Tearing Up the Revolutionary Sky: The Yodo-go and the Trajectory of Yoshizo Tanaka" [March 1970].

Tearing Up the Revolutionary Sky: The Yodo-go and the Trajectory of Yoshizo Tanaka" [March 1970].

Yoshizo Tanaka (a.k.a. Kazunori Hayashi) is a symbolic activist of the New Left Movement in Japan, especially as the perpetrator of the "Yodo-go" hijacking incident in March 1970. At the end of the 1960s, during the height of the school conflict, he joined the Socialist Students League and eventually joined the Red Army faction.

In 1969, Tanaka was involved in an incident involving the throwing of Molotov cocktails into the Hon-Fuji police station of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, and chose the path of underground activities. The following year, on March 31, 1970, he and eight others hijacked Japan Airlines Flight 351 from Haneda to Fukuoka, known as "Yodo-go. In their hands were a replica Japanese sword and explosives. The youths occupy the aircraft and set their destination as "North Korea. Tanaka was the first to enter the cockpit and was one of the first to take the lead in the incident.

This incident, Japan's first full-scale hijacking of an aircraft, sent shock waves through the nation. The aircraft landed at Gimpo Airport in South Korea, and the Japanese government took the unusual step of sending Shinjiro Yamamura, vice minister of transportation, to exchange hostages with the plane in an effort to prioritize human life. Finally, the "Yodo-go" arrived in Pyongyang. The group of criminals, including Tanaka, is accepted as political refugees in North Korea, and they become the focus of international attention as the "Yodo-go Group.

Tanaka's life in North Korea continued for a long time, and in 1977 he married Kyoko Mizutani. He continued to be seen outside the country, and in 1996 he was detained in Cambodia on suspicion of involvement in a fake dollar case along with a North Korean diplomat. After a trial, he was acquitted, but was extradited to Japan in 2000, where he was indicted over 30 years for the "Molotov cocktail incident" and the "Yodo-go incident." In 2002, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and in 2003, he withdrew his appeal and his prison sentence was confirmed.

While serving his sentence in Kumamoto Prison, Tanaka developed liver cancer and was transferred to Osaka Medical Prison in November 2006; his sentence was suspended in December, and he passed away peacefully on January 1, 2007, at the age of 58. Subsequently, "Yoshizo Tanaka's Posthumous Essays and Memorials" was published, featuring posthumous manuscripts and contributions from related persons, and his thoughts and way of life during his lifetime were once again called into question. He also wrote "Yodo-go, Korea, Thailand, and Japan" (Yodo-go, Korea, Thailand, and Japan) before his death, leaving behind a record of the path he had taken.

Yoshizo Tanaka's life, from his confrontation with the state and his decision to defect to his return and imprisonment, vividly reflects the shadows and contradictions of postwar Japan. The Yodo-gyo incident raised extremely serious political, diplomatic, and moral questions in Cold War Japan. Tanaka's existence is both a portrait of a young man martyred for his ideals and a memory of an era torn apart in the name of "revolution.