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(1)The German and Japanese Red Armies in Film and History Kenji Hasegawa㧔 ᮮ ᵿ ࿖ ┙ ᄢ ቇ 㧕 Tom de Laar㧔ࡂࠗ࠺࡞ࡌ࡞ࠣᄢቇ㧕 Key words:. Red Army, Japan, Germany, History, Film. Introduction Two recent films have re-examined the German and Japanese Red Armies in innovative ways: Jitsuroku rengo sekigun [United Red Army] by Wakamatsu Koji (2007) and Wer wenn nicht wir [If Not Us, Who?] by Andres Veiel (2011). Through a comparative contextualization and discussion of these two films and their subjects, this paper will shed light on their parallels and contrasts. The first section will discuss the Japanese side, where attention—both cinematic and general—has been overwhelmingly on the Asama sanso incident of 1972. Similar to the German RAF, leftist terrorism leading up to the United Red Army can be interpreted as a post-fascist phenomenon, with twisted connections with the recent past these groups ostensibly rejected. Together with Wakamatsu’s film, this section discusses the background of the United Red Army. The second section will discuss the historical context of the German RAF. While the contemporaneity with Japan of the climax and decline of the student movement in the late 1960s amidst the Vietnam War is evident, a striking contrast is how the conspiratorial denunciations of “fascism” led to a series of attacks on the establishment with little internal splintering seen in the Japanese case. The perceived proximity of the enemy in Germany in the form of the fascist past and the reality of the Cold War likely contributed to this difference. The third section will examine past cinematic treatments of the RAF. The periodization of the films can be loosely organized as: political-artistic social criticism (1970s), personification (1980s/1990s), and romanticization/commercialization (2000s). However, Andres Veiel’s recent film represents an innovative departure from these past treatments. In the fourth and final section, Andres Veiel and Wakamatsu Koji will be comparatively discussed, focusing especially on a difference that reflects both their contrasting backgrounds. 䋭㪍㪐䋭.

(2) and contexts: the latter’s anger.. Japan: The Red Army in Film and History Compared to the German case, cinematic representations of the Japan’s United Red Army are limited in number. In addition, their focus is overwhelmingly on a single event: the 1972 shoot-out in Asama sanso between United Red Army members and police, and the ensuing revelation of the series of deadly internal lynchings. The German RAF’s historical context and previous film treatments will be dealt with in separate sections. However, reflecting the dearth of previous serious films on the topic, this section will discuss synthetically the historical context of the Asama sanso incident and its latest film representation. Below is a list of films dealing with the Asama sanso incident: Kichiku daienkai [Banquet of Devils], Kumakiri Kazuyoshi (1998) Hikari no ame [Rain of Light], Takahashi Banmei (2001) Totsunyu seyo! Asama sanso jiken [Charge! Asama sanso incident], Harada Masato (2002) Jitsuroku rengo sekigun [United Red Army], Wakamatsu Koji (2007) Kichiku daienkai was essentially a splatter film in which crazed leftist youths self destruct in an orgy of violence. It displayed no interest in the youths’ thoughts or actions and invited viewers to voyeuristically enjoy the bloody spectacle. Hikari no ame was based on the novel of the same title by Tatematsu Wahei. It was a complexly structured film in which young actors with no knowledge of the Red Army try to enact and understand the Red Army members. Scenes traversed back and forth between the “real” contemporaneous events and their latter day enactments by uncomprehending youths. The main issue in the film, which remained. ultimately. unsolved,. was. the. possibility. of. intergenerational. understanding of the traumatic event of the lynchings in Asama sanso. Totsunyu seyo! Asama sanso jiken was based on the memoir of the police commander during the siege. Its complete lack of interest in the Red Army youths, except as to depict. 䋭㪎㪇䋭.

(3) them as “enemies of the people,” led Wakamatsu Koji to angrily announce that he would direct a film which would tell the story from the other side of the barricades. Wakamatsu’s Jitsuroku rengo sekigun is by far the most serious engagement with the Asama sanso incident (Yomota 2008: 203-205). Wakamatsu Koji begins his narrative of the “road to Asama sanso”. in. 1960. The massive protests against the revised US-Japan Security Treaty of this year became the symbolic foundational event of Japan's proliferating “New Left” groups that defined themselves in opposition to the Japanese Communist Party (JCP). Wakamatsu placed his long 1960s marked by political contention and revolutionary fervor in opposition to the sweet national nostalgia of the “Showa 30's” (1955-65) so popularized by the film “Sanchome no yuhi.” The events after 1960 are effectively outlined in the first hour or so of Wakamatsu Koji's movie. After its protests failed to thwart the treaty, the Bund dissolved into numerous competing factions and an interlude of low activity ensued. However a turning point came in 1966, with the reconstruction of the sanpa (three factions) Zengakuren. One of the three factions was the Shagakudo, out of which the Red Army faction eventually emerged. In October 1967, amidst the escalation of Japan-based American bombing campaigns in Vietnam, the sanpa Zengakuren made its major debut in the streets, clashing with riot police in an effort to thwart Prime Minister Sato Eisaku's visit to the United States. During the clash, the Kyoto University student Yamazaki Hiroaki was killed. Escalating violence led to massive arrests in a series of clashes as students began to arm themselves. Wakamatsu contextualizes these clashes within the wider world political context of the late 1960s, inserting brief worded descriptions of events such as the Cultural Revolution in China, Martin Luther King's assassination, and the Paris uprising. He also mentions the emergence of the “non-sect radicals” who chose not to affiliate themselves with any sect. However, as the film's focus is on “the road to Asama sanso,” these non-sect students drop out of view as abruptly as they emerge. Unlike the non-sect students, the proliferating sects of eager revolutionaries sought to recuperate the shards of the JCP's revolutionary aura shattered in 1960. In the early postwar period, some commentators had characterized the JCP's rigidly authoritarian character as a “leftist emperor system”.. 䋭㪎㪈䋭.

