students protesting against the perceived reactionary remnants in academia.
The Japanese Communist Party stepped in in the late 1940s, attempting to organize them into a nationwide consolidated arm of the party. Over the next years and through the 1950s the Zengakuren participated in many protests, including the infamous Anpo Protests of 1959, the largest protests in modern Japanese history. They were organized against the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty, and the Zengakuren mobilized up 6.4 million protesters across the country during these tumultuous days, solidifying the Japanese leftist student movement firmly in place for the next decades.
2.1.2 The Bund
In 1959, the anti-Stalinist Bund faction, working with another Trotskyist group, the Revolutionary Communist League of Ken’ichi Kuroda, took over the Zengakuren. They led the Zengakuren into the violent Anpo Protests. The violence during the protests, pushed the Japanese Communist Party to denounce the actions of the Bund causing a split between the two. After the failure of generalized revolution and the collapse of the Anpo Protests in 1960, the Bund fell apart.
Attempting to assign blame to each other, warring factions tore the movement apart and eventually gave birth to the more radical New Left factions of the late 1960s. Effectively, the Bund marked the split of JCP influence over the Japanese New Left, and the transition period from democratic leftism, to radical revolutionary ideology in the student associations.
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2.1.3 Red Army Faction & Schism
The Bund reformed itself in 1966 as the Second Bund led by Kyoto University philosophy major dropout Takaya Shiomi. The Kansai-wing of the Second Bund was the far-left part of the group, and around 1968 began identifying as the Red Army Faction.
The group officially split from the Second Bund, finding it too moderate, in 1969. They envisioned a global communist revolution sparked by urban guerrilla warfare, beginning with a violent uprising in Japan. Shiomi’s arrest in 1970 along with 53 other members, including multiple older leading figures, and a massive police crackdown on their training camp shattered the group’s operations, forcing survivors underground.
With Shiomi gone, Takamaro Tamiya briefly stepped in and along with a group of eight others conducted a hijacking of Japan Airlines Flight 351 to North Korea in 1970. Takamaro ended up defecting to North Korea and dying in Pyongyang in 1995. This group is also known as the Yodo-go.
Mori Tsuneo took over the remnants of the Red Army Factions after the tumultuous events of the 1970s and Yodo-go’s hijacking, and fused the splinters of the Red Army Faction with another Marxist-Leninist group to create the infamous United Red Army.
Fusako Shigenobu, the only woman in the higher echelons of the Red Army Faction committees, and someone who maintained a close relationship with Takamaro Tamiya before his arrest, turned outward. Rejecting domestic stagnation, she took her faction overseas, determined to ignite world revolution from the Middle East. Thus she laid the foundations of the Japanese Red Army proper.
2.2 Red Brothers
2.2.1 United Red Army
The remnants of the Red Army Faction who remained in Japan after the early months of 1971 merged with the Revolutionary Left’s Kanagawa group under the leadership of Tsuneo Mori and vice‑chairman Hiroko Nagata, forming the United Red Army in July 1971.
Their goal became the purification of the revolutionary vanguard through harsh ideological “self‑criticism.” This culminated in a purge at their mountain compound and training camp, in Gunma, during the last days of December 1971. Twelve members and one bystander were killed in violent beatings, with the last being in February of 1972. Among those killed was Toyama Mieko, Shigenobu’s best friend.
After the last deaths in February 1972, with Mori away in Tokyo, five surviving members fled the Gunma camp to Mount Asama. There they broke in and took over a local lodge called Asama‑Sansō, triggering a hostage crisis, which became a national spectacle as police besieged the lodge in a live broadcast lasting over ten hours. The siege and final assault resulted in multiple deaths, including two police officers, the rescue of the hostage, and the capture of the militants.
Once exposed to the national spotlight, the United Red Army’s radical-ideology-driven violence greatly damaged the New Left in Japan and led to the group’s rapid dissolution, along with the death of the student movement in Japan.
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2.2.2 Early Japanese Red Army
Led by Fusako Shigenobu, the Japanese Red Army (JRA) was formed by Red Army Faction members and other militant leftists who left Japan in the early 1970s, seeking to ignite global revolution from abroad.
Disillusioned by the failure of domestic armed struggle and inspired by international solidarity, they based themselves in Beirut, Lebanon and aligned closely with Palestinian militant groups, particularly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Shigenobu detested Mori and his perceived myopic view of tactics and goals for the revolution. In her eyes, the United Red Army was crumbling and the student movement was not where real international revolution could ever start. Since her relationship with Takamaro Tamiya was over after his hijacking of Flight 351 and she was left emotionally alone, she pressured Mori to let her leave Japan while maintaining the mantle of the Red Army name.
The JRA saw itself as a vanguard of world revolution, launching high-profile international attacks, including embassy sieges, airport assaults, and hijackings. Operating outside Japan allowed them to remain active for decades, even as their notoriety grew and membership dwindled.
