The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 16 | Issue 7 | Number 1 | Apr 01, 2018

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How Japanese Student Radicals Became Juche Believers inNorth Korea

Takazawa Kōji edited by Patricia G. Steinhoff

Excerpted and adapted from the Englishtranslation of Destiny: the Secret Operations ofthe Yodogō Exiles, by Takazawa Kōji, edited byPatricia G. Steinhoff.

Abstract

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Japanhad a New Left protest cycle that paralleledthose in western Europe and the United States.The Japanese New Left was separate from theparliamentary Japan Communist Party anddrew many of its ideas from Japanesetranslations of the latest revolutionary NewLeft literature including works by Regis DeBray (1967), Che Guevara (1968, 1969), RudiDutschke (1968), Daniel Cohn-Bendit (1968),Howard Zinn (1968), Stokely Carmichael(1968), Eldridge Cleaver (1969), Alberto Bayo(1969), and Carlos Marighella (1970). JapaneseNew Left groups identified with studentmovements in the west and protested aboutsimilar issues, including opposition to theVietnam War and American military bases inJapan, as wel l as tu i t ion increases ,overcrowding, and authoritarian regulations atuniversities. Frustrated by the Japanesegovernment’s intransigence in the face of hugeprotest demonstrations, they despaired ofchange through either electoral or streetpolitics, and instead saw revolution as the onlyalternative. New Left street demonstrationssteadily escalated into violent clashesresembling medieval battles. The students wore

color-coded crash helmets emblazoned withnames of their organizations, carried longfighting poles, and threw paving stones orfirebombs at the police. They confrontedsquads of riot police wearing medieval stylehelmets, who battled the students with tallaluminum body shields and police batons,supported by water cannon trucks that sprayedfire hoses of water laced with tear gas at thestudents. At the peak of the protest cycle in1968-69, Japanese authorities suddenly crackeddown with mass arrests and prolongedincarcerations of thousands of students. Thisturned the tide, in part by producing splitswithin New Left groups.

Public debut of the independent Red ArmyFaction at the National Zenkyōtōconvention, Hibiya Park, September 5,1969. Red Army Faction members (right)battled with members of Bund (left)

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outside Hibiya Outdoor Amphitheatre.Takazawa, Kōji, author and editor,Zenkyōtō Gurafuitei. Tokyo: Shinsensha,1984, p. 55.

One major national New Left protestorganizations nicknamed Bund expelled itsradical Red Army Faction for advocating urbanguerrilla warfare with guns and improvisedexplosives to incite a revolution in Japan, aspart of the simultaneous worldwide revolutionthat their leader Shiomi Takaya believed wasimminent. As the newly-independent groupexperimented with explosives in fall 1969,heavy po l ice pressure pushed themunderground. In March 1970 nine studentsfrom the Red Army Faction hijacked a plane toNorth Korea. Two years later they renouncedthe Red Army Fact ion ’s ideo logy o fsimultaneous world revolution and converted toKim Il Sung’s juche ideology. Little was heardfrom them until they re-established contactwith supporters in Japan in 1988. After oneYodogō member was arrested in Japan, hislawyer and the leader of a support organizationbegan visiting the group in North Korea.Takazawa Koji knew the group’s leader TamiyaTakamaro from his days as a student activist,first in Bund and then on the fringes of the RedArmy Faction, where he helped publish RedArmy Faction publications and providedsupport when people were arrested. Hebecame an editor and authority on the Newleft, and first visited North Korea in 1990 at thegroup’s invitation. In this excerpt fromchapters 5 and 6 of Dest iny , he usesmanuscripts they gave him for publication inJapan to examine their conversion process. Ashe explored their experience in North Korea, hefound disturbing parallels to the United RedArmy Incident in Japan that happened at almostthe same time.

Keywords: Yodogō group, juche ideology, RedArmy Faction, thought reform process, self-criticism, mutual criticism, self-reliance,sōkatsu, United Red Army

A certain fateful day can mark the momentwhen all traces of a person whom we have beenfollowing closely suddenly disappear. The flowof information concerning our subject dries upabruptly. We hear nothing more of how he isliving, or where. In this kind of situation weusually say "his whereabouts are unknown," or"he has disappeared." These words perfectlydescribe the situation after the Red ArmyFaction students arrived in Pyongyang. Ofcourse, they did not "disappear," but spent thefirst several years in Pyongyang undergoingintensive daily ideological and life-styleremolding ("brainwashing"). But to us, theirlives in Pyongyang were a blank during thoseyears. It was as if a wire had been cut, withsilence falling suddenly after all the noise. Theymight as well have hijacked themselves acrossthe river of the dead.

This impression may just be in contrast to theflood of information that preceded the momentof the hijackers' disappearance. The testimonyof every passenger aboard the Yodogō waspublic information; there was not a newspaper,magazine, or weekly tabloid that had neglectedto cover the subject. Live, unceasing, on-the-spot television coverage had provided countlessimages of the crisis. There is even a recordingof the speech Tamiya made to the passengersaboard the Yodogō. On this tape, Tamiya isshouting at the top of his lungs, his distinctive,piercing voice delivering a political speech inlanguage the listeners found very difficult tounderstand. With such a proliferation ofinformation, viewers could easily imaginethemselves at the scene.

But the hijackers' daily lives in Pyongyangremained a blank. Not only were there norelations between the two countries, but there

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was no news of the students, and no way tomake contact with them. The public knew onlythat they had indeed gone to North Korea, andmany believed, without reason, that they werejailed there. So, twenty years passed….

