⛩️ #27 The Mitsubishi Massacre: Japan's Forgotten Terrorist Attack
The Headlines, This Week in Japanese History, and Much More
Welcome back! Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition:
How Japanese terrorists killed 8 people in a bomb attack and (mostly) got away with it
An interview with Japan-based entrepreneur Drew Kent Wallin
5 cunningly-named Japanese companies
And your usual links of the week and quiz.
Let’s jump into it:
THE QUIZ
Question: what food is this, and why might Japanese people have eaten it this week?
Answer at the foot of the mail.
THE HISTORY
Warning: gruesome photos ahead
The Mitsubishi Massacre: Japan's Forgotten Terrorist Attack
Ayako Daidoji, released from prison when the Japanese government bowed to the demands of the hijackers of Japan Air Flight 472
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” is the kind of puddle-deep bon mot favored by young men of the Joe Rogan school of intellect.
The fact is that some terrorists are just terrorists, and their weapon of choice is invariably the bomb.
Whatever the ideological slant, whatever bullshit these people have convinced themselves about the necessity for violent action, the resort to explosives is the embrace of that awful phrase “collateral damage”, which of course is a euphemism meaning “murdering innocent people”.
(Only the Israelis have ever successfully carried out true precision bombings — but for every assassination via tiny bomb hidden inside a cellphone or under a bed in a guesthouse inside the compound of the Iranian President, in Gaza they don’t mind blowing up classrooms full of kids in the hopes of killing Hamas f*cks hiding under the floorboards.)
The fact is, your terrorist sicko who decides it’s a good idea to start leaving bombs in public is at heart an insecure numbnut trying to show how they have not only “mastered” the intellectual — I perceive the world how it truly is, you naïve sheep — but also the physical — I can make fire bend to my will.
And when these idiots inevitably end up blowing innocent people into chunks of meat, they turn around and blame everyone but the people actually responsible: themselves.
* * *
The 1970s were boom years (pun intended) for left-wing terrorists.
Black September was killing Jews at the Olympics, the IRA massacring cafés full of Protestants and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - External Operations hijacking airplanes and trying to think of a catchier moniker.
Meanwhile, in Germany and Italy, a weird adolescent mix of “Daddy, what did you do in the war?” second-hand Nazi guilt/I hate my parents whining plus “but whyyyyyyy is America so stwong?” nationalist self-pity was getting Baader-Meinhof and the Red Brigades hot under the collar.
They decided that strikes at symbols of capitalism would bring about a really epically cool revolution, and proceeded to kidnap a bunch of hapless captains of industry for ransom and publicity.
In Japan, meanwhile, their ideological cousins were the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, but these morons decided to target not the oligarch class itself — which might have got them a modicum of sympathy from the masses — but instead “large companies”, in general, with bomb attacks, which meant the actual victims would inevitably be members of the very working class they professed to be trying to free from the crushing gears of the capitalist system.
Aftermath of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries bombing. Image: Mainichi Shimbun
OPERATION DIAMOND
The bomb was originally scheduled for September 1st 1974, but that was a Sunday, when workers would not be teeming through the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters in the middle of Tokyo, so, for maximum impact, a weekday, Friday August 30th was chosen instead.
The Operation Diamond plan consisted of members of the EEAJAF’s “Wolf” cell (the codenames tell you a lot about the maturity of these people) planting two bombs containing 45 kilograms of explosives in a flower pot at the entrance of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' head office in the busy Marunouchi district of Tokyo.
Sister-company Mitsubishi Electric’s building was just across the street, and the goal was to destroy both buildings — in other words, they knew the narrow gap between the structures would amplify the blast.
A warning was called in to the Mitsubishi switchboard 8 minutes (!) before the bombs were timed to explode.
The telephone operator hung up, thinking it was a gag.
4 minutes later the terrorists called back, saying, no really — you’re about to die.
The operator took them seriously this time, and set off for the elevator to go report to the bosses.
BOOM.
* * *
Five people, two of them Mitsubishi employees, were killed instantly, and three more died shortly afterwards in hospital.
An estimated 376 people were injured, and when we say “injured” in relation to a bomb blast, that means limbs removed, faces ripped off, eyeballs popped, permanent deafening, lifetimes of chronic pain, etc, etc.
The communique claiming responsibility for the attack is the kind of pathetic self-pitying bullshit familiar to anyone who grew up during the IRA’s bomb campaigns in the U.K.
Just like the IRA would, the terrorists blamed the lack of timely evacuation (not our fwault!), rather than their own pathetically late warning. Their official communique claiming the attack is a sickening yard of self-absorption and deflection. Highlight is the wrong word, but check out this particular stave on the victims:
The people killed or injured by the “Wolf” bombs are not “mere workers” or “innocent citizens.” They are colonizers who are the parasitic core of the Japanese Empire, participate in colonialism , and grow fat on the blood of colonized people.
Colonialism, in this 1970s context, meaning “investing in third world nations”.
* * *
GETTING AWAY WITH IT
Seven members of EAAJAF were arrested on 19 May 1975.
But two of these assholes managed to get released — via hijacker demands in other attacks.
On September 28th 1977, fellow leftist terrorists the Japanese Red Army hijacked a flight from Paris to Bombay, landed in Bangladesh, and demanded bomber Ayako Daidōji be released, plus a few million USD in cash.
Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda announced the government would accept the demands, on the principle that “the life of a single person outweighs the Earth” — thus proving the point that every country should have a highly-trained rescue team ready 24/7 to shoot terrorists and save hostages.