2.3 JRA
The Japanese Red Army advocated for global armed revolution and the overthrow of imperialist systems, aiming to unite oppressed peoples through international struggle. Rejecting reformism and nationalism, they called for a world communist revolution, aligning their actions with anti-colonial and Marxist-Leninist movements abroad.
Though only a few dozen members ever joined, their reach was global. They moved from Japan to Lebanon, training with Palestinian militants, and staging attacks from Europe to Southeast Asia. Over the years, they evolved from a tight-knit revolutionary cell into a nomadic, stateless force, leaving a trail of violence, ideology, and terror across the late decades of the Cold War.
3.0 Organization
3.1 Collaborators
After leaving Japan with no more than a dozen members, the Japanese Red Army, led by Shigenobu, found refuge under the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Shigenobu herself led by making contact with the PLFP in 1971 and over the next few years her comrades joined her in Lebanon.
Shigenobu’s husband, another revolutionary named Tsuyoshi Okudaira, soon joined her in Lebanon. Shigenobu married him to take his last name just before she fled to Lebanon, a union which would allow her to leave Japan without being suspected by the Japanese authorities, who knew the name Fusako Shigenobu, but not Fusako Okudaira.
PFLP guerillas took the couple to training camps and hideouts in the Syrian-controlled Beqaa Valley away from the eyes of Lebanese and Japanese authorities. There they and the comrades that joined them received further training.
Shigenobu’s timing was fortuitous, her escape preceded the events in Asama-Sanso and the effective death of the New Left Student movement in Japan.
3.2 Funding
The Japanese Red Army was funded and maintained by the PFLP and by their own actions which helped them gather significant ransoms as funds for continued operations.
Other than this, due to the complex and shadowy nature of the way the PFLP was funded by Arab countries and other networks, it is difficult to establish a clear pattern or map behind the funding of the JRA.
Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya long assisted and abated the JRA. North Korea used, trained and often assisted several members of the Japanese Red Army, who defected after the Yodo-go incident. Lebanon, and Syria proved to also be places where JRA operatives were able to operate and hide during the many years of their existence, even until today. All such states and actors therein may be suspected to have provided financial assistance and direct or indirect funding the JRA’s operations with either the PLA, or in North Korea’s case, orchestrating propaganda and abduction cases in Japan proper.
4.0 Incidents and Operations
4.1 Lod Airport Massacre
In March 1972, Yasuyuki Yasuda, Kozo Okamoto, and Tsuyoshi Okudaira himself in coordination with the PFLP, carried out a gun-and-grenade attack at Israel’s Lod (now Ben Gurion) Airport, killing at least 26 and injuring dozens, catapulting the group to global infamy. Shigenobu herself did not participate in this attack, but it was the first operation of the group.
Two of the three JRA operatives did not survive the incident, while Kozo Okamoto was captured and sentenced to life imprisonment in Israel. After 13 years in prison, Okamoto was released through a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Palestinian militant factions.
4.2 Japan Airlines Flight 404
On 20 July 1973, the JRA led the seizure of Japan Airlines Flight 404, resulting in the planes’ destruction in Libya, where its passengers were released. This attack signaled JRA’s shift toward high-visibility symbolic violence.
The head of the operation was Osamu Maruoka, who was followed by four Palestinians and one Iraqi national, named Katie Thomas, who was killed midflight by the accidental detonation of a grenade in her pocket.
Maruoka attempted to negotiate the release of then captured Kozo Okamoto to no avail. The plane ended up in Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi, a fan of the JRA, allowed them to land.
4.3 Laju Air Incident
In January 1974, in Singapore, the JRA attacked a Shell refinery while PFLP simultaneously stormed the Japanese embassy in Kuwait. Hostage exchanges secured safe passage to Yemen for the involved terrorists, as well as a ransom.
The attack was executed in protest against the supply of oil to South Vietnam by the Singaporean government.
4.4 French Embassy
Shigenobu’s internationalist aims were made known as she attempted to thrust into Europe. Europe received more Japanese tourists than the Middle East, had strong militant leftist groups, and unlike the PFLP seemed to be truly internationalist, instead of focusing on what seemed to be nationalist goals in Palestine.
In February 1974, aided by a European network including figures like Carlos the Jackal and the Baader-Meinhof Gang, three JRA members stormed the French Embassy in the Hague. After wounding two Dutch police officers, they took eleven hostages, including the French ambassador, and demanded the release of a jailed comrade and a $300,000 ransom. When negotiations stalled, a bomb detonated in a Paris café, killing two. Facing mounting casualties and public risk, France and the Netherlands conceded. Upon arrival in Syria, the JRA operatives were forced to surrender the ransom, as Syrian officials dismissed it as “counter-revolutionary.”
4.5 AIA Kuala Lumpur
After a brief period of silence, in August 1975, the JRA attacked the AIA building in Kuala Lumpur, which housed the American and Swedish embassies.