(4) While it was the only political party to openly challenge the emperor system, it was not self-critical of its organizational style rooted in the wartime period. The result was that the revolutionary party came to resemble the enemy it sought to destroy. This pattern was repeated by the New Left groups critical of the JCP. While they characterized themselves as the antithesis of the JCP, they did not renounce the idea of the “sole vanguard of the revolution” but rather sought to claim it as their own. One of the consequences of this, among other factors, was the spiral of intra-leftist violence known as uchigeba which claimed numerous lives. The Red Army faction was born out of its uchigeba with its parent organization of the Shagakudo. Just as the Bund broke with the JCP over its failure to organize recklessly confrontational protests, the students of the Red Army faction broke with the Shagakudo because of their moderation. The two break-up processes were also similar in that they both entailed violence. The Shagakudo leader was left seriously injured in a brutal attack. Retaliation quickly ensued. Depicting this bloody foundational event, Wakamatsu has one of the students voice a doubt that gets bulldozed over on the inexorable road to Asama sanso: “This can't be revolution.” Wakamatsu also inserts a significant detail by showing Mori Tsuneo, the future leader of the Red Army faction, opting out of an uchigeba mission and being labeled a coward by his elders. A tearful Mori is shown asking for forgiveness when he seeks to rejoin the sect. He is allowed back in with the admonition, “Don't chicken out next time.” Indeed, as Wakamatsu implies, this admonition seems to have stuck, with devastating consequences. Sotogeba, or violence against the external establishment also escalated. In November 1970 a group of Revolutionary Leftists unsuccessfully raided a police box in search of guns, resulting in the shooting death of one of the members—a misguided extremist in the eyes of some, a martyr in the eyes of others. Uchigeba (internally directed violence) and sotogeba (externally directed violence) were inextricably linked. The Red Army faction emphasized that they were not simply protesting students but an “army.” They emphasized the use of real weapons in their “war” against the reactionaries and sought not to be outdone by the escalating tactics of competing sects. This linkage between uchigeba and sotogeba was not new to the late 1960s. In the early 1950s too, during the first of Japan's “postwar” wars, escalating extremism (including military. 䋭㪎㪉䋭.

(5) training in the mountains) became a means to gain internal control over the coveted title of the sole revolutionary vanguard. After the party split into two conflicting factions over the Cominform's criticism of the JCP's cooperative stance toward the American occupation in 1950, the mainstream faction eventually regained control by adopting the policy of military struggle. While the competing international faction had repeatedly attacked the mainstream faction for its weak-kneed stance, with the military struggle amidst the Korean War, the tables were turned. The mainstream faction began to re-direct the vituperative label of “rightist opportunists” away from themselves and onto their internal enemies. Twenty years later, with the second of Japan's “postwar” wars winding down, and with a dizzying array of New Left groups claiming the revolutionary mantle, Red Army faction students echoed the military theme. In order to become the true vanguard party superior to all others, they needed to “fully respond” to the call to war (Kyosanshugisha domei sekigunha 1971: 25). While there are parallels in the internal dynamics of escalating extremism in the early 1950s and 1970s, there was one crucial difference: whereas the military turn of the early 1950s took place while memories of war remained fresh (a significant number of those involved had military experience), this was not the case in the early 1970s. In a dialog with the Red Army students, the writer Takahashi Kazumi, born in 1931 and familiar with the dilemmas of early 1950s leftist radicalism, expressed remarkable sympathy for their thoughts and tactics but questioned their naïve embrace of “war.” The students’ radical language of “armed struggle” and “war” sounded oddly upbeat and lacking in morbid reality. Even radical leftist organizations have embraced the principle of “anti-war” throughout the postwar period, Takahashi pointed out. “This was based on the senseless destruction and loss of lives…that became a national experience… It is true that the basic emotion to recoil from large-scale bloodshed has had a moderating influence on labor and other associated movements, but one must also recognize that the people’s [anti-war] instincts are important. All denunciations of the lies and injustices of political power have at their base the desire to protect individual lives and livelihoods.” While the writer continued to talk sense into the youthful warriors, he seems to have sensed that his message was not going through. Nor did he seem to blame them, as he lamented that the contemporary situation of the entrenched establishment and a beleaguered and desperate leftist movement was rooted in the failures of the early postwar period: “In the case of Japan, the problems from having failed to convert the defeat in war into an internal. 䋭㪎㪊䋭.

(6) rebellion continue unchanged to this day” (Ibid: 48-49). In the early postwar period, commentators had noted the “kamikaze to Communist Party” phenomenon, with pure hearted soldiers turning to leftist ends after the bankruptcy of the militarist regime. It is reasonable to imagine this connection linking student radicals with the tragic “generation of certain death” in the popular imagination having been partly rekindled with the anachronistic scene of United Red Army members fighting a shooting war with police in a mountain resort. The students themselves stridently denied any such connections, repeatedly stressing their distinctiveness from all other leftist groups both contemporary and past, much less the wartime generation. Nevertheless, beneath their rigidly doctrinaire pronouncements (with their multitude of “final battles”) and painfully spartan practices, one can sense an element of temporal solidarity with the generation of youths swept away in the age of fascism and battle to the death. What is more certain is their attempt at spatial solidarity with war ravaged areas distant from the peace and happiness of mass consumerist Japan. Images of Vietnamese villages destroyed by American bombers were entering Japanese living rooms in the first war to be broadcast widely on television. The significance of Wakmatsu’s movie in recuperating the Asama sanso incident from collective oblivion is highlighted when contextualized within earlier treatments of the subject. During the crisis, coverage of the crazed extremists filled the print media. However the medium that most powerfully communicated the event to the national audience was television. During the final two hours of the hostage rescue operation, TV history was made with combined ratings rising to 87% as stations offered live commercial free coverage. The adopted theme of the ten day televised drama centered around the fate of the sole hostage taken by the beleaguered extremists, Muta Yasuko, the 31 year old wife of the Asama sanso mountain resort. “Is Yasuko-san safe?” television reporters repeated again and again, providing dramatic suspense in an otherwise event-deprived ten day battle of attrition. Like Shoda Michiko in 1959, Kanba Michiko in 1960, and the women's volleyball team in 1964, Yasuko-san became the para-social focal point on which a television viewing audience directed their national gaze (Chun 2007: 236-237). As the Yasuko-san drama ended with her happy rescue, the defeated students were disgracefully paraded in front of the television cameras. Nevertheless, public sympathy for the extremist students was not entirely absent. While repeated uchigeba incidents had already largely undermined public support for student radicals, sentiments of respect or pity for the passionately pure youths fighting a final battle. 䋭㪎㪋䋭.