When I visited North Korea for the first time,upon my arrival in Pyongyang, I checked intothe Koryo Hotel on Changuang Avenue. Tamiyawas waiting for me in the hotel lobby. A man ofrather small physique, he stood in the shadowof one of the pillars in the lobby, his head tiltedslightly to the side. Memory can fade with thepassage of time, but this was indeed Tamiya,leader of that student movement of twentyyears past. But I was struck by the impressionthat this man, the leader of that long-agohijacking, did not seem comfortable in theluxurious hotel lobby.

That evening, we enjoyed a fabulous banquet ina private dining room at the hotel, in thecompany of several high-ranking North KoreanWorkers' Party members. After the meal, wemoved to another room in the hotel, andcontinued our party late into the night. Myinterest and excitement overcame any travelexhaustion: here I was, in North Korea! It wasnot a place one ordinarily visited. In addition,here were the Yodogō hijackers themselveswho had come to meet me, and with twentyyears of catching up to do, we had plenty totalk about. …1

The North Korean Workers' Party had promisedto dispatch cadres to serve as instructors forthe students, and [once they had settled intotheir new home] the students prepared to maketheir self-introductions. For the first time theytold each other their true names, since theyhad continued to use pseudonyms whenaddressing each other. Before the hijacking,the group had met in full only twice. Since theydid not even know each other’s' names, it ishardly surprising to learn they had no agreed-upon plan to follow now, after their arrival inNorth Korea. Tamiya quickly called a meeting

so they could agree on a plan. The discussiongrew heated: suddenly they were no longerdealing with an amorphous future. They foundthemselves in Pyongyang, but they still had nofirm ideas of what they wished to do.

The meeting resulted in the entire groupagreeing on three resolutions, embodied inthree slogans. Much later, Tamiya read theslogans to me one by one and explained theirmeaning:

Item: We live and die together.

Item: We will defend and nurturet h e s i m u l t a n e o u s w o r l drevolutionary transition.

Item: To complete the success ofthe hijacking, let us prepare for atriumphant return to Japan!

In the end, they agreed to make the followingfive requests:

Item: Military training

Item: A solution for our return toJapan sometime this year

Item: Lectures on philosophy,economics, and the Korean Anti-Japanese Resistance

Item: Training field trips

Item: Japanese newspapers andmagazines; access to a radio

These requests were immediately relayed tothe Workers' Party. The response to the requestfor military training: "We will consider it."

As for returning to Japan, "It was a rashdecision on your part to come here, and this

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will not be a simple matter. We will do what wecan. Please consider any future requestscarefully."

Lectures began immediately. A curriculum wasdeveloped, and a teacher was dispatched todeliver the lectures every day at the appointedtime. The professors from the Social SciencesInstitute in Pyongyang spoke in soft tones, butthere was no room for compromise ininterpreting their message. Their text was KimIl Sung's writings, and the topic of study washis personal leadership ideology, the onlyideology acceptable in North Korea. Otherlectures covered the revolutionary history ofNorth Korea , and the h is tory o f theinternational labor movement.

Their wish to go on field trips was soongranted. To learn about the resistancemovement against Japan, they visited museumsdedicated to the Revolution, as well ashistorical sites, and listened to lecturesafterwards. They were usually asked to writeopinion essays on what they had seen andheard after these trips…. Once a week theywatched ideological movies. Many of themovies were about the Korean resistanceagainst the Japanese; others concerned theaccomplishments of Kim Il Sung, or weresocialist propaganda vehicles. …

Apparently, they were not very diligentstudents in those early days, mainly becausethe lectures had nothing to do with the topicsthey wished to study. Where they had wantedto study economics and Marxist-Leninist texts,they were given lectures on juche2 ideology andthe "masterpieces" of Kim Il Sung. …It was onlyafter their arrival in Pyongyang that thehijackers heard of "juche" ("self-reliance"). Andthey could not easily agree with the professors'words. As far as the Red Army Faction wasconcerned, even if this ideology was well-suitedto the circumstances in communist NorthKorea, it was still just a local brand of Marxism-Leninism. …

Consequently, their daily routine had two parts:the days were spent studying juche ideology,and the evenings, Shiomi Takaya's theory of thetrans i t ion in to s imul taneous wor ldrevolution.3 Once classes were finished for theday, they conducted their own study sessionsand discussions to meet the requirements ofitem two on their list of slogans, "We willensure the success of simultaneous worldrevolution."

Of course they did not only study and debateissues. Their physical training sessions were animportant part of their schedule as well andcontinued throughout their stay.

"Military training! Military training! Alwaysmilitary training!" wrote Abe Kimihiro. "If wedidn't get military training, then we had noreason for coming…. Because one of ourmotives for coming to North Korea was toreceive military training, our daily routine alsoincluded running in the mornings. It felt verygood to run in the fresh, early morning air, farfrom the city. We agreed that we shouldn't justrun, but that we should ‘run in the spirit ofactivism.’ So we shattered the still of the earlyKorean mornings by shouting out our Red Armyslogan of "Achieve the Uprising, Victory inWar!"

However, they were immediately obliged tostop this demonstration. They received amessage from the Workers' Party: "You can beheard in all the nearby farms. Wouldn't it bebest if you stopped shouting your slogan?"

"What's wrong with being heard?"

A counselor from the Party advised them, "Youmight have some trouble if it got out in theneighborhood that some Japanese people aredoing something here." (p.170).4

The hijackers had no response to this, theperfect squelch….

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Since arriving in Pyongyang, the Red Armystudents' world had been completelycircumscribed by the North Korean Workers'Party. Even if they tried, they would not havebeen able to escape its control. When theybecame restive, the manipulation simplybecame more intensive. Escape was impossible.A little later in their studies of juche, they cameacross the term "the art of guidance." Handledskillfully, a person can be made to believe adecision has been made completely freely,without either restrictions or coercion on thepart of a handler. But no one wants to believehe can be controlled is such a way, so he thinkshis decision has been made of his own will. The"art of guidance" is a highly developed form ofmind-control, and when the students agreed togive up the show of activist spirit on their early-morning runs, they took their first voluntarystep into the embrace of the Workers' Party.They chose to interpret their instructor's advicein a positive way: "Isn't this a sign that ourrequest for military training is going to beaccepted?"

