William Andrews

‘I considered starting over as a farmer’: Masao Adachi on political cinema, revolution and Japan today The director and ex-Japanese Red Army militant discusses his new film Escape, about the anarchist fugitive Satoshi Kirishima, the frustrations of radical film-making and progressive politics

‘I considered starting over as a farmer’: Masao Adachi on political cinema, revolution and Japan today www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...

‘People ought to know’: Blue Boy Trial brings Japan’s trans history up to date Kasho Iizuka’s feature casts trans actors to revisit a notorious 1965 trial that made gender reassignment illegal for more than 30 years. He explains why the history remains unfinished

‘People ought to know’: Blue Boy Trial brings Japan’s trans history up to date www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...

山上徹也裁判は何だったのか、「REVOLUTION＋1」特別上映会＆トークライブ開催 - 映画ナタリー 安倍晋三元首相の銃撃犯である山上徹也をモデルに描いた映画「REVOLUTION＋1」の特別上映会およびトークライブ「安倍元首相銃撃犯・山上徹也裁判は何だったのか」が、2月17日に東京・新宿歌舞伎町のロフトプラスワンにて開催される。

screening Adachi's Revolution +1 now (Feb 17th) is a hilariously political choice...
natalie.mu/eiga/news/65...

New reading: books by Craig Mod and Tom Feiling

New edited volume focuses on the student movement at Kyoto University in the late 1960s. Contributors include some big names like Ukai Satoshi, Fujihara Tatsushi, Ueno Chizuko, Fuke Takahiro. www.seidosha.co.jp/book/index.p...

Finally in my hands - with chapters on such interesting thinkers as Kakehashi Akihide, Yoshinori Takaaki, Tokoro Mitsuko, Kuroda Kan'ichi, and a contribution by yours truly on Hiromatsu Wataru. @Enojp_org

【2026新年特集・下】 酒井隆史さんに聞く！　ジグザグデモ盛衰史から見える、日本社会の閉塞感打破の一手｜人民新聞 前の仲間の肩を掴み、道いっぱいに広がり、一匹の蛇となって右へ左へうねっていく。60年安保を前後してその最盛期を迎えた「ジグザグデモ」は、民衆の自発性、そして示威行動としての華やかさから民衆に支持された。しかし体制権力と、何よりも自身の統制力の低下を恐れた運動内指導部によって、蛇は退治された。これらの大衆運動の歴史を掘り起こすことで、前号で特集した「極中道」現象や、今の日本の社会運動の課題と打開策が...

An interview with Sakai Takashi about the snack dance (zigzag demonstration), a famous feature of Japanese protests, especially among the New Left during the Long Sixties. Sakai published a book about the subject last year. note.com/jinminshinbu...

Not to mention, Arai Haruhiko and Adachi Masao have a somewhat combative (but playful) professional rivalry.

Fragmentation, Centralization, and Civil War in the Japanese Ultra-Left • Ill Will Harumasa Abe on revolutionary organization and internecine violence in 1960s and ’70s Japan.

Harumasa Abe on the decline of the New Left in Japan, arguing that the United Red Army incident and uchigeba in-fighting embody a "maximal tension" between two dynamics: centralization and fragmentation. illwill.com/uchigeba

I Am Kirishima at number 2 but no love for Escape (also about Kirishima)?

Wow, just spotted that unfortunate type on the back! Still, I was once credited as Andrew Williams (my Welsh doppelganger) in a publication, so it could have been worse!

闇市と都市―Black Markets and the Reimagining of Tokyo

On view through February 23, the exhibition examines Tokyo’s legacy of informality at the Takashimaya department store in Nihonbashi.

—> www.takashimaya.co.jp/shiryokan/to...

Very pleased to receive my copy of Political Thought and Japan’s New Left Movements, newly published by Bloomsbury. I contributed a chapter on Takita Osamu. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/political...