(7) against overwhelming odds remained. Such sentiments, however, were wiped out by the ensuing revelation of the gruesome internal killings. As with the triumphant rescue of Yasuko-san, the police orchestrated the shocking revelation of the killings to produce maximum effect. According to some accounts, the police was aware of the killings before the shoot-out. However the television viewing audience first found out after a week-long reprieve after the marathon shoot-out. The discoveries of the bodies, conducted in separate installments over a week-long period, were rehearsed and coordinated for dramatic live television coverage. (Oguma 2009: 653-654) The televised dramatization may have simply reinforced the overdetermined: what remained of popular sympathy for the captured radicals evaporated. A plethora of depictions sought to caricature and purge the radicals from national memory. Nagata Yoko was demonized as the mastermind of the killings, driven to a murderous frenzy against her better looking peers because of her “ugly complex.” The radicals were reported to be a “free sex” group whose twisted desires led to the killings. “It could have happened to you” was another common remark, serving as admonishment to stay away from political activism, whose culmination point was the gruesome killings. All in all, the Asama sanso incident became the traumatic nail in the coffin for an already beleaguered New Left. The most recent film dealing with the Asama sanso incident before Wakamatsu Koji's film purged all ambivalence by exhibiting a total lack of interest in the extremist students and depicting them as the “enemies of the Japanese people.” The 2002 film “Totsunyu seyo! Asama sanso jiken: The Choice of Hercules” (Charge!) dramatically retold the story from a police viewpoint. The movie's protagonist is Sasa (played by the well-known actor Yakusho Koji), the commander in chief of the police forces at Asama sanso. A typical buyuden (tale of self-glorification), it portrays the hero unwillingly charged with the herculean task of managing a police force riven with internal antagonisms (inter-division and local vs. Tokyo) and incompetent staff (blustering and blundering local police leaders cannot even successfully cut the electric wires before the final wrecking ball operation) to rescue the hostage and capture the extremists alive. At times these animosities spill into violence, mirroring the self-destructive uchi-geba of the leftist students. However thanks to the predetermined denouement and glorious music reminiscent of Hollywood war films intermittently inserted into action scenes, the viewer can easily dismiss such scenes with a disapproving head shake. Though police lives were lost in the process, the operation succeeds. 䋭㪎㪌䋭.

(8) in rescuing the hostage and capturing the extremists alive. Do not kill the extremists, he had been told, for it was important to drive home once and for all that these students were not revolutionary heroes, but rather enemies of the Japanese people. With dignified authority, Sasa allows his men to grab their captives by the hair to show their shameful faces in the Japanese people's television sets. Mission accomplished, an exhausted Sasa returns home to his beautiful wife who gives him a nice foot massage. Though haunted by the need to attend the funerals of the men he lost, he is in good spirits when his boss calls him up promptly to congratulate him and tell him to rest well—but only for one day. “Hercules here,” he answers the phone as the 133 minute film comes to an end. While the movie provided “behind the scenes” details on the police operation, the narrative. essentially. recapitulated. the. contemporaneous. television. coverage—a. suspense-filled drama centering around the rescue of the damsel in distress. Besides the brief appearances in the beginning and end of the film as they flee and are captured, the extremist students enter the field of vision only in the form of a rifle butt jutting out of the occupied building, intermittently firing shots toward the police (and viewers). The students' perspectives are kept safely out of sight and out of mind, effectively reinforcing the self-righteous denunciation by much of Japanese mainstream society. Such a perspective remains prevalent to this day. With Jitsuroku rengo sekigun, Wakamatsu disrupted this perspective. In a contemporary context where a significant percentage of youth are alienated from the fruits of postwar affluence, it is not unreasonable to speculate that an increasing number of people may find the thoughts and actions of the Red Army members, even with their fatal flaws of ideological rigidity and closed-loop violence, more interesting and relevant in thinking about human history than obliviously insular perspectives of “rapid economic growth” period Japan that exclude them.. Germany: The Red Army in History Like in most Western societies in which the social liberalization process took place in the 1960s, terrorist groups such as the RAF arose from the 1967-69 protests.. In. West. Germany,. this. movement. was. embodied. by. the. Extraparliamentary Opposition (APO) and the Socialist German Student Union (SDS) - movements and organizations which basically turned against American. 䋭㪎㪍䋭.