(She was released and put on a flight in front of the Japanese press, a national humiliation no country should ever endure. That photo appears at the top of this article.)
Norio Sasaki, the genius who made the bomb warning calls, was released after a different Red Army hostage crisis in Kuala Lumpur.
Of the 5 remaining members the government hadn’t let waltz out of custody, Masashi Daidoji and Toshiaki Masunaga were convicted and sentenced to death, despite maintaining they had no idea how powerful the bomb would be, and were therefore innocent of murder.
EAAJAF member Satoshi Kirishima escaped, and became the smiling, bespectacled star of ubiquitous “most wanted” posters nationwide.
Japan’s most-wanted, circa 2023. Satoshi Kirishima is bottom right. Image: National Police Agency
On January 25, 2024, almost 50 years after the attack, Japanese police announced they had taken Kirishima into custody from a hospital in Kanagawa Prefecture, where, suffering from terminal cancer, he had checked himself in under the pseudonym he had been using for the last 5 decades.
Knowing he would soon die, he explained that he wanted to live what was left of his life under his real name — remaining, in other words, a genius of self-pity to the very end.
Satoshi Kirishima died 5 days later.
Masashi Daidōji died of myeloma at the Tokyo Detention House on the morning of May 24 , 2017 (aged 68)
Toshiaki Masunaga remains on death row.
After their release to appease terrorists demands, Ayako Daidōji and Norio Sasaki were never found. They remain on international wanted lists to this day.
More here (Japanese)
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THE INTERVIEW
“NATTO FANATIC”
Drew Kent Wallin sold a startup to Google, then renovated a traditional Kyoto townhouse into Garden Lab Tea & Bar.
Live now:
Kyoto
Passport?
Canada
Arrived in Japan
1994 in Hokkaido
Favorite place
Kyoto, Kanazawa, Kamakura
Please don’t read anything into the unfortunate lettering, this is a terrible coincidence. All three cities are the perfect size, pace of life, and rich in culture and history.
Favorite word
あっという間 (a to iu ma)
“In the blink of an eye”
Natto, yay or nay?
Natto fanatic
Most embarrassing moment
In third grade I was forced to introduce myself in Japanese in front of ther whole school after being in Japan for 2 weeks.
Weirdest question from a Japanese person
Too many to list…
Ever sang A Cruel Angel’s Thesis?
I have shaken a tambourine vigorously to the song many times, never sang.
Experienced a Japanese funeral?
I have been to two. One was someone I loved very deeply, and the other was someone I never met.
Japan forever?
Almost certainly.
Drew’s Garden Lab Tea & Bar has been featured in many publications as the ur-example of sympathetic renovation of traditional Kyoto architecture.
THE LANGUAGE
5 Cunningly Named Japanese Companies
Here are 5 mega-famous Japanese companies whose names seem obscure at first sight, but actually come from some elaborate wordplay:
Sanrio
Company behind mega-successful characters like Hello Kitty (who is not actually a cat), Sanrio’s name comes from the Spanish words “San Rio”, literally “Saint River”, chosen in the hopes that the company would “become a river raising up Japanese culture”. That’s one way to describe them…
SEIKO
Watch brand whose name comes from the highly alliterative phrase 精巧で精密な時計の生産に成功する工場 (Seikō de seimitsu na tokei no seisan ni seikō suru kōjyō) “A factory successfully producing intricate and precise watches”. Yeah glad they shortened that.
NISSIN
Momofuku Andō, founder of Pot noodle kingpins Nissin, chose the company’s moniker from the phrase 日々清らかに豊かな味をつくる (Nichinichi kiyoraka ni yutaka na aji wo tsukuru) “Creating pure and rich flavors every day”. In a piece of wordplay baffling to non-Japanese speakers the alternative readings of 日 and 清 can be combined to make NISSIN.
So, now you know: that Pot Noodle flavor? Pure and rich, not cheap and salty.
ASKUL
ASKUL is a mail-order company whose fat catalog can be found in every Japanese workplace, selling copy paper by the ream, print cartridges by the dozen, and other tat nobody really needs by the kilo. The name comes from the simple phrase 明日来る Asu kuru, meaning “delivered tomorrow”.
CURRY HOUSE CoCo ICHIBANYA
Japanese curry-as-comfort-food specialists CocoIchi are currently making a bid for worldwide fame with their international expansion. The name comes from the phrase カレーならココ一番やー！ (Curry nara koko ichiban ya!), “If you’re talking curry, the best’s right here!”. This one is close to our hearts because the phrase is rendered in Kansai dialect, the variation of Japanese spoken in the Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe region.
THE LINKS
3 things worth your time from this week:
Based On Real Real Estate Scams: Mark Kennedy on Netflix’s new hit drama, Tokyo Swindlers
Ferris Bueller’s Boombox: Obsolete Sony on Sony product placement in iconic films
Japanese Jiggly Cheesecake: Yuki Gomi shows you how to make it
THE ANSWER
Question: what food is this, and why might Japanese people have eaten it this week?
Answer: a croquette sandwich — for those for whom no amount of carbs is too much. And why might people have been tucking in this week? Well, apparently eating croquettes during typhoons is a new, meme-y tradition…
Enjoy The Kyote this time? Check this out next: The hijacking that never ended
We’ll see each other again next week,
The Kyote
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The Kyote is published in Kyoto, Japan every Sunday at 19:00 JST
Horrible. People who have high ideals of "freedom" and "human dignity" can be the absolute worse perpetrators of shit like this. I guess its easier to kill people when you believe its for a good cause. Don't worry if they never critically examined their cause, feeling it is enough.
Glad to see there are other natto fanatics out there!