They took over 50 hostages and, in exchange for their freedom, requested the release of seven leftist militants who were imprisoned in Japan years prior. Two of them refused to go, while the other 5 were released.
After negotiations, the JRA fled to Libya again, where Muammar Gaddafi allowed them entry and refuge into the country once more.
4.6 Japan Airlines Flight 472
In 1977, five armed JRA operatives hijacked a Japan Airlines flight from Bombay to Tokyo. Among them was Bando Kunio, released from prison by the Kuala Lumpur negotiations, and Maruoka Osamu.
They redirected the flight to Dhaka, Bangladesh, demanding the release of nine prisoners in Japan—mostly JRA members and potential recruits—as well as $6 million in ransom. The crisis triggered a tense 24-hour standoff in Tokyo, placing immense pressure on Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo and his cabinet. After intense deliberations, Fukuda ultimately agreed to their demands.
4.7 Fading 80s
After 1977, the intensity and frequency of the JRA’s momentum slowed. On-and-off incidents of violence, random bombings, and often cases where their involvement could not be directly confirmed were the main instances tied to the once loud and terrifying JRA.
JRA’s 1988 carbombing of the USO club in Naples, Italy marked the group’s last act of violence. Placed by Okudaira Junzo, Shigenobu’s released brother-in-law, the device killed five people.
5.0 Key Figures
The Japanese Red Army was loosely organized; there was not much in the way of a recorded hierarchy. As such, Fusako Shigenobu’s central role, influence, and backstory is perhaps the most important to follow. Her leadership and vision was what led the revolutionary fighters to take action.
Each of the members had distinct backgrounds, and many survived and are on the run even today. Nevertheless, Shigenobu and Maruoka Osamu perhaps were the most impactful.
5.1 Fusako Shigenobu
Fusako Shigenobu was the founding member of the Japanese Red Army. She spearheaded the organization’s links to the PFLP and their relocation to Lebanon, she masterminded recruitment and orchestration, and wrote prolifically for the revolution.
Her personal connections with leaders of the early revolutionary movement in Japan, and later international connections enabled a big part of the JRA’s actions and influenced a lot of her own decisions. The journey for Fusako was never just about an idea; much of her involvement was deeply personal.
Shigenobu was released from prison in 2022. She is no longer pursuing revolutionary action and is focused on battling cancer, which she developed in prison. Shigenobu is currently under surveillance by Japanese police. She has a daughter, Mei Shigenobu, who is a journalist and writer.
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5.2 Maruoka Osamu
Osamu Maruoka was a senior operative and two‑time hijacker for the Japanese Red Army. Raised in Tokushima and Osaka/Kobe, he followed Fusako Shigenobu to the Middle East in 1972 and participated in the 1973 Japan Airlines Flight 404 hijacking under PFLP coordination, later leading the 1977 Dhaka hijacking.
After years as a fugitive, Maruoka was arrested in Tokyo in November 1987 under a false passport, received a life sentence in 2000, and died in prison of heart disease on 29 May 2011.
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6.0 The Day After
From prison, Shigenobu in April 2001 announced that the JRA would be dissolved. In turn, the National Police Agency commented that the validity of the dissolution claims remained questionable.
In December 2001, the successor Rentai Movement, or Solidarity Movement, was formed. They maintained an active blog until 2011, where they posted revolutionary and pro-PFLP messages, including statements regarding the deaths of imprisoned JRA members such as Maruoka. The blog has not been updated since June 2011. Japanese Police reports indicate that JRA has continued to operate after its ‘dissolution’ through the Rentai Movement. Current activities are unknown.
In 2022, the Japanese Police announced that the case around the JRA is far from closed. They announced that the search for seven individuals of the JRA still continues. Furthermore, the Yodo-go Group of seven individuals involved in the hijacking of Flight 351 in 1970 are also still wanted and still considered a credible threat.
Information has some of them residing in the Middle East, namely in Lebanon and Syria residing in refugee camps in the region (Kozo Okamoto). Others such as Bando Kunio were known to be in the Philippines until 2000, but may have returned to Japan or be hiding in North Korea. Several members of the Yodo-go group were in North Korea, where they received “reeducation.” Their whereabouts are however currently unknown.
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7.0 Conclusion
The Japanese Red Army emerged from Japan’s fractured student left to become one of the most notorious international terrorist groups of the 20th century.
Driven by a radical vision of global revolution, they left a trail of violence from Tokyo to Tel Aviv, Dhaka to the Hague. Yet their relentless militancy ultimately led to isolation, decline, and disillusionment, as the world moved on and their ideology lost ground.
Though the JRA formally dissolved in 2001, its legacy remains unresolved. Its remnants are hunted fugitives; criminals still at large. Its legacy is terror and disillusionment. In the end, the JRA’s revolution never came, but its shadow continues to linger.