(9) imperialism in Vietnam and home-made fascism that expressed itself in a nascent police state exemplified by the Emergency Acts of 1968. According to the socialist theory worked out by Rudi Dutschke, leading ideologist and leading figure in the APO and SDS, the ominous condition of society could be traced back to the course of capitalism, whose mouthpiece the publishing company "Springer press" was accused to have become by influencing the public in favor of the FRG-establishment. As in most other societies featuring protest movements, terrorist groups originated from the disaggregating student movement. It is, in the majority of cases, at the peak of a protest cycle (in combination with other factors such as increasing state repression) when New Leftist clandestine groups decide to go underground (Zwerman/Steinhoff/della Porta 2000). Whereas most parts of the fractionalized movement drifted towards social democracy (besides the emergence of insignificant and relatively small Maoist groups ("K-Gruppen")), the advancing dissolution of the student movement in 1969/70 led to the radicalization of a violence-prone minority, which actively aimed at preserving an anti-imperialist consciousness and waging class struggle. This minority became the recruitment base not only for the RAF, but also for other German terrorist groups, such as the Movement 2 June, the Revolutionary Cells, the Red Zora and the Anti-Imperialist Cells. The terrorist turn was triggered by the question whether or not violence should be used as a reaction to police brutality (shooting of student Benno Ohnesorg on June 2, 1967) or to bring about political change in general. The assembling RAF deemed it necessary to put Marxist capitalism and imperialism theory into practice by building a “proletarian army” and developing working-class consciousness. They understood themselves as avant-garde, and professional revolutionaries in a Maoist and (Marxist-)Leninist way. In doing so, they adopted guerilla war tactics, which proved to be successful in other parts of the world at that time (China, Vietnam and, to a lesser extent, Uruguay). For the RAF, this step expressed an act of solidarity with the oppressed people of the Third World, and especially with the ongoing liberation struggle of the Vietcong in Vietnam. A special feature of the German terrorists' motivation to join the armed. 䋭㪎㪎䋭.

(10) struggle against the US-American imperialism was the associative proximity to Nazi warfare during World War II (“Vietnam = Auschwitz”) (Klimke/Mausbauch 2006: 623 ff.). As Birgit Hogefeld, a former leading member of the RAF described: For many, the pictures from Vietnam, the use of napalm bombs and chemical weapons such as agent orange, the bombing of dams, the analogy to Auschwitz suggested itself, precisely the obvious will to wipe out this people. (Hogefeld 2004: 104, translated by the authors). In memory of the national socialist past, German leftist terrorism always felt the need to make up for the historical injustice and the weak opposition against the Nazi regime. From this point of view, it is comprehensible why the RAF designed its struggle and its actions as it did: namely, as the opening of a second front in the rear of an industrialized country, and, simultaneously, as a contribution to the anti-imperialist liberation war. In summary, the development of terrorism in Germany was the result of a complex combination of factors, which included a generational conflict (generations raised in prewar Germany versus generations socialized in the FRG), cultural revolution (in this case fascism and conservatism versus an amalgamation of progressive, socialist and communist ideas), and a flagging leftist student movement (Bulig 2007: 23). The concrete origins of the RAF are to be found, inter alia, in the "Kommune 1", an anarchistic housing project whose intention was to overcome traditional family concepts. Kommune 1 drew attention to itself in the late 1960s through spectacular and relatively peaceful actions in public, e.g. the attempted "pudding assassination" of US Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. The RAF took this project on another level by turning the "fun guerilla" into conventional urban guerilla warfare strategies with the Latin American guerilla troops as its archetype. However, in the course of the first years, the RAF transformed itself into a hierarchical Leninist cadre organization and drafted its own ideology, which can be taken from the paper "The Concept of the Urban Guerilla" (1971). Being one of the few ideological RAF publications, it claims an extensive connection between. 䋭㪎㪏䋭.

(11) capitalism, imperialism and fascism, and thus propagates the necessity and consequence of armed struggle and "terror against the rule apparatus" (Kowalski 2010: 9). In literature, it is widely accepted that the RAF ideology remained vague and confusing, since it employed an extremely wide fascism term, denouncing nearly every part of established political culture as "fascist" or worse. As Kowalski puts it: Capitalism, fascism, imperialism: in the texts of the RAF wobbles an inextricable conglomerate of past and present, of Marxist-Leninist jargon and bigoted resentments, of conceptual coordinates that do not have more meaning than referring to each other. What comes across as historical-political analysis turns out to be, on closer examination, a genuine anti-enlightening political state of mind, which, in its incapacitation of the ‘masses’, cultural-pessimistic anti-Americanism and hostile anti-capitalism, bears resemblance to conservative-revolutionary German interwar-period traditions of thought, and, with its conspiracist elements,. consistently. reminds. one. of. anti-Semitic. structured. Nazi-ideologemes. (Kowalski 2010: 64, translated by the authors) In general, the RAF era used to be divided into three phases of activity (generations). Each phase of activity ended with the arrest of its core members and the fluid transition to a consolidation phase, in which new members had to be recruited by the group. The first generation, consisting of the RAF's most known personalities such as Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin and Horst Mahler, was mainly active between 1970 and 1972. Making their debut on April 2, 1968, Baader, Ensslin and two accomplices set two Frankfurt department stores on fire as a protest against the Vietnam War in particular and the Western consumer society in general. The participants involved in the action were sentenced to three years imprisonment. The subsequent liberation of Baader on May 14, 1970, is generally considered to be the constituent event of the RAF, since the persons involved now finally went underground. After a series of multiple bank robberies which functioned as "fund-raising" for terrorist activities, the group carried out. 䋭㪎㪐䋭.

(12) various bomb and arson attacks, mainly on US facilities, but also on symbols of the Federal Republic like police stations or the Springer publishing house. The activity phase of the first generation ended with the arrest of its core members (Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof and Jan-Carl Raspe) and the solitary confinement of each of them. The following time in Stammheim prison is essential for understanding the "RAF myth", since the imprisoned were endeavored to present themselves as the victims of fascist and inhuman rule of law. Solitary confinement and hunger strikes (resulting in the death of Holger Meins), helped the RAF to achieve “martyr” status and motivated later members to join the second and third generation of the RAF. Quoting again Birgit Hogefeld, leading member of the third generation: Most people who know the picture of dead Holger Meins won’t forget it for life - surely also because this broken-down human bore so much resemblance to Nazi concentration camp prisoners, to the dead of Auschwitz. (Hogefeld 2004: 106, translated by the authors). The second generation made repeated attempts to obtain the release of the political prisoners, such as through the occupation of the West German embassy in Stockholm 1975 or during the German Autumn 1977, the height of German terrorism. The German Autumn consisted of the events taking place in late summer and fall of that year; most outstandingly, the kidnapping of German Employers' Associations president Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the Lufthansa airplain "Landshut". The project (“Big Raushole”) failed, ending with the collective suicide of the first generation in Stammheim. Subsequent to the capture of the leading members of the second generation (Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Christian Klar, to mention the most important), the transition to the third generation took place in the 1980s. The following combat against the "military-industrial complex" finally expressed itself in several bomb and arson attacks on facilities mainly employed by the US, but also in assassinations of leading figures in German politics and business (e.g. Alfred Herrhausen and Detlev Karsten Rohwedder) until 1991. The active RAF came to an end 1993 after a police confrontation with the remaining core members Birgit Hogefeld and Wolfgang Werner Grams.. 䋭㪏㪇䋭.

