United Red Army Release On May 27,2011
Release Date: May 27, 2011 (NY)
Starring: Maki Sakai, Arata, Akie Namiki
Director: Kôji Wakamatsu
Studio: Lorber Films
Screenwriter: Kôji Wakamatsu, Masayuki Kakegawa
Genre: Drama
Story: Shot in a raw verite style, “United Red Army” explores the political unrest of 1960s Japan, when mass student uprisings coincided with the beginnings of the far-left United Red Army group, which tortured and murdered its “deviant” members during a 1972 training session.
Mr. Wakamatsu’s harrowing film depicts the famed Asama-Sanso incident, which began when members of the United Red Army assassinated 14 of its own, during a group “self-criticism” session, and then broke into a holiday lodge below Mount Asama and took the wife of the lodge-keeper as a hostage. A standoff between police and the URA radicals took place, lasting ten days.
The radical student protests that rocked Japan in the late 1960s were in many ways, a response to the growing military alignment between Japan and the United States (ratified by the Japan-US Security Treaty signed in 1951). But the decisions made by the Japanese Communist Party, which was being accused of rigidity (and even “Stalinism”) also played a role in the radicalization of the Japanese student movement during the 1960s and 70s in Japan.
Asia, Japan, Japanese Communist Party, Maki Sakai, Mount Asama, Stalinism, United Red Army, United States