Films about Japanese radicals of the 1970s who hijacked airplanes, blew up buildings and murdered each other in the name of ideological purity may strike younger viewers as unfolding in an alternative universe.
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.
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