(13) The official declaration of self-dissolution followed on April 20, 1998. The reasons for the decline in RAF terror are to be found not only in the altered societal circumstances that led to the increased obsolescence of the communist theories of the group, but in the RAF itself, whose increasing radicalization ultimately caused its alienation from the extreme left and from society at large. The dwindling support from the public and from the group's legal supporting environment resulted in an increasingly growing recruitment problem, which, in combination with an unforthcoming success regarding the revolutionalization of society, left nothing behind but a resigned RAF.. Germany: The Red Army in Film Like the history of the RAF itself, its cinematic representation can be divided into different phases. This paper claims a change in the cinematic representation, ranging from political-artistic social criticism (1970s) and personification (1980s/1990s) to romanticization and commercialization (2000s). In order to test this assumption, the following paragraphs shall analyze a sample of ten movies and relate it to the results of earlier publications. Classic film analysis hereby suggests the focusing on plot, characters as well as norms and values - the movie’s “statement”. While addressing these layers and their impact on RAF representation, it is necessary to determine the various plotlines, the characterization of the figures as well as the construction of historiography through positive or negative RAF images. The following section shall examine how the representation of the RAF has changed over time. For this purpose, a sample has been compiled of all relevant German films on the RAF that have been produced until 2011 (title [English title], director, year): Die dritte Generation [The Third Generation], Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1979) Die bleierne Zeit [Marianne and Juliane], Margarethe von Trotta (1981) Stammheim [Stammheim], Reinhard Hauff (1986) Die Reise [The Journey], Markus Imhoof (1986). 䋭㪏㪈䋭.

(14) Todesspiel [Death Game], Heinrich Breloer (1997) Die Stille nach dem Schuss [The Legend of Rita], Volker Schlöndorff (2000) Black Box BRD [Black Box BRD], Andres Veiel (2001) Baader [Baader], Christopher Roth (2002) Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex [The Baader Meinhof Complex], Uli Edel (2008) Wer wenn nicht wir [If Not Us, Who?], Andres Veiel (2011) Selection criteria included, firstly, the explicit depiction of the RAF and its group members, respectively (mainly by incorporating elements of fiction into the artwork). Secondly, screening in cinemas nationwide, since the emergence of a mass audience is more likely to occur in that case. The TV production Todesspiel has been included as an exception because of its wide acceptance and far-reaching impact on the public’s perception of the German Autumn. Other movies touching on the terrorist issue but only marginally referring to the RAF have been excluded, such as Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta's The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (1975) and Germany in Autumn (1978), to name the most important. Before examining the sample, it is important to note that until now, there have been two “waves” in the cinematic production: the first wave being a direct reaction to the terrorist events that took place in the 1970s and 1980s; the second wave (starting from 1997, after a production gap of ten years) emanating from the increasing willingness to reflect on German postwar history, 20 years after the traumatic events of 1977. Nevertheless, within these two phases, further subtypes can be differentiated. When looking at the first RAF movies in connection with other movies dealing with the terrorism, there is a tendency for socio-critical film-making. Especially when considering the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, these movies must be understood as an attempt to re-enact the political debate. His film Die dritte Generation (1979) portrays a fictional third RAF generation (yet non-existent at that time), which is a motley crew of spare-time revolutionaries; a mockery of the second RAF generation that tries to compensate its loss of political. 䋭㪏㪉䋭.

(15) goal-orientation by an increase in violence. P.J. Lurz, a US businessman, uses the group for his own commercial purposes (that is, supplying the federal government with counter-terrorism equipment) so that, in the end, he even lets himself being taken as a hostage in order to get business moving again: a clear hint to the Schleyer kidnapping 1977. “Capital invented terrorism”, an original quote from the movie, is the unambiguous statement of this film, whose expressivity and artistically demanding manner has remained unmatched for years. Margarethe von Trotta's Die bleierne Zeit (1981) is interesting insofar as it combines socio-critical cinema and increasing personalization trends. In the screenplay, Marianne and Juliane are the fictionally reproduced characters representing the Ensslin sisters; and while Marianne takes the well-known role of the RAF terrorist, the storyline revolves around her sister Juliane, a feminist activist working for a ‘new’ women's magazine. The plot sets in motion shortly before Marianne gets caught and sent to prison, which is where all the verbal exchange takes place for the rest of the movie. The storyline, however, is frequently interrupted by childhood flashbacks to the sisters' conservative parents' house, which on the one hand help illuminate the socio-historical interrelations between the authoritarian structures of German society and the 1968 protest movement; but on the other hand, brings about the above-mentioned effect of personalization of political contents; in this case: the parting of the ways between reformism and revolution. Compared with later productions, the ideological divides are of far more relevance than the life story of a certain character. This happens to change at some point. Aside from Stammheim (1986), a mere renarration of the Stammheim trial (based on Stefan Aust’s bestseller book “Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex” (1985)), Die Reise (1986) is a good example for RAF films of the personalization phase. The film is strongly linked to the biography of Bernward Vesper, an important writer of the 1968 generation and former husband of Gudrun Ensslin who committed suicide in 1971. The telling of his story is intrinsically tied to the relationship with his father, an important author in Nazi Germany, which, by implication of the political circumstances, became ostracized by the postwar literature community. Vesper's involvement in the student movement and his struggle against the conservative structures of state and. 䋭㪏㪊䋭.

