The explosion went over the moat and shook the window of the bureau chief’s office
Readers who subscribe to Masayuki Takayama’s following books at their local bookstores, as I recommended, will be most grateful to the author and somewhat thankful to me, the recommender.
They will be proud to know he is a unique journalist and Japanese in the postwar world.
Everyone will admire and marvel at his erudition, insight, mastery of verification, and reporting skills.
All the chapters are great, but the following chapters are especially significant.
Emphasis in the text, except for the headline, is mine.
Thoughts on the “Death of Daidoji” in the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Bombing
Was he the Japanese who gave up assassinating the emperor twice?
The Fall of the Left after the Asama-Sanso Incident
Nearly 40 years ago, a massive explosion occurred in broad daylight at the front entrance of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Building in Marunouchi, Tokyo, killing eight people instantly and seriously injuring nearly 400 others.
At the time, I was a reporter in charge of aviation.
That day, I had a press conference with the Director General of the Civil Aviation Bureau of the Ministry of Transport.
I was in his office on the seventh floor of the government building overlooking the moat.
The explosion went over the moat and shook the window of the bureau chief’s office.
As I recall, the first report was that a propane gas cylinder had exploded during transport.
It was long after dusk when we learned that it was a bombing.
The word “terrorism” seemed so sudden to everyone.
I felt that way because four years before this incident, it was the 70-year Security Treaty.
Ten years earlier, the somewhat idyllic atmosphere of the 60 Security Treaty had disappeared, and the students were now hiding their faces and arming themselves with iron pipes.
In clashes with riot police, stones and Molotov cocktails were thrown, and many were killed or injured on the riot police side.
Gone was the tranquil atmosphere of the 1960 Security Treaty, where local women served onigiri (rice balls) to protesting students.
The divergence between activists and citizens peaked in the United Red Army incident 1972.
The Red Army faction and a straggler organization of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) joined forces and, with women’s jealousy involved, they killed 12 people and, pursued by the police, took civilians hostage in the “Asama-Sanso” incident, where they also killed a police officer.
Asama-Sanso kept people glued to their televisions for a whole week, and the brutality and insanity of the incident were astonishing.
After this incident, people woke up from the illusions played by the leftist camp as if they were possessed.
The Asahi Journal, which had sold nearly 300,000 copies since its launch the year before the 1960 Security Treaty, had dropped to less than 30,000 copies.
The radicals themselves had lost their place in the movement, and at best, they seemed to be content to kill each other in a domestic war.
Two years later, a bombing in Marunouchi with the equivalent of 700 sticks of dynamite, aimed at revolution, took place.
This article continues.