Escape review – notorious Japanese revolutionary tells story of country’s most wanted criminal Director Masao Adachi – formerly of the Japanese Red Army – on the infamous Satoshi Kirishima, who went on the run in 1975 after a series of corporate bombings

Adachi Masao's Escape is showing at the ICA in London from Friday, and just earned a four-star review in the Guardian. www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ja...

About six years ago, I wrote a peculiar novel about the extermination of the city's crows. Sadly, no one else seemed interested in it. Perhaps one day it will see the light of day in another form. Until then, I continue to worship at the altar of Corvus.

It's been corrected now, so perhaps a few humans are still lurking around the editorial desks of the Guardian.

"Japan’s Saipan island"? Apparently Roy Keane can time-travel back to pre-1944 days. www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ja...

What fresh hell is this? "Required to view paper"?!

The Japanese avant-garde has long had a complicated relationship with commercialism (v. Terayama Shuji and Parco, etc.), but angura actor and butoh artist Maro Akaji fronting a winter campaign for United Arrows (with his son and daughter-in-law) was not something I expected to see any time soon.

NHK is broadcasting a two-part documentary about the Japanese Red Army. It features an interview with the group's former leader, Shigenobu Fusako – her first mainstream media appearance since her release from prison in 2022. www.web.nhk/tv/an/mikaik...

Perhaps related to culture, perhaps also (more?) to social conditions. But such generalizations are always tricky and risk sending us down the essentialist path towards nihonjinron.

It was easier in the Long Sixties because Vietnam and Okinawa were key issues with emotional resonances that formed the “glue” for a wide movement. The far right is also very disparate but the emperor system and love of the motherland arguably retains people better. 2/

Sadly, as the current and very acrimonious split between Zengakuren and its parent organization demonstrates, bringing people together (or even just keeping people together) has always been a problem for the Japanese radical left. 1/

The climate crisis is indeed largely/strangely absent from the Japanese far left's discourse, though an argument could be made that capitalism and neoliberalism are responsible for the acceleration of the crisis, making it possible to campaign for the environment from a radical leftist position.

Artist Yoshinao Satoh spliced thousands of newspaper clippings and Steve Reich music into a transfixing short animation, Papers (1991). The result is "a mass-media collage that seems to anticipate the age of information overload". aeon.co/videos/japan...

「全学連」名乗る組織は6派に分裂　中核派離脱の矢嶋尋委員長らが機関紙発行で確定的 過激派の中核派の内紛で離脱状態にある矢嶋尋委員長の全学連が17日付で機関紙「全学連通信」を発行した。一方、中核派中央系の集会には、離脱しなかった全学連書記次長…

The acrimonious split in Japan's left-wing student movement has attracted little mainstream media attention with the exception of the conservative Sankei, which has positively revelled in the dispute. www.sankei.com/article/2025...

Zengakuren has seemingly cemented its split from parent organization Chukaku-ha by doing what any New Left group does: publish its own newspaper. mosakusha.com?p=12411

Very pleased to receive my copy of this comprehensive look at the work of Yanagi Yukinori. It includes an interview with Yanagi surveying his career as well as new essays by Bert Winther-Tamaki, Jane Farver, and Reiko Tomii. I translated several texts in the book. blum-books.com/products/yuk...

The center’s self-defeating politics As Japan’s far-right gains political and ideological force, can the center hold? It is a familiar question, one that is now rapidly gaining salience after Takaichi Sanae was elected leader of the Libe...

I wrote this piece about Tamaki Yuichiro's recent rise to populist fame and how centrists are paving the way for a more anti-establishment politics (against their better judgments)

A 40-year wait for ‘Mishima’ ends at TIFF Paul Schrader’s 1985 biopic of the radical author Yukio Mishima finds its Japanese audience at last.

I spoke to Paul Schrader and Alan Poul about the Japan premiere of MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS for the JT. There will be additional screenings of the film in Tokyo this weekend, tickets for which go on sale at noon today.
www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2025...