Instead of shouting slogans, they cleared out athree-kilometer-long running course in the pinewoods around their residence, adding anexercise area with horizontal and parallel bars.Sweating allowed them a small sense offulfillment. With the help of some Koreanworkers, they enlarged the open ground evenmore, and made a field large enough to playsoccer. Every day in their small square of land,they spent themselves to build up their physicalstrength. Naturally, they were not allowed towander around freely outside.

"The only thing we worked really hard at wasthe physical exercise," wrote Abe Kimihiro."Anyway, I went all out. It was an urgentmatter, since we thought the plan was to returnin the autumn and lead the revolt."

The season had shifted to summer, and soon itwould be autumn, the time for their departure.Still no military training curriculum had been

offered, and there was no firm date set for theirreturn to Japan. …

Tamiya Takamaro accompanied me to theairport on the morning of my departure fromPyongyang.…

It was time to board. I passed through passportcontrol and entered the boarding lounge, thenwalked across the airport tarmac to board theairplane waiting on the runway. It was thesame little twin-engine aircraft in which I hadcome to North Korea. Through the roundwindow, I could see my companions wavingcontinually. At that moment, I had no idea ofhow many repeat visits I would make to NorthKorea in the future.

In those days, as now, there were no directflights between North Korea and Japan.Traveling between them always means astopover, often in Moscow or Beijing. NorthKorean Airlines has only one or two weeklyflights to Moscow, Beijing, Khabarovsk, andSofia. From Japan, the usual transit point isBeijing.

It was a relief to return to Beijing. There, thecity hummed with people and cars. Waves ofbicycles filled the streets; the crowds were fullof energy. Used to the hubbub of metropolitanTokyo, I had felt uncomfortable in the silenceand stillness of Pyongyang. In contrast, Beijingfelt like a place where people lived and worked.It was with a strange sense of nostalgia that Iwandered among the crowds on DongdanStreet and Chang'an Avenue, near the Qianmengate and Wangfujing. In Pyongyang, there hadbeen no sense of people living their daily lives,but in Beijing, activity swirled around me in alldirections.

The martial law imposed in Beijing after theTian'anmen Square incident in June 1989 hadonly recently been rescinded, and armedsoldiers were still stationed on street corners.Circumstances were hardly normal even inBeijing, but to my eyes, compared to North

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Korea, people here seemed free to lead theirown lives….

At my hotel in Beijing, I began reading thememoir manuscripts the Yodogō group hadgiven me. Some of the manuscripts were hand-written, and some had been typed on a word-processor; yet others had apparently alreadybeen published in magazines or newsletters.Each writer described in detail his lifebeginning with his experiences as a studentactivist, and the process of joining the RedArmy Faction. The essays described the periodimmediately before and after the hijacking; theatmosphere and events on the airplane; thehijackers' shift of attitude after arriving inPyongyang; and the current ideologicalstandpoint of each writer. Disappointingly, thestories only continued for the first [two years]of their stay in North Korea. The interveningtwenty years remained a blank. However, theirvoices, which I had previously encountered onlyin political newsletters and articles, camethrough clearly in the short manuscripts.

Wakabayashi Moriaki had this to say about thedays spent in lectures and study: "Our debatestook many different tacks. The instructorsnever directly contradicted us, nor agreed withus; they just circumvented our arguments. Itwas as if they were saying, 'Do as you like, wedon't care.' We tried to engage them in[Shiomi's theories of] simultaneous worldrevolution and international bases forrevolution, but it was no use. We got absolutelynowhere with it. We soon grew frustrated." (p.174)

Abe Kimihiro, on the sought-after militarytraining: "There was no indication we would begranted the military training we had requestedto accompany our academic studies. Wheneverwe asked about the military training, theresponse was always, 'Let us think about it,' or'We are looking into it.' As we gradually figuredout, 'Let us think about it' is North Korean for'This is not possible, but we can think about it.'

Or more clearly, 'No.'" (p.176)

In short, they were not taken seriously. Theirimpatience came through clearly in themanuscripts. None of their requests werefulfilled, except for the lectures on jucheideology, and the field trips.

I had just one simple question: So why did theyremain in North Korea? After all the effort ofhijacking an airplane and flying there with theprimary goal of receiving military training, whydid they remain in North Korea when it becameobvious that the military training would not beforthcoming? Why didn’t they follow theirinitial plan of only stopping over in NorthKorea, and continuing on to Cuba or the MiddleEast? Why couldn't they do that? The moretimes I read the words 'We were not able to getmilitary training,' the more I began to feel Iwas not getting the whole story. …

What I wished most to learn, as I shuffledthrough the thick sheaf of manuscripts, was thehow and why of their conversion to juchethought. While no one could doubt theimmaturity of their Red Army ideology, theirtotal submission to juche was too extreme to bebelievable. To put it directly, was theirconversion a voluntary matter of free choice, orwere they forced to accept it?

Perhaps North Korea's much-rumoredtechniques of "brainwashing" really did exist.

The manuscripts contained the statement, "Weentered into the struggle of systematically re-evaluating the errors of our earlier ideologyafter the middle of 1971." I began to read morecarefully from this point. Both Konishi andWakabayashi wrote about this. Wakabayashiwrote,

While defending the idea ofsimultaneous world revolutionwithin our ranks, a seriousi d e o l o g i c a l d i l e m m a w a s

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developing.

