‘I Am Kirishima' peels back the mystery of a fugitive radical
But filmmakers like Banmei Takahashi ('Rain of Light,' 2001), Koji Wakamatsu ('United Red Army,' 2007) and Masao Adachi ('The Escape,' 2025), who knew that turbulent time firsthand, have earnestly tried to make it understandable to succeeding generations, while being faithful to the stories of their extremist protagonists.
That is also true of Takahashi's latest, 'I Am Kirishima,' a strongly rooted, deliberately paced drama about the underground existence of Satoshi Kirishima, a former member of the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front (EAAJAF) whose smiling face was featured on wanted posters for half a century. Takahashi's film is more straightforward than Adachi's Kirishima biopic, 'The Escape,' which scrambles chronology and flirts with surrealism. It is, however, similarly in ideological rapport with its eponymous character, played in an outwardly tamped-down, inwardly seething performance by Katsuya Maiguma.
Neither film probably would have been made if Kirishima, who was 21 when he went on the run in 1975, had not evaded capture until January 2024, when he revealed his true identity while in a hospital being treated for terminal cancer. He died four days later, his sensational revelation making national news.
Co-scripted by Takahashi and Aki Kajiwara, the film starts with a rather plodding, if needed, primer on the actions and beliefs of the EAAJAF after Kirishima joined it, including the September 1974 bombing of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters building in Tokyo that resulted in six deaths.
Though Kirishima shared the rage of his comrades at Japanese corporations that exploited their workers, both foreign and domestic, he was against killing, as the film takes pains to emphasize. After conspiring to blow up buildings belonging to a major construction company, Kirishima is shown wracked with remorse when he learns that one explosion injured a security guard.
Be that as it may, once police begin scooping up EAAJAF members, including Hisaichi Ugajin (Eita Okuno), Kirishima's one real friend in the group, he changes his name to Hiroshi Uchida and disappears into the netherworld of day-labor jobs, where IDs are not required.
In the 1980s, he finds a home of sorts at a small construction company in Kanagawa Prefecture run by an uninquisitive boss, but as he enters middle age, Kirishima feels trapped in his lonely, tedious existence. Romantic sparks fly between 'Uyan' (Kirishima's nickname) and Keena (Kana Kita), a singer at a local pub whose plaintive version of the 1986 pop hit 'Jidai Okure' ('Behind the Times') warms his heart, but he knows that marriage is out. 'I can never make anyone happy,' he tells her.
Much later, by now an old man, he bridles at the casual anti-Korean remarks of a blonde new hire — an indication that, though his gait has slowed and his hair has turned gray, his core values remain as fiercely alive as ever.
Whether 'I Am Kirishima' exposes the truth behind the youthful mug that once grinned from thousands of police boxes remains a question since so little is known about the man. Perhaps, after decades of living behind a mask, Kirishima himself had only a weak grasp of his pre-fugitive self. But as his deathbed confession dramatically shows, he also never totally lost it.
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