A man walks past a case showing many of Japan’s most wanted criminals, including a poster of Satoshi Kirishima (top R), who was a member of the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front – a radical leftist organisation responsible for bombing attacks in Japan’s capital in the 1970s – outside a police box in Tokyo on 29 January 2024. Local media have reported on 29 January that the man believed to be Kirishima has died at a local hospital in Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo only days after he was reportedly caught after almost 50 years on the run.
- Satoshi Kirishima, a fugitive wanted in connection with bombings by leftist extremists in Japan during the 1970s, reportedly died after nearly 50 years on the run.
- Kirishima revealed his true identity after he admitted himself to a hospital under a false name for cancer treatment.
- The 70-year-old had been living a double life, working as a building contractor under the alias Hiroshi Uchida in the city of Fujisawa.
Long hair,
youthful smile, thick glasses slightly askew: for decades, the black-and-white
photo of one of Japan’s most wanted fugitives has been a ubiquitous sight at
police stations nationwide.
But after
nearly 50 years, Satoshi Kirishima – wanted over deadly bombings by leftist
extremists in the 1970s – reportedly died Monday, days after local media said
he had finally been caught.
Last week,
the 70-year-old revealed his identity after he admitted himself to hospital
under a false name for cancer treatment, according to Japanese media.
The reports
were a sensation in Japan, where his young face is so widely recognised that it
has inspired viral Halloween costumes.
But police
were still scrambling to conduct DNA tests when the man believed to be
Kirishima passed away on Monday morning.
“Investigators
looked into and eliminated past tips, but there is a very high possibility that
this individual is actually Kirishima,” a police source told the Asahi
newspaper.
Plain sight
Details are
emerging of how Kirishima may have been hiding in plain sight for decades.
Born in
Hiroshima in January 1954, Kirishima attended university in Tokyo, where he was
attracted by radical far-left politics.
He joined
the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, one of several militant groups active in
the era, along with the once-feared Japanese Red Army or the Baader-Meinhof
Group in West Germany.
The
revolutionary Armed Front carried out bombings at Japanese companies, including
one at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries that killed eight people.
It operated
in three cells, with fanciful names: “Wolf”, “Fangs of the
Earth” and “Scorpion” — Kirishima’s outfit.
Under the radar
Alongside
physical descriptors on Kirishima’s wanted posters – 160 cm tall, full lips,
very short-sighted – is a summary of his crime.
In April
1975, the young radical allegedly helped set up a bomb that blasted away parts
of a building in Tokyo’s upscale Ginza district. No one was killed.
He has been
on the run ever since.
TV Asahi
and other outlets said he had lived a double life for years, working as a
building contractor in the city of Fujisawa in the Kanagawa region under the
alias Hiroshi Uchida.
He was paid
in cash and went under the radar with no health insurance or driving licence,
the reports said.
At the
nondescript office where the man reportedly worked, someone who knew him told
TV Asahi that the suspect had “lost a lot of weight” compared to the
wanted photo.
The man,
believed to be Kirishima, began to receive treatment for stomach cancer at his
own expense, the reports said.
It was at a
hospital in the city of Kamakura that he finally confessed that he was
70-year-old Kirishima, they added.
Walking free
Nine other
members of the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front were arrested, the Asahi
newspaper said.
But two
75-year-olds are still on the run after being released in 1977 as part of a
deal by the Japanese Red Army, which had hijacked a Japan Airlines plane in
Bangladesh.
Fusako
Shigenobu, the female founder of the Japanese Red Army, walked free from prison
in 2022 after completing a 20-year sentence for a 1974 embassy siege.
Shigenobu’s
group carried out armed attacks in support of the Palestinian cause during the
1970s and 80s, including a mass shooting at Tel Aviv airport in 1972 that
killed 24 people.
Kirishima,
though, escaped justice, or so it seems.
“I
want to meet my death with my real name,” he told staff at the hospital,
according to NHK.
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