In contrast to the success of therevolution and reconstruction ofNorth Korea, the failure of our ownefforts was obvious. This failuremeant our ideology and theory, ourparty line, our strategy and tacticswere all bankrupt….

Tamiya came into my room to talk.I looked up from my book andlistened to him. He summarizedwhat our struggle had achieved. Ithink I answered a number ofquest ions, and had severalopinions to add. The conversationwent on for a while, then Tamiyaasked slowly, "So, on whose behalfwere you fighting, anyway?"

I was stumped by this suddenquestion. I turned the questionover in my mind, "On whosebehalf….on whose behalf….?" Theonly response that came to mindwas, "For the people…right?" But Isaid nothing, feeling at a loss.

Why couldn't I just say, "For thepeople"? Although I knew what Ishould say, why could I not say itout loud? Why was I at such a lossfor words?

It was from this time that myideological conversion began. Ie n t e r e d a p e r i o d o f s e l f -examination.

"For what? For whom? Have I everthought about this? Have I reallybeen working for a grand cause?"Looking back to when I was inJapan, I knew the words "for thepeople" had seldom crossed mylips. There seemed to be somethingfishy about them even on those few

official occasions when I did saythem out loud. It seemed almosthypocritical. I thought it might bebecause I did not really believe insome of the actions taken in thename of "the people." If someonehad asked me if I was fighting "forthe people," I would not have beenable to answer with confidence. Imust have started out believingit.... So why? …I began to re-thinkmy childish ideology, in order to beable to say, without hesitation, andwith full responsibility, "for thepeople." This was the start of mynew endeavor. (pp. 183-185)

Konishi wrote,

We had to face reality. Why,instead of expanding or effectivelyorgan i z ing , were our ownorganizations collapsing? It musthave been because of somefundamental error on our part.While we defended our idea ofsimultaneous world revolution indebates with our teachers, Ibecame more aware of this issue.

I will not go into the details of there-evaluation that the groupundertook, but only mention a littleof what my own intuition told me.

I had begun to doubt the collectivepeople's power, the power of mycomrades, and especially my ownpower. This doubt grew strongeras the contrast between these andthe history and the current realityof the revolution in North Koreabecame clear….

We had frequently repeated theword "world" when we spoke of the

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"simultaneous world revolution,"the "world revolution," or the"armed and organized worldproletariat," but this was mainlybecause the will of the Japanesepeople to take the initiative andcarry out the revolution in Japanwas very weak. (p. 187)

Ah, so that's how it was. "We had to facereality." That was true. I wondered at thestatement that the theory of "simultaneousworld revolution" was an expression of theweak will of the Japanese people to take theinitiative in achieving their own revolution. Butmy real question concerned "reality." Whatkind of reality were the Yodogō hijackers facingafter their arrival in North Korea? What kind ofre-evaluation were they being forced to make?What was the process of their conversion?What was the process of re-evaluation? Whatwere the facts? These questions remained inmy mind as I continued to read through thememoirs.

I was not so interested in knowing the resultsof this process: it was fairly obvious from theirpresent ideology and their discussions of theirre-evaluations what they currently believed. Ibegan to feel irritated. I had more sympathy forthe Wakabayashi who, newly arrived inPyongyang, was still sensitive enough to findphrases like "for the people" untrustworthy,than I felt for the Wakabayashi who now usedthe words without hesitation. Suppressing mydisgruntlement, I continued to read. Thefollowing are from Tanaka Yoshimi and AbeKimihiro. Tanaka wrote:

… The much-awaited "preliminaryrevolt" [in Japan] did not happenand faced with the reality of NorthKorea I began to taste how greenmy own ideological stance was.

On whose behalf had I myself

fought in the struggle? To whatend? Had I really meant to share inthe lives of workers and learn fromthem? This self-examination led meto the conclusion that I had notbeen a genuine revolutionary. Idetermined to eradicate the petit-bourgeois world-view I had helduntil now, and to rebuild from thefoundation a revolutionary, popularworld-view. (p.181)

Abe Kimihiro’s memoir reported:

Each of us underwent a separateideological conversion. In my case,my moment came during a trip tothe east coast in the summer of1971.

Of course, I had been greatlytroubled until then. During ourdiscussions of simultaneous worldrevo lut ion , I found myse l fb e c o m i n g m o r e a n d m o r esympathetic to the story of theNorth Korean revolution. Therewas the reality of modern NorthKorea, but I found the story of theanti-Japanese resistance, as wesaw it in f i lms, particularlyaffecting. When I watched themovies, great tears would dripdown my face. They were tears ofsympathy, for even though I wasvery young, I too stood for armedstruggle. They were tears ofhomage and admiration.

However, that was a separate issuefrom the question of simultaneousworld revolution. I may have feltsympathetic to the struggles of theNorth Korean revolution, but Iclung strongly to my belief that"under the siege of imperialism, it

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is impossible to achieve socialismor communism in a single country.Sooner or later, it would collapse.The North Korean revolution is noexception to this." Put simply, Ithought any socialist countrysurrounded by imperialism must benegatively affected by it, or evenforced to submit to it.

With the situation thus, we wenton a trip to the east coast in July. Itwas our first such trip, and ourfirst outing in a while. Yay! I feltrefreshed by the change. The trainreached the coast, and we couldsee the ocean, our first sight of itsince our arrival in North Korea. Isaw a sentry box from the windowof our train as it followed thecoastline. It had neat stone walls,and a soldier armed with a bayonetstood within. The area was veryclean and looked as if it had beencarefully swept. "Ah, yes, NorthKorea is fighting the fight," Ithought to myself. Suddenly, I wasovercome by a vision of the gloryof North Korea's struggle againstU.S. imperialism.