(16) society merely serve as background story, whereas the central conflict revolves around Bernward and his authoritarian father. Such a perspective virtually suggests itself, though, when considering that the film is based on the homonymous novel by Bernward Vesper, which has been evaluated as the “inheritance of an entire generation”. The movies produced around the turn of the century are in many ways different from those made in the 1970s and 1980s. Whereas directors such as Fassbinder and Margarethe von Trotta specifically allowed and encouraged the discussion about the legitimacy of terrorism in their movies, later productions show a constant bias either for the RAF or the public authorities. Todesspiel (1997) is a striking and exceptional example for how the lines between feature and documentary film were blurred, and how the terrorist events of the German Autumn could be presented in a very one-sided way (by letting almost only former public officials, terror victims and their family members getting a word in edgeways). In light of the fact that the peak of German leftist terrorism dates back 20 years when the second wave of cinematic productions begins, the general reprocessing of historical events is more likely to become the leitmotif of the respective movies. In the case of Todesspiel, there are first signs of a myth-and-legend-creation, which, understandably, do not serve the glorification of the RAF, but rather intend to demonstrate the omnipotence of the Federal Government. In this sense, it is “a filmic tribute to the triumph of the German state” (Trnka 2007: 6). In terms of chronology, Die Stille nach dem Schuss (2000) may be interpreted as a fall-back into old patterns. The story of Rita, a terrorist who flees to East Germany in the 1980s in order to escape from criminal prosecution in the West (based on the life story of Inge Viett who emigrated to East Germany in 1982), solely focuses on another biography of a tragic political figure. Even though important in terms of East-West-rapprochement, it perfectly shows how a personalized RAF story is capable to depoliticize and thus trivialize the terrorism issue: Die Stille nach dem Schuss received much attention and mixed reviews;. 䋭㪏㪋䋭.

(17) the film was mainly criticised for neglecting to explore the political dimensions, for catering to mass audience tastes, and for trivializing traumatic events, romanticising terrorists and simplifying or falsifying history. (Mueller 2008: 270). It should have become clear by now that with the second wave there has been an essential change in cinematic RAF production. Almost simultaneously with the declaration of self-dissolution in 1998, a new form of representation emerged that is prevalent down to the present day. In literature, this third phase is consistently being referred to as “romanticization of the RAF” (Kreimeier 2006; Elter 2008 237ff.; Uka 2006; Preece 2008). Baader (2002) is one of the most outstanding movies in this regard, portraying Baader and Ensslin as a second-rate "Bonnie & Clyde" (Baumann 2010: 246). Sharing nearly all characteristics of a romanticizing representation style, it offers an idealized image of the RAF: gunfights and car chases, the marketing of a “terrorist lifestyle”, glorification of their actions and, finally, an adventurous fusion of fact and fiction that misrepresents the historical facts to a great extent. The latest outcome of this development is the blockbuster Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex (2008), a feature film with first-class direction and actors team, depicting ten years of RAF history (1967-77). To director Uli Edel’s credit, the film closely followed the research work by Stefan Aust; however, since the focus of the film lies on the committed actions of the group rather than its ideology, one would have expected more under the given preconditions. Being the temporary highlight of the New German Cinema, these movies constitute quite the opposite to the socio-critical movies of the 1970s, since the fusion of information and entertainment seems complete now, resulting in total commercialization of the brand “RAF”. In contrast to the examples given above, the representational change does not seem be as straight-lined as presumed. Even though a long-term media trend towards trivialization and depoliticization can be observed, some movies like, for example, the works of Andres Veiel may be exempted from this development. What makes these movies different from their predecessors is the reintroduction of political ambivalence, the realization of the general multi-edged-ness of political. 䋭㪏㪌䋭.

(18) value systems. Veiel demonstrates this by breaking up ideological entrenchments, like, for example, in his documentary Black Box BRD (2001), where he shows that terrorist Wolfgang Werner Grams and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen actually had a lot in common through their unusual idealism. In doing so, he “attempts to depolarise the victim/perpetrator dichotomy” (Homewood 2008: 238). By comparing Grams’ and Herrhausen’s similarities in their life stories throughout the entire movie, ideological reconciliation seems not only possible, but desirable. The feature film Wer wenn nicht wir (2011) furthermore proves Veiel’s ability to abstract from protagonists Bernward Vesper’s and Gudrun Ensslin’s perspectives to the global political events of the 1960s and the formation of the RAF (in very contrast to Markus Imhoof’s Die Reise). Their biographies rather function as explanation approaches, not as purposes in themselves. The father-son conflict, for instance, is familiar to the audience, but not ubiquitous, since the narration makes clear that many other factors influenced the political attitudes of Vesper and his environment. Eventually, it appears reasonable to assume that Veiel picks up where the second generation of RAF-movies left off by refraining from reductionist and romanticizing styles of representation. In this sense, “Veiel’s strategy serves to challenge the dominant cultural myth of the RAF (…) which has reduced the RAF to the level of fashionable signs and symbols which favour style over substance” (Homewood 2008: 245). Veiel’s unparalleled work thus constitutes an essential step in dealing with the German “RAF trauma”.. Conclusion: Andres Veiel and Wakamatsu Koji in Comparative Context In the German context, Andres Veiel’s recent works on the RAF are innovative departures. Catching up with the socio-critical cinema of the 1970s, Veiel has re-launched an open discussion on the root causes of terrorism, the RAF’s motives, and abstract themes such as morals, guilt, and atonement; topics that have been often ignored before. Much of this can be explained by Veiel's biography: Having been a part of the leftist scene that emerged out of the student movement in the 1970s, Veiel was involved in squatting and community activism that did not go along with his membership in the Junge Union (youth organization. 䋭㪏㪍䋭.

