“I thought about starting over as a farmer”: Masao Adachi on political cinema, revolution, and Japan today | film

toLast month, on the same day that “Revolution + 1” — a fictionalized account of the life of Tetsuya Yamagami, the man who assassinated former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July 2022 — was screened at London’s ICA, during a season about radical filmmaker Masao Adachi, a court in Japan sentenced Yamagami to life in prison.

Whether the programming is the result of insight or sheer coincidence, dismantling the boundaries that would keep films confined within the screen and distant from the outside world is a feature of Adachi’s lifelong practice.

As part of the ICA’s In Focus series highlighting political cinema, the retrospective also included his 1969 film AKA Serial Killer, which established the director as a pioneer of ‘landscape theory’, and the UK premiere of his last film, Escape.

The feature film examines the strange case of Satoshi Kirishima, an anarchist whose photo as a youth in the 1970s adorned police stations across Japan – until he came out of hiding shortly before his death two years ago. It was something that “remains a strange reality” for the 86-year-old director.

Speaking through a translator from his home in Japan, Adachi said: “This film was made as soon as his death was announced and I wanted to explore the truth behind it.”

“The fact I want to point out is that there was a certain idea and myth about Kirishima, and a certain image was wrapped in people’s minds. There was a contradiction between the image of Kirishima as a fugitive… and his smiling face.”

Using the cinematic medium to reverse Kirishima’s reduction to an image—a scene from the past—Escape sought to address “this question of why Kirishima decided to reveal his identity… [but without] Any clear and frank answer.”

A glance at Adachi’s early biography suggests that his interest in Kirishima’s life was not accidental: he was a politically engaged student who later took up the subversive “pink film” genre, before helping to produce a propaganda newsreel for Palestinian Marxist guerrilla fighters and then leaving Japan for Lebanon in 1974 to join those same fighters. However, it is an interest that reflects a broader re-evaluation of Japan’s pre- and post-war history.

Adachi was born in 1939, and the Japan of his youth was in the throes of violent, transformative rupture. Defeat in World War II paved the way for US military occupation and a political settlement that rehabilitated suspected war criminals like Nobusuke Kishi – the founding father of both the LDP and the right-wing family that later included his grandson Abe.

During Kishi’s premiership in the late 1950s, Adachi attended Nihon University and became a member of its Film Study Club, one of a number of collectives at the time that sought to take avant-garde theory and give it celluloid form. However, ideas that began by removing the hierarchy of roles in the film production process and subverting commercialism soon spread to the streets.

When millions joined ANBU demonstrations against the renewal of the US-Japan security treaty in 1960, the club’s students documented and participated in the ongoing protest actions that became known as the ANBU Struggle.

“Avant-garde cinema was deeply intertwined not only with cinematic and aesthetic experimentation, but also with ANBU struggle and political thought,” said Go Hirasawa, a film scholar and co-editor of a recent book exploring the artistic movements of the time.

Kishi was forced to resign, but not before going ahead with the renewal of the treaty and generating a sense of disappointment among those who had pinned their hopes on potential popular pressure. After Adachi participated in the struggle daily for about six months, he was “stunned, resentful of the evils of the false democratic system, and overwhelmed by a sense of defeat” and found himself at a point of contemplation.

“I also felt so keenly the powerlessness of the independently produced films I was making, that I considered returning to my hometown to start over as a farmer.”

The ANBU conflict was a watershed moment for the immediate postwar generation that “tried to make revolution” but faced repression, co-optation, and the resilience of the Japanese state. “Japan was going through a transformation phase after World War II, and because of the enhanced police force, most of the people who participated as student activists were arrested or forced to stop their activities,” Adachi said. “They were trying to change the entire society, and they were, temporarily, leading [a] A mass political movement.”

He credited Nagisa Oshima’s 1960 film Night and Fog in Japan for showing how “film could confront the political issues and circumstances of the time head-on” and ultimately reaffirming his belief in filmmaking. According to Gu, “creating new forms of cinema and art was, for many, almost synonymous with creating new forms of politics.”