My whole body began to shake inunbelievable shock…. That was thestart of my active participation inthe work o f re -eva lua t ingsimultaneous world revolution. (pp.189-190)

It is all well and good to be moved by the sightof a soldier armed with a bayonet standing in asentry box against the background of abeautiful view of the sea, but it isn't logical.…More significant here is the statement thatthis was their first trip since coming toPyongyang, their first outing "in a while,"implying that they lived under conditions ofnear-imprisonment.

Tamiya wrote about his own process ofconversion:

The principle of simultaneousworld revolution had come to seemincreasingly hollow. None of uscould explain clearly why we hadtried so hard to achieve it. But ifwe gave up this slogan, we felt ourentire reason for existence woulddisappear, and we would have noidea what we should be strugglingfor.

During this period, we were allthinking over various issues. Howcould we undergo our ideologicalconversion together? This was themain question in my mind at thistime.

Some of my comrades felt deepcommitment to the Red ArmyF a c t i o n a n d t h e i d e a o fsimultaneous world revolution;others had decided that thephilosophy of juche was correct.

There may have been only nine ofus, but there were differencesbetween us all the same. Each hadhis own opinion. It would not beeasy to reach a consensus, thoughwe continued to agree on onething: "We live and die together."Anyway, we had only each other torely on. How could there be anylife in separating from thesecomrades and going off on one'sown? Therefore none of us had anyintention of striking out alone.

For this reason, those of us whothought juche ideology was correctin its claims did not go so far as tosay that the idea of simultaneousworld revolution was nonsense.

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But someone had to say it. And itcame down to me. But even I wasreluctant to voice it, since therewere still those who clung to theidea, and I could not ignore them.

Despite our slogan of "We live anddie together," and despite ourshared purpose, the grouprelations became more awkward asour thoughts and ideology began todiffer. In addition, I had come tothink that as long as we held on toour ideas of "simultaneous worldrevolution," we would not be ableto make any progress. We couldnot move on to the new until wehad shed ourselves of the old.

So I proposed to the others that wedeal with far more fundamentalmatters than wasting time inp o i n t l e s s d i s c u s s i o n s o nsimultaneous world revolution.Why had we thrown ourselves inwith the revolution? Were wereally fighting for the workers?Was not our own ideology flawed?By ask ing these and o therquestions, we began to revise ourown ideological foundations. (pp.190-91)

Because they could not make any logicalprogress or discoveries as things stood, Tamiyasaid they should start over from scratch. As thegroup's leader, Tamiya's problem was to find away out of their current deadlock. How couldhe move the group forward while sti l lpreserving their unity? He was not proposing anew theory or a new ideology, which is clearwhen he refers to their discussions ofsimultaneous world revolution as "wastingtime." He was proposing a whole new life-view.Only in this way could they overcome theirdifferences of ideology and theory. "Let's startover," he said. Tamiya's writing here shows

frankly how the unity of politics and ideologyamong the Yodogō group members had at thistime disintegrated. There was no orderly orlogical process of conversion.

Here I have to touch once again on thecircumstances of their decision to stay in NorthKorea. The haphazardly planned hijacking hadnot ended in the North Korean Workers' Partyforcibly repatriating them, or sending them toprison; indeed, the Party had installed them ina first-class hotel. They had nothing in the wayof personal items with them, and werecompletely dependent on the Workers' Partyfor everything from bedding and clothing tounderwear, towels, and toothbrushes. Mealswere luxurious, and a chef and an attendantwere assigned to them exclusively. They weretreated as honored guests.

Despite this, wrote Abe Kimihiro,

We were not very grateful for thistreatment. In part, at the time, wetook such things for granted; but inpart we thought they were tryingto placate us and we resisted thefeelings of gratitude. But then wewere really impressed when all ofus received tailor-made suits. Aswe were being measured, we had ahard t ime suppress ing ourlaughter.

“Huh, a suit. It's my first one.”

“Yeah, me too. Who knew wewould have to come to NorthKorea to get tailor-made suits?”

“Then we all felt the propergratitude in our hearts.” (pp.163-64)

Here we can clearly see how they underwent asoftening-up process. Though they tried to

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resist it, such good treatment resulted in their"proper" gratitude. And this led gradually tof e e l i n g s o f g i r i [ " o b l i g a t i o n " ] [ 5 ](https://apjjf.org/#_ftn5) toward the Workers'Party, which in turn bound them more tightly toit. Their belief in their theories had alreadybeen bankrupted; in place of theory, they fellback on ingrained values. Their sense ofobligation became their only spiritual prop. Atthe time, they coined a phrase, "revolutionarygiri." To whom did they owe this obligation? Tothe Workers' Party, and to Kim Il Sung, whohad extended such "heartwarming treatment"to them. This phrase of "revolutionary giri"remains a favorite among them even today.

Thus they were treated hospitably and providedwith everything they needed, except freedom.They were forbidden to go out, and they werekept segregated from the "people." AbeKimihiro wrote about how they tried to cope:

To release our frustration, wewould sneak out and wanderaround different places. We wouldslip out after dark and climb anearby hil l -top to watch thesurrounding villages. In winter weskated across the Daedong River tothe other bank and visited thevillages, then came back over amountain. It was a thrill when wecame across military traininggrounds or sentry boxes. Of courseall this was a secret, but I think thestatute of limitations has run outso I'm telling about it. (p. 177)

He meant the area around the guest housecompound where they lived. Describing suchordinary walks as a "thrill" reveals the lack ofpersonal freedom they had in their daily lives.They did not know the location of thecompound, nor did anyone tell them how to getaround. On those occasions when they went ona field trip or a tour, the Party always provided

cars with drivers. So they knew nothing of theirsurroundings except that they were in NorthKorea, somewhere in the outskirts ofPyongyang.