(19) of the two major conservative political parties), bringing him in constant conflict with his conservative political heritage. The final break occurred when a fellow party member advised him to refrain from observing the Stammheim trial for the sake of his political future, making Veiel being doubtful about the prospects of German democracy. Eventually, Veiel stepped out of the Junge Union and left his Southern German home for West Berlin where he completed a master's degree in psychology. However, his intention was not to work as a psychologist, but to write and direct stage plays. After all, rebelling against the authorities through artistic expression is what Veiel and Wakamatsu have in common. Much of Veiel's reputation as a film director derives from his approach not to impose his point of view on the audience. His intention is neither to dramatize nor to glorify the RAF, but to take it as a part of history and reassess this history. According to an earlier statement from Veiel, the historical causes of the RAF are to be found in the postwar period, a time in which the collective consciousness was dominated by feelings of guilt, shame and silence. This is interesting inasmuch as the connection between postwar history and 1968 social revolutionary terrorism has been emphasized by several scholars before. The historian Dorothea Hauser, for example, found that in Japan, Italy and Germany, the shame of defeat set the basic preconditions for a similar political culture, manifesting itself in a profound identity crisis, giving terrorist groups of the 1970s the stimulating political environment they needed for developing a high potential of violence (Hauser 2006: 1294ff.). The sociologist Martin Kowalski, on the other hand, characterized the RAF as a post-fascist phenomenon, resulting from the internal dynamics of a post-fascist society that is traumatized from its national socialist past (Kowalski 2010: 15). Characteristics of such a society include an identity disorder of collective consciousness and a problematic state legitimacy that is due to the discontinuity of the political system. This identity gap, caused by the abolition of traditional social structures, is crucial for the understanding of nationalist and social revolutionary terrorist groups, since one of their primary functions is the rewriting of identity. When considering the cases of Japan and Germany, this is being done through the critical challenge of the allied powers and the United States in particular. The struggle against the Vietnam War and, hence,. 䋭㪏㪎䋭.

(20) widespread anti-Americanism means in this regard an indirect return to (pre-)wartime history. Like. Veiel,. Wakamatsu. was. dissatisfied. with. the. caricatured. understandings of the United Red Army members. Compared to Veiel, however, Wakamatsu’s dissatisfaction is a more visceral one, laced with the driving emotion behind his creative energy: anger. This can be traced to multiple factors, including his temperament and his direct connections to the United Red Army members and the times they lived. Wakamatsu Koji’s career as a movie director began somewhat improbably. Arriving in Tokyo after being expelled from his local high school, Wakamatsu joined a gangster group. It was during this time that he experienced his first major clash with state authority. After a fight with a rival gang member, Wakamatsu was arrested and held in custody for half a year. Wakamatsu experienced this as arbitrary torture—a formative experience which led him to vow revenge. Understanding that direct violence had no chance of succeeding, Wakamatsu eventually turned to film as his weapon. His experiences as a gangster also served him well in proving his worth as an effective diplomat who could work with the local bosses in securing sets. In addition, he knew how to work without complaining unlike his proud university educated peers. Wakamatsu rose to the rank of director with remarkable speed, but initially there was a condition attached: that he include nude female bodies and love scenes. This proved to be no problem. His 1963 debut film, “Amai wana” (The Sweet Trap) caused a sensation and orders began pouring in. His films were especially popular among student radicals. Atypical. of. pornographic. films,. Wakamatsu’s. films. often. contained. anti-establishment messages which resonated with the politically charged atmosphere of the time (Wakamatsu 2004: 107,110). Wakamatsu’s ties to leftist radicalism were further forged through his collaboration with Adachi Masao, a younger director with ties to the Japanese Red Army. With the funds that came with the success of a 1970 movie, Wakamatsu and Adachi went to Palestine to film the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) members. The guerillas did not allow them to film for about two weeks but one morning abruptly told them to film everything they wanted in a day and. 䋭㪏㪏䋭.

(21) leave camp that evening. They did so, descending the mountain and later learning the guerillas had all been killed in an attack the following day. Driven on by a sense of mission, Wakamatsu organized a nationwide campaign to show the resulting film “Red Army PFLP: Declaration of World War” (1971). The film juxtaposed the very real war occurring in Palestine with the “war” being waged in postwar Japan by the Red Army. “In reality, are we fighting the enemy? Who is fighting the enemy, in reality? In reality, can we fight the enemy?” a voice intones over images of consumerist Japanese television. Among the many youths who saw the film was Toyama Mieko, a student activist who worked in Wakamatsu’s studio, and who was later killed in the series of internal lynchings within the United Red Army (Yomota 2006: 267-270). The dilemma surrounding the possibility to identify and fight the enemy in 1970s Japan touches on one of the key differences between the United Red Army, the RAF, and the contexts in which they operated. The most striking contrast between German and Japanese perceptions on the recent past of leftist terrorism is the overwhelming factor of uchigeba in the Japanese case. In an interview conducted during the preparation stages of his film on Asama sanso, Wakamatsu speculated that a major reason behind the uchigeba phenomenon was that the radicals’ pain was not real, but rather indirect and theoretical. Despite their misgivings toward the “peace and happiness” of postwar Japan, most of the radicals needed to make a major effort to feel pain or anger toward an enemy—something that came naturally to those such as the Palestinian people whose family and friends had been killed before their own eyes (Wakamatsu 2004: 199). While the contrast is not as sharp, a similar point can be made between Japan and Germany. One of the striking absences in Wakamatsu’s film on the United Red Army is any connection with the wartime past: the “road to Asama sanso” began in 1960, with the protests against the US-Japan Security Treaty. It is symbolic that Wakamatsu felt compelled to deal with the parents’ generation in a separate film: “Caterpillar” (2010). In Veiel’s film, by contrast, the two activists’ relationships with their Nazi era generation parents are an important backdrop. This difference stems not only from Veiel’s stronger focus on biographical backgrounds, but also differences in historical context. The fascist past, as well as. 䋭㪏㪐䋭.

