Introduction

Setting – everyday Japan Shōwa 46, 1971. For the Japanese, it was a year of no great significance when many significant things happened. As they viewed their colour TVs over breakfast and in the newspapers they read on the commuter trains, they did see that for some it was truly a momentous year. The terrible near-decade of butchery was just beginning for Ugandans, and while Bangladeshis celebrated their independence, Indians and Pakistanis joined the Vietnamese and Americans as populations embroiled in war. Though not on the apocalyptic scale of these events, big things did happen in Japan, too. The accord for the Reversion of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty was signed to begin the end of the American occupation, and while Japanese and Americans watched their post-colonial moment unfold on television, some Okinawans protested the start of a renewed Japanese colonial ever-after,

and a policeman was killed with a bamboo spear. Protest, in fact, was prevalent that year. The government clashed with protesters in Sanrizuka over its forced expropriation of land for the construction of Narita airport; three policemen were killed. Meanwhile, a bemused majority watched news about Shigenobu Fusako, the female leader of the Japanese Red Army who inspired women to wear paramilitary berets, as featured on the cover of the women’s fashion magazine AnAn; eleven people were taken hostage in her organization’s seizure of the French Embassy in The Hague in 1974.