Every day their routine included ideologicaleducation. However, the instructors andprofessors sent to them by the Party paid noattention whatsoever to their discussions oftheory. The only item on the curriculum wasjuche ideology.

They would rise at 6 a.m., eat breakfast, thenspend the rest of the morning in study. Afterlunch there was a short break, followed byclasses again. This was the routine, day afterday, without change or breaks. After a day of"What is juche?" and "What must you do tomaster it?" there was always time allotted fordiscussion groups.

There was only one answer to each of theinstructors' questions; to anyone answeringotherwise, the same lecture would be repeatedagain and again. But the instructors neverpressed for the "correct" answers. By theconstant repetition of the same lecture, thegroup came to understand for themselves thatthere was only one correct answer.

Eventually, as the lectures continued, theyfinally got the point. And with that, the firststage of their "education" was complete: therewas no escape except by giving the answer theinstructors wanted to hear. They saw the light.Though they were insincere, they sought togive the answers the instructors expected. Asfar as the instructors were concerned, it didn'tmatter that their answers were insincere. Whatmattered was the process involved in elicitingthe answers.

Though they didn't really believe in what theywere saying, they answered according to theideology of juche, and suppressed theirdiscontent. But this process they were beingsubjected to gradually results in a spiritualdisconnect, a dismantling of the self .

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Every th ing beg ins to seem ho l low,meaningless, pointless. At this point, a strangeand new ideology can easily take root: only byaccepting a new ideology and absorbing a newset of values and standards can one overcomethe terrible sense of emptiness. The Yodogōhijackers eventually saw the light in this path.The instructors waited patiently for theirstudents to reach this stage, and once no oneany longer raised any objections, theirteachings soaked in like water poured on sand.

It was an extremely effective way to brainwashthe students: First probe into the psychology ofthe subject, then lead him into an independentacceptance of the correct ideology. This wasthe method of teaching juche ideology.

The "self-reliant" choice to accept the teachingmeans the student does not feel he is beingcoerced in any way. Instead, once anindependent answer is made, more answerswhich do not contradict the first build up to alogical structure. Thus any doubts entertainedalong the way mean doubting one's ownthinking, and require a "self-reliant" re-examination for illogic in one's own argument.It is the beginning of an endless process, anendless re-cycling around again and again. Theonly escape from this trap without going madwas to accept juche as the only truth.

Slowly but inexorably, the brainwashingcontinued, and finally bore fruit.

In his memoir, Tamiya Takamaro suddenlylaunched into the statement, "Self-criticism andmutual criticism are the most effective methodsfor forging a strong ideology, and also allow fora decisive summary of one's ideology." Then hecontinued, "I successfully rebuilt my own set ofbeliefs in this way, and so did my companions."

At this point, Tamiya's topic changed from hisown process of ideological conversion to theprocess of his companions' achievement ofpolitical and organizational unity. I read onwith some surprise at this change of pace in his

text.

It seemed that Tamiya himself had by this timestepped into the next phase. I understood thissingle fact and continued to read withincreasingly mixed feelings rising in me. But letus continue to explore these matters, and lookat some more of Tamiya's text. He wrote,

The best method for forging andstrengthening one's ideology isthrough self-criticism and mutualcriticism. First I prepared my ownself-criticism, and then receivedthe criticism of my comrades. Inmy self-criticism, I acknowledgedthat although I subjectivelythought I was working on behalf ofthe people, in fact I was onlyinterested in the narrow goals ofthe Red Army Faction, and myactions were all motivated by theinterests of a small sectariangroup. I criticized my tendencytoward radical petit-bourgeoisthought. Finally, I stronglycriticized myself for not holding aproperly juche attitude.

In a sense, we spoke of self-reliance more than anything else.Especially when we were thinkingover our "line," and trying to liveaccording to it , we had onlyourselves to rely on. But the truemeaning of "establishing a self-reliant attitude" means holding toa masterly attitude, and takingresponsibility for one's own fate.But how deeply had I thought ofJapan's fate, or spoken or actedresponsibly? Perhaps my wordsand actions had been little thoughtout, based only on my own narrowand shallow experiences…

That time my comrades' criticism

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of me was quite harsh, but I wasgrateful for it. Frank though theircriticism was, it included a strongmessage of comradely loyalty,insisting that having come to NorthKorea with me as the leader, all ofus must continue to advance alongthe correct road.

My comrades gave examples andcriticized some actions of minethat I had not noticed before. Onesaid I did not look on them as"comrades" but as "subordinates."Another commented on how when Ispoke of the people fighting inJapan, I tended to speak criticallywi thout cons ider ing the i rhardships. One strict criticismquestioned whether I was livingeach day thinking of Japan, andthinking of the people. I also beganto understand how my least wordcould wound my comrades,resulting in an obstacle for oursolidarity as a group.

Until then, I had thought that of allof us, I was the one who thoughtmost and acted most on behalf ofJapan and its people, so thiscriticism made me realize for thefirst time how arrogant I was. Imade the devastating discoverythat even when one thinks he isgiving all he has for the people,ac tua l l y ach iev ing th i s i simpossible. In this way, goingthrough this criticism session wasa g r e a t c h a n c e f o r m e t oreconsider myself.