(22) the stark realities of the Cold War, were more real in postwar Germany as symbolized by the Auschwitz trials and the Berlin Wall. In Japan, the tendency of activist thinkers to position themselves in opposition to early postwar progressives, or against contemporary rival factions, was both cause and consequence of the distanced past and present. The discrepancy in the number of films dealing with the issue of leftist terrorism suggests that the gap in the proximity of the recent past exists today as well. This is also related to the fact that in Japan there are remarkably few former radicals of the late 1960s and early 1970s who have entered parliament or otherwise made it into the influential ranks of mainstream society. The former student radicals of the German Green Party and their role in the contentious and real national debate over nuclear energy come to mind as contrast. The fact that the 1972 events and their contexts have receded so far in national memory led Wakamatsu to construct his film incorporating documentary style explanations to educate viewers—something that Veiel, the documentary director, did not need to do as a plethora of films had already told the story of the terrorists’ actions, as opposed to motivations. In Wakamatsu’s uncharacteristically studious style one can sense his angry determination to redeem the tragic youths not through glorification or iconization but through the reenactment of their experiences, and through the simple act of setting the record straight. His anger comes through more directly in the climactic scene, where he has the reticent youngest member of the barricading radicals lash out against his elders, accusing them, and himself, of cowardice. The anguished voice of “We lacked courage!” was not only directed against the United Red Army members for having failed to stop the inner-directed spiral of violence, but also toward the elder members of the group who had fled overseas without providing adequate education or support to those they left behind, and toward the viewers themselves living in a society that chooses to forget the possibilities, both positive and negative, of the recent radicalism the film depicts.. Amano Kazumasa (1999): Mutoha undo no shiso, Tokyo.. 䋭㪐㪇䋭.

(23) Baumann, Cordia (2010): Die RAF als Abenteuer: Der Bonnie-und-Clyde-Mythos: Die Romantisierung der RAF in Film und Literatur, in: Ächtler, Norman (ed.): Ikonographie des Terrors?, Heidelberg, pp. 245-267. Bulig Jan (2007): Von der Provokation zur "Propaganda der Tat", Bonn. Elter, Andreas (2008): Propaganda der Tat, Frankfurt. Hauser, Dorothea (2006): Deutschland, Italien, Japan: Die ehemaligen Achsenmächte und der Terrorismus der 1970er Jahre, in: Kraushaar, Wolfgang (ed.): Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, Hamburg, pp. 1272-1298. Hogefeld, Birgit (2004): Zur Geschichte der RAF, in: Wirth, Hans-Jürgen (ed.): Hitlers Enkel - oder Kinder der Demokratie?: Die 68er-Generation, die RAF und die Fischer-Debatte, Gießen, pp. 93-131. Homewood, Chris (2008): Making Invisible Memory Visible: Communicative Memory and Taboo in Andres Veiel's Black Box BRD, in: Berendse, Gerrit-Jan (ed.): Baader-Meinhof Returns: History and Cultural Memory of German Left-Wing Terrorism, Amsterdam, pp. 231-249. Jitsuroku Rengo Sekigun henshu iinkai [“Jitsuroku” in text] (2008): Wakamatsu Koji Jitsuroku Rengo Sekigun, Tokyo. Klimke, Martin and Wilfried Mausbach (2006): Auf der äußeren Linie der Befreiungskriege: Die RAF und der Vietnamkonflikt, in: Kraushaar, Wolfgang (ed.): Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, Hamburg, pp. 620-643. Kowalski, Martin (2010): "Aber ich will etwas getan haben dagegen!", Berlin. Kreimeier, Klaus (2006): Die RAF und der deutsche Film, in: Kraushaar, Wolfgang (ed.): Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, Hamburg, pp. 1155-1170. Kyosanshugisha domei sekigunha (1971): Sekai kakumei senso e no hisho, Tokyo.. 䋭㪐㪈䋭.

(24) Mueller, Gabriele (2008): Imagining the RAF from an East German Perspective: Carow's Vater, Mutter, Mörderkind and Dresen's Raus aus der Haut, in: Berendse, Gerrit-Jan (ed.): Baader-Meinhof Returns: History and Cultural Memory of German Left-Wing Terrorism, Amsterdam, pp. 269-284. Oguma Eiji (2009): 1968(ge), Tokyo. Preece, Julian (2008): Reinscribing the German Autumn: Heinrich Breloer’s Todesspiel and the Two Clusters of German ‘Terrorist’ Films, in: Berendse, Gerrit-Jan (ed.): Baader-Meinhof Returns: History and Cultural Memory of German Left-Wing Terrorism, Amsterdam, pp. 213-229. Steinhoff, Patricia (2005): Shi e no ideorogi, Tokyo. Tanigawa Gan et.al. eds (1966): Mishushugi no shinwa, Tokyo. Trnka, Jamie H.: “The Struggle Is Over, the Wounds Are Open”: Cinematic Tropes, History, and the RAF in Recent German Film, in: New German Critique 34 (2007), pp. 1-26. Uka, Walter (2006): Terrorismus im Film der 70er Jahre: Über die Schwierigkeiten deutscher Filmemacher beim Umgang mit der realen Gegenwart,. in:. Weinhauer,. Klaus. (ed.):. Terrorismus. in. der. Bundesrepublik: Medien, Staat und Subkulturen in den 1970er Jahren, Frankfurt, pp. 382-399. Wakamatsu Koji (2004): Jikonashi, Tokyo. Yomota Inuhiko (2006): Paresuchina now, Tokyo. Yomota Inuhiko (2008): Rengo sekigun no eizo, in: Shincho (2008.1), pp.202-212. Zwerman, Gilda, Patricia G. Steinhoff and Donatella della Porta: Disappearing Social Movements: Clandestinity in the Cycle of New Left Protest in the U.S., Japan, Germany, and Italy, in: Mobilization: An International Quarterly 5 (2000), pp. 85-104.. 䋭㪐㪉䋭.

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