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Murakami Ichiro and Ultra-Nationalist Intimidation in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

David McNeill
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On December 19, 2003, Japanese police arrested 54-year-old rightist Murakami Ichiro, along with five accomplices, charging them with violating the Firearms and Swords Control Law.

Murakami is accused of leading a terror campaign, under the banner of the Kenkoku Giyugun (Nation-Building Volunteer Corps), and the Kokuzoku Seibatsutai, (Volunteer Corps to Punish Traitors), which conducted 23 shooting, arson and bomb attacks on targets across Japan over a one-year period beginning in November 2002.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , January 2004 , e3
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2004

References

Notes

1. “Rightist: N. Korea had to be punished,” Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 25, 2003. Available at http://www.asahi.com/english/world/TKY200312250166.html. See also Justin McCurry, “The Enemy Within,” The Guardian, Dec. 30, 2003. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1114012,00.html.

2. David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro, Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld. University of California Press, 2003.

3. Among the many books that deal with the Kennedy family's involvement with the mafia are Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000, and Seymour M. Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1997.

4. In 2000, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nakagawa Hidenao (Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro's closest aide) resigned after being photographed dining with the boss of an ultra-right organization. Mori himself gave a speech at a wedding attended by Inagawa Yuko, the boss of the Inagawa-kai crime syndicate.

5. See David McNeill, “Out of the Shadows,” The Independent, Aug. 19, 2003.

6. “Ishihara unrepentant over bomb barb, Japan Times, Sept. 12, 2003. Available at http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20030912a2.htm.

7. This revelation was greeted with incredulity by much of the press, which cannot have been following Nishimura's career very closely. A well-known supporter of nationalist causes and a hero of the hard-right for years, in 1997 Nishimura planted the Japanese flag on a rocky, windswept island known here as Senkaku (or Diaoyu in China) in the East China Sea, signalling what he said was “The revival of a proud Japan and an awakening of people's consciousness.” In 1999, he was forced to resign from his post as vice minister of the Defence Agency after suggesting that Japan should consider acquiring a nuclear arsenal.

8. See David McNeill, “Media Intimidation in Japan: A Close Encounter with Hard Japanese Nationalism.” Available online at http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/discussionpapers/McNeill.html.

9. Ibid.

10. In December 2001, Emperor Akihito spoke at a press conference to mark his 68th birthday about the Korean ancestry of the Japanese Imperial family and said he felt a close ‘kinship’ with the country. The speech, from the head of an institution that is the ultimate linchpin of the myth of Japanese uniqueness and the lodestar for the most repressive ideas of racial superiority, was widely reported outside Japan, especially in Korea, but was largely ignored by the Japanese media. The Asahi was the only major paper to cover it in detail. See, Jonathan Watts, “The Emperor's New Roots,” The Guardian, Dec. 28, 2001. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,7369,625426,00.html. The media has also failed to discuss the fertility-treatment assisted birth of a baby girl to Crown Princess Masako in December 2001, despite the story being widely covered outside Japan; a trivial issue perhaps, but indicative of how far the media will go to avoid angering ultra-nationalists.