In addition, I began to understandthat the method of criticism is avery powerful tool for changingpeople. When I was in Japan, I wasconvinced that people did not

change easily, and that it wasenough for those to change whowished to do so. However, when Iu n d e r w e n t t h i s c r i t i c i s mexperience, I realized that by usingthis method, any human beingcould achieve a revolutionaryexistence. Following me, all theothers began a complete analysisof their ideological beliefs throughself-criticism and mutual criticism.[emphasis added by Takazawa](pp. 192-94)

Upon reaching this point in Tamiya's memoir, Ifelt a stirring of uneasiness, of anxiety. I hadcome across something similar before.Dredging the bottom of my mind, I pulled up anold but clear memory from the distant past.This method of which he spoke was the samemethod that had been used in the snowy JapanAlps in 1972 in the “sōkatsu” and purge duringthe United Red Army Incident. Then, theprocesses of self-criticism and mutual criticismhad ended in a purge and a massacre by theUni ted Red Army o f some o f i t s ownmembers.6 I already knew the historical falloutfrom this event. A feel ing of disquietsurrounded me as I continued to read.

This method of ideological analysis andpersonality remolding that Tamiya mentions isvery commonly seen in North Korea, in weeklyor monthly criticism meetings, either at theworkplace or at district party meetings…. [It] isstructured so that only by criticizing others canone become more revolutionary. Makingcriticism is part of one's disciplinary duties, andthe criticism can be for anything from generallifestyle to daily acts and words, becauseeveryday behavior is taken to indicate one'sideology. The criticism escalates in a spiral thatcannot be stopped, since he who gives the mostdevastating criticisms gains the upper hand. Ofcourse, there may be the rare example ofsuccess with the method, in situations where

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there is total trust between the members of thegroup. But in his memoir, Tamiya clearly statedthat "relations became more awkward as ourthoughts and ideology began to differ."

The disintegration of the unity of the Yodogōgroup came through clearly in the memoirs. Ifgiv ing harsh cr i t ic ism showed greatrevolutionary disposition, the end result wasthat endless rounds of self-criticism and mutualcriticism gradually wore away the distinctionbetween friend and enemy, ending with the lossof all friendship. Soon enough the comradeswho once swore to "live and die together" weretargeting trivialities and fiercely denouncingeach other. They mistakenly came to seefinding an enemy within the organization as ameaningful political activity. In this, theirstandard of judgment was their newly-acquiredjuche ideology. From this time on, this ideologybecame their supreme guiding beacon.

The day came when they took down the threeslogans they had posted on the walls of theguest house. Not only "We will defend andnurture simultaneous world revolution," butalso their first resolution "We live and dietogether" was torn down and thrown away.

Yodogō members announce theirconversion to Juche ideology at a pressconference in Pyongyang, May 1, 1972.From right front, Okamoto Takeshi,

Konishi Takahiro, Tamiya Takamaro,(unidentified person), Yoshida Kintarō,Abe Kimihiro. Photo from Kyōdō News,reprinted in Takazawa, Kōji, Destiny: TheSecret Operations of the Yodogō Exiles,edited by Patricia G. Steinhoff. Honolulu:University of Hawaii Press, 2017, p. 403.

The group of Red Army Faction members whohad flown to North Korea were germinating thebud of disaster at the same time as, just acrossthe Sea of Japan at a winter camp in the JapanAlps, the harried United Red Army was about tocommit its own terrible mistake.7

There seemed to be a deep and fatefulconnection here, in that both cases wereclashes with outside ideologies that resulted incalamity. In the United Red Army, there wasfriction over the Maoist principles of theCultural Revolution. For the Yodogō hijackers,there was the encounter with Kim Il Sung'sprinciple of juche, or self-reliance. Just thissimilarity is enough to give one shivers. Itremains deeply puzzling that the dissolution ofboth groups in such a short time was not due toproblems of theory or tactics, but to problemswith the social values of duty, morale, andethics.8

Having read thus far, I finally put away themanuscript. I was tired from my travels. And Ifelt a growing anxiety regarding what remainedto be read.

Outside my hotel window, the sprawling city ofBeijing was completely obscured by the night'sdarkness. Suddenly I sensed an evil presencef ly ing in the p i tch b lack, screaminggrotesquely. It was the same evil darkness Ihad seen in the spring of 1972 in Karuizawa,looking at the Myōgi mountain range where theUnited Red Army purges had taken place.

I edited and published the Yodogō group’s

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memoirs several months later in Japan underthe title Twenty Years After Takeoff: To NorthKorea on the Yodogō. Yoshida Kintarō's name isnot included in the list of authors. In addition,just when the first proofs were ready for proof-reading, I received an urgent message from theYodogō group requesting the deletion of

Okamoto Takeshi's segment of the manuscript.The reason they gave was, "Okamoto no longerwishes to return to Japan. Because thepublication of this manuscript is a step in ourmove to return, his name cannot be listed withours."9

Translators A group of Japanese University of Hawaii graduate students read Destiny whilecataloguing the Takazawa Collection and proposed to translate it into English. RyokoYamamoto, Shinji Kojima, Eiko Saeki, Kazumi Higashikubo, Kazutoh Ishida, and Midori Ishidadid the original rough translation of Destiny. With support from the University of HawaiiJapan Endowment, Lina Terrell, a graduate student who is also a professional translator,worked with Steinhoff to polish the translation.

Takazawa Kōji, the author of Destiny, is a former student activist in Japan who went on tobecome an author, editor, and independent investigative journalist. He was a student memberof the New Left organization known as Bund (Kyōsanshugisha Dōmei) and became part of theRed Army Faction when it was expelled from Bund in the summer of 1969. He helped producethe Red Army Faction’s publications and knew some members of the hijack group. In the1990s he visited North Korea several times to meet with the Yodogō hijackers and publishedtheir writings in Japan. Over time he became suspicious of the stories they told him, and afterhis friend Tamiya died suddenly in 1995, he began tracing their tracks in Europe andSoutheast Asia. He uncovered evidence that the group had been involved in luring youngJapanese from Europe to North Korea. He published Destiny: The Secret Operations of theYodogō Exiles in 1998. The book won the Kodansha Prize for Non-Fiction the following year.Although the remaining members of the Yodogō group in in North Korea continue to denytheir involvement in the kidnapping or luring of Japanese to North Korea, in 2002 the NorthKorean government gave a list of Japanese abductees to the Japanese government thatincluded the three people he had linked to the Yodogō group. Takazawa donated his vastcollection of Japanese New Left social movement materials to the University of Hawaii in1993 [http://www.takazawa.hawaii.edu] and has added additional materials since, includingall his research materials for Destiny.