On the other hand, other activists directed their frustrations at various New Left factions – of which the East Asia Anti-Japanese Kirishima Armed Front was a descendant – which later pursued publicity for the act, at the expense of mass movements. Adachi estimated that “there were at least two to three thousand – and perhaps more – young men who participated in this operation.” [far-left] “They were largely influenced by activity in other countries” such as the May 1968 Paris attack, but “the basis that led to these extreme activities was the fact that during World War II, Japan was oppressing other East Asian countries.”

Attacking companies involved in Japanese imperialism, as EAAJAF did, was seen as a way to “make people question and realize…this disturbing hidden truth.” Adachi says that young people in Japan today are beginning to realize that they have not studied history properly and that there is a “trend among young people” to reconsider aspects of the country’s past.

Since his release from prison after extradition to Japan in 2000, the former Japanese Red Army member has refused to play the role of the prodigal son. His more recent films have focused on individuals who commit radical acts of violence in pursuit of goals that are not always well-defined, or even ideological, and are left to face the consequences that society imposes on them. Adachi attended the trial hearings for Yamagami, who received a great deal of public sympathy – perhaps similar to the backlash that resulted from the alleged killing of Luigi Mangione of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in the US – given the circumstances that prompted his fatal attack on Abe.

Are there similarities between Yamagami and the youth of the 1960s and 1970s who turned to political violence? “What [Yamagami] It was not linked to what could be described as collectivism. He explained that he was carrying out the assassination for very personal reasons. If Yamagami had been born and put in this situation in a different era, I think he might not have needed to actually kill Abe.

Adachi argues that the fragmentation of present-day Japan meant that Yamagami “could not obtain comrades to campaign with” alongside others. shūkyō onesie (A phrase used to refer to children who are forced to follow their parents’ strong religious beliefs.) His act of revenge was, in fact, an ironic consequence of “what Abe and the Unification Church were doing… [to make] “Group activity is very difficult.”

It also “is linked to the poor and poor state of the political left” because “people these days simply don’t know how to break through these individual ideas and turn them into collective activity.” As someone who “was involved in supporting Palestine for the last 60 years” to the point of “living day in and day out under the crossfire” during the Lebanese civil war, Adashi saw his experience as “not very successful” compared to the solidarity movement that grew in response to the atrocities in Gaza.

Japan’s current prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, had not yet delivered a landslide victory for the Liberal Democratic Party when Adachi spoke to the Guardian, but in response to her call for a snap election in January and her push for the country’s shortest ever general election campaign – at just 12 days – the 86-year-old director issued a cautionary warning to outside observers.

“It may seem [that] Japan is becoming more right-wing, [but] In fact, not many people support this trend. Basically, what you are asking is whether we, the Japanese people, [are] Happy to leave the decisions up to her. Do you trust me to determine the direction of the country? “What you are doing is the same as what Hitler did.”

Much has been said about the prime minister’s handbag and musical skills, but with a new supermajority in parliament, coupled with the growing presence of the far-right Sanseto Party, Takaichi has a strong chance of achieving one of the long-sought goals of the Kishi Abe dynasty: removing the pacifism clause in the Japanese constitution, which prohibits the country from using military force for reasons other than self-defense. It is not yet clear how far this can be achieved without exacerbating the social and economic distress that the country is suffering from.

While naturalism seems to be in vogue among some contemporary Japanese filmmakers, there have been recent signs of a resurgence of politics – director Niyo Sora’s Happyend drew on themes of student rebellion and racial diversity to openly criticize the rhetoric of rising right-wing nationalism.

“I don’t see a lot of radical expression or… [a] A very direct and obvious conclusion in recent films… In this regard, I am not very satisfied but I want to support 100% what young filmmakers are trying to do.

“I see clear signs in the visual work that a lot of people are trying to respond to this [state of the] The world through political and radical filmmaking.