Patricia G. Steinhoff, editor of the English translation, is professor of sociology and chair ofthe sociology department at the University of Hawaii. A Japan specialist focusing on theJapanese left, she has known Takazawa Kōji since the early 1980s, first as an informant andlater as a colleague on projects involving the Japanese New Left. He facilitated the Japanesepublication of her book on the Red Army, Nihon Sekigunha: Sono ShakaigakutekiMonogatari (Japan Red Army Factions: A Sociological Tale). Tokyo: Kawade Shōbō Shinsha,1991, 1993. This book was later republished as Shi eno Ideology: Nihon Sekigunha. [DeadlyIdeology: the Japanese Red Army Factions] Iwanami Modern Classics Series, Tokyo: IwanamiPublishing Company, 2003. When Takazawa donated his collection to the University ofHawaii, she became responsible for organizing and overseeing its cataloguing as a

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manuscript collection within the university’s Japanese Collection and developed thecollection’s bibliographic website. She has published numerous book chapters and journalarticles about the Japanese New Left and is now revising and updating her Japanese book onthe Red Army Faction for publication in English, along with a companion volume on theJapanese Red Army in the Middle East. In addition to adding an editor’s introduction and afollow-up chapter to Destiny at Takazawa’s request, she re-translated some passages to bringout nuances and added explanatory notes throughout the text. See an interview with theauthor about The Red Army here(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaubwU_qUBM&feature=youtu.be).

Notes1 The hijackers had stayed in this same hotel for four days after their arrival in Pyongyang,and then had been moved to a Workers Party guest house in the country some distance fromthe city, which has been their home ever since. On his first trip Takazawa did not visit theirhome. They came to Pyongyang to see him and he learned about what had happened fromlong conversations and the manuscripts that he had offered to publish for them in Japan.Although they went to Pyongyang as members of the Red Army Faction, they later came to beknown in the media as the Yodogō group, after the name of the Japan Airlines plane they hadhijacked.2 Juche ideology is the official ideology of North Korea, based on the writings of Kim Il Sung.The characters for juche主体are the same as the characters for self-reliance or subjecthood inJapanese主体性. The Japanese philosophical concept of “shutaisei” or independentsubjecthood, was a much debated and admired quality among New Left students in the late1960s, but was understood in quite a different way from the North Korean juche concept.Takazawa wrote the word in katakana and we have kept it as juche, but in quotationssometimes render it as “self-reliance.”3 Shiomi Takaya, a philosophy graduate of Kyoto University, crafted the Red Army Faction’sideology while Tamiya organized and led its daring escapades.4 All citations in the text are to the book Takazawa published in Japan based on the hijackers’manuscripts, Tamiya Takamaro et al, Hisho nijūnen: Yodogō de Choson e [Twenty Years afterTakeoff: To North Korea on the Yodogō.] Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1990.5 The term “giri” refers to a strong moral obligation in Japanese culture to repay one’sbenefactors. As radical left students, these men would have been dismissive of such atraditional cultural value, even though they would have felt its pull in their everyday lives.Calling it “revolutionary giri” allowed them to experience it positively.6 In ordinary Japanese parlance, a sōkatsu is simply an analysis of a recent activity, but here itwas a demand for a personal re-evaluation of one’s behavior and thoughts to produceideological change. The United Red Army was formed in 1971 by remnants of the Red ArmyFaction and a Maoist group called the Revolutionary Left Faction, whose parent organizationhad broken with the Japan Communist Party to favor a Maoist line some years earlier. Themerged group contained many members who were wanted by the police, and they retreatedinto the mountains to develop the group’s ideology and prepare for future activity. A Maoist-inspired process of self-criticism and mutual criticism introduced by the Revolutionary Left

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Faction went out of control as the leaders began ordering physical attacks and harshpunishments of their members. Their process of group criticism fed on itself, resulting in thedeath of a dozen members of the group during the winter of 1971-72. The group’s leaders,Mori Tsuneo and Nagata Hiroko, called the demand for such an ideological self-criticism a“sōkatsu” and this new meaning was popularized in accounts of the purge. For a detailedaccount, see Steinhoff, Patricia G. 1992. "Death by Defeatism and Other Fables: The SocialDynamics of the Rengo Sekigun Purge." Pp. 195-224 in Japanese Social Organization, editedby T. S. Lebra. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.7 The Japanese New Left struggled mightily to make sense of the United Red Army purge byanalyzing it from its own Marxist ideological perspective as a policy error of disastrousproportions, hence a “terrible mistake.” In English calling it a “mistake” seems to trivialize it,but both the participants in the purge and the people around them understood such anunintended policy error as a serious matter for which one needed to apologize and seekforgiveness.8 In Takazawa’s view, both groups confronted ideologies that were distinctly different fromShiomi’s theory that guided the Red Army Faction. However, when he examined the processmore closely, they were not persuaded by these different ideological positions, but insteadfound themselves unexpectedly vulnerable to more fundamental, ingrained social values suchas giri and deference to authority.9 Both Takazawa’s friend Yoshida and Okamoto had disappeared from the group before hebegan visiting them. Destiny examines what happened to them and how the remaining groupmembers